Intro:
This is a pretty good question because a lot of people place a lot of faith and belief in their religion and that is all good but sometimes, there might be things in the world which are not included in their religious books which can make it confusing. Now, I would like to say that the religious books are recorded when humans were starting to become more civilized and they recorded what was in front of them. So, in a concise manner, the answer would be ‘No’, Dinosaurs were definitely not mentioned in the Bible or any sort of religious textbooks but this does not mean Dinosaurs did not exist.
Science Vs. Religion:
Before I dive deeper into this topic, I want to make one thing clear. Religion and Science should not be against each other because they operate in different parts of our human lives. Science teaches us about our world, finds answers to questions we do not know about and explains why the world is the way it is and how we can learn from it for our benefit whereas religion on the other hand teaches us morality and humanity towards everyone with whom we share the planet.
Religion is not going to explain why the light from the Sun takes about 8 minutes and 20 seconds and Science is not going to explain why helping out a person in distress will make you a good person. Both of these form of beliefs work differently and they are different and you do not need to subscribe to one and not respect other. You can have both and use both to make your own life better as well as for others. Now, getting back on topic…
Why are Dinosaurs not mentioned in the Bible? :
Now we know the clear distinctions between Science and Religion, we can figure out why Dinosaurs are not mentioned in the Bible or any other religious texts whereas we have millions of fossil evidences proving life existed before humanity. Let’s start with something closer to our own timeline, if I were to choose the Christianity as my basis, then we know that Earth was made 5000 years ago and coincidentally, scientists or archaeologists have also discovered that civilized humanity also appeared around 4000 to 3000 years ago, not too far off from each other and you can why religion has said that time.
If you check out other religions, they will say even older numbers like 12,000 years by Hinduism. At this point, it would make more sense that as humanity was not so globalized like the modern day and every pocket of human civilization had their own version of religion and thus their own Earth lore. But I repeat, it is Religion’s job to provide background details about our Earth and the Universe, instead it is to make us good human beings so that we can be appreciated by the higher power and each other.
Scientist and Geologists have said that Earth is about 4.543 billion years old, give or take 50 million years, now that is long and that makes sense because any naturally occurring change would take a lot of time because Earth is huge and so the change to appear will take millions of years to happen, that is just how it is and that is how we learned from Science.
So, Bible and other religious texts does not mention Dinosaurs specifically but they do mention something else which are super close to Dinosaurs. I am not sure how many people may know these words but I will say it anyway. These couple of words are used to describe ‘sea monster’, ‘serpent’ or even a ‘dragon’. The words, ‘Tanniyn’, ‘Livyathan’, ‘Behemoth’ and so many more. The meaning for ‘Behemoth’ especially means a huge, plant-eating animal that dwells by the water. Its bones are like “tubes of bronze,” and its limbs are like “rods of iron” and its tail is likened to a cedar tree.
Now, if reread the meanings of the words, they awfully start to look like Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Marine Reptiles, don’t they? But now what does that mean? Did Dinosaurs live alongside human beings? Well…not exactly. Dinosaurs and other large, flying and marine reptiles did die off 66 million years ago by the meteorite impact but we cannot forget that there could have been a lot of misidentification.
From the mid-16th to 19th century, a lot of sailors said tall tales about Mermaids but now we do not believe those stories because that was a case of misidentification. They identified Sea Cows and Manatees as Mermaids and so the same could have happened with the legendary beasts of the Bible.
One could have encountered an elephant, or even found fossil skeleton of a whole titanosaur, or even whales, it is possible this happened. There have been anecdotal cases where some people found fossils of a Mosasaur and described it as a dragon. It is more plausible that this happened in place of an actual ‘Livyathan’ roaming the seas. Think about it for a moment logically as this has nothing to do with faith or anything but more towards understanding our own planet.
I will give a real-life example of misidentification of an animal that is well known to everyone. 13th-century explorer, Marco Polo, wrote of seeing “huge serpents” in China, which he described: “At the fore part, near the head, they have two short legs, each with three claws, as well as eyes larger than a loaf and very glaring. The jaws are wide enough to swallow a man, the teeth are large and sharp, and their whole appearance is so formidable, that neither man, nor any kind of animal can approach them without terror”
So, now can you tell me what kind of animal best fits this description. The answer is a crocodilian, the Chinese Alligator. See how, he did not describe the back legs or the tail but all the rest do match and an explorer manhandling a crocodile back then and so some of his information is inaccurate like how the fore legs only have 3 claws when they actually have 5 fingers and only 3 of them have the claws or nails.
The Final Verdict:
In the end, the reason Dinosaurs are not mentioned in the Bible because they went extinct millions of years ago before civilized humans came on this Earth and we found fossils of dinosaurs or animals that looked like Dinosaurs like the Crocodilians and how would we even know about Dinosaurs if we never saw it and which when people of the past saw these things, the named it as Dragons instead. When Science became more accepted, the first depiction of a Dinosaur was an overgrown lizard, not a living, breathing unique lifeforms that once ruled our planet. I hope you can take this information to heart and whenever you meet someone with this same question, point them to my blog!!!
If you want to have your own dinosaurs and dragons idea illustrated, be sure to click the button below as I have started my new Fiverr commission channel and it would be a great way to support my blogging endeavor as I try my best to bring more dinosaur and many more creature related content to you guys!!! See you again soon!
