Day 2- Jan 21, 2008 - Genesis 1-3

Today is pretty familiar to a lot of us but check it out and see if you see anything new this time.

Okay i have a question that has ALWAYS confused me... what about dinosaurs? I thought that they were the first living creatures on earth???

oooo good question, anybody care to take a stab at this?

Well I guess they were created during the fifth day. I assume that when this was first written down dinosaurs were not discovered at the time so I guess they weren't included in the list. Thats the only conclusion I have come too; hope it helps.

Thanks Sammy! That helped a lot! That does make good sense!

okay guys this is one of the harder questions around and i think we will never know what the answer is until we can ask in person. I did a little research and this is what i found. some scholors say that dinosaurs do exist in the bible.

Check on Job 40:15-24 for the Behemoth. Some people explain it as a hippo or elephant, but those dont have very impressive tails. the verses say "His tail sways like a cedar". There arent many animals that have such tails around but there were a lot of dinos that did. Something to think about...

Also, check Job 41; Psalm 104:25,26; and Isaiah 27:1 for the Leviathan. People explain this as a crocodile but crocs dont really go out in the sea all that much. Also, this thing was breathing fire. Was there a dinosaur that could breath fire? i guess we will have to see.

Lastly, the word tanniyn is mentioned several times in the bible and it translates anywhere from sea monster to reptile to great creature.

This is just one possibility but its odd that the Bible points out the other animals very specifically as names we know but these we have never heard of. I wonder why this is.

There are many possibilities out there and i have never thought of what Sammy added so who knows. Do i believe the explination i just gave, hmm im not sure but im for sure not throwing it away as false.

Just something to get you thinking!

I love the dinosaur ideas.
that's something I've always wondered too.

And I love the creation story. Except for the part when Adam and Eve get kicked out of the garden. =(

yeah the dino ideas are pretty interesting and it would be fun to find out that that is indeed the truth.

The creation story is a cool one, especially with the naming of those rivers and all.

the creation story is a sad one, just think about the differences if they would have stayed away from the tree. But thats not really for us to doubt so we will see how it goes.

Good work everybody!

Man, the dinosaur concepts are pretty interesting!

When I was reading Genesis, I really didn't hit on much of anything new on my views, but for some reason I had a better view of how pure Adam and Eve were before the whole "WHY'D YOU EAT THAT FRUIT?!" incident. Although a quick thought hit me while typing this, and it really doesn't have any significance I suppose...but when most people think of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they think of a tree that produces apples right? I just realized, I've been thinking the same thing all my life AND IT DOESN'T SAY IT'S AN APPLE TREE. Kinda interesting, like it could be pears or something...or a new type of fruit!

yeah it would have been pretty cool if we still all walked around naked and chilled all day and talked about smart stuff but now that we have knowledge and free will and all of that it makes it that much sweeter when we get it all. And i think the tree suffers from too many Snow White viewings. I think it was really a grapefruit tree because those things are nasty.

great question on the dinosaurs and great answers.

These were thoughts I had.

First, the Bible is not comprehensive. In other words, its purpose is not to explain or even mention every historical event. So any failure to discuss the dinosaurs expressly should not raise any concerns.

Second, the Bible says (in my translation) that He made "livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals." Dinosaurs could easily fall into the last two categories.

Third, although inspired by God, the Bible is written by men and is necessarily limited by the inadequacies/incompleteness of human vocabulary. So if God told Moses that animals were made on such and such day, Moses (or whoever wrote Genesis) would only be able to communicate that idea in words that were common to him. God may not have revealed the existence of dinosaurs specifically and so Moses just defined the categories in ways in which he was familiar.

Lastly, and most controversially, the account of Creation in Genesis may not be perfectly literal. It may be somewhat symbolic or poetic or even allegorical. In other words, it may be written to communicate certain truths about the Creation event but is not intended to be literal in every sense and certainly not complete, as mentioned earlier. So, when it refers to the "fourth day" or the "fifth day" it may just mean a dispensation or period of time. Like, "during the fourth period of time," etc. In that respect, the dinosaurs have plenty of time to be made and to die out and are just one occurrence in a large passage of time, which may or may not have been worth mentioning to the author of Genesis.

The account also may be perfectly literal. I'm not a Bible scholar and I wouldn't profess to know one way or the other. What we do know, is that we can trust the account as TRUE. "Literal" and "true" are not the same. God's word is true but may not always be literal.

These points have helped me sort of balance what I read in Genesis with what our science tells about the history of this planet. (In addition to the verses pointed out by Tommy, which seem to allude to dinosaur-like creatures.)

thanks joe, that was perfect! I think that a lot of people will get something from that explination. I think dinosaurs are one thing that people use to discount the bible or argue their point but in the end, to me, its really not that important. It would be cool to know but it doesnt change my belief either way.