"...which feeds on grass like an ox. What strength he has in his loins, what power in the muscles of his belly! His tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are close-knit. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like rods of iron. He ranks first among the works of God...The hills bring him their produce, and all the wild animals play nearby. Under the lotus plants he lies, hidden among the reeds in the marsh. The lotuses conceal him in their shadow; the poplars by the stream surround him. When the river rages, he is not alarmed; he is secure, though Jordan should surge against his mouth. Can anyone capture him by the eyes, or trap him and pierce his nose?"


I am going to stick with the wild boar theory for the Behemoth. With the sinewy legs a hippo has to be right out of the question. The boar would eat grass like an ox, would be heavily built to account for the perception of freakish strength. Boars will go to water so it could be that. Also, they are talking about piercing its nose. I am going to work on the assumption that they would pierce cattle's noses back in those days as well as now. In which case one could surmise it is a type of large cattle looking animal. Boar or maybe Bison (I am sure that they would be in that part of the world)

With the Lutheran belief structure, is everything in the Bible literal? Does it contain any metaphorical references at all (outside the parables)?

On the fossil thing. I need to read up on the results of the Mt St Helens eruption tests before I comment on that. That is the first I have heard of there being errors, I thought the dating would refer to the lava itself which you would expect to be that old. I also need to look at one or two creationist sites to make sure I know both sides of the evidence. It'll probably be tomorrow by the time I reply about that because one vid I want to look through is an hour long.

"...which feeds on grass like an ox. What strength he has in his loins, what power in the muscles of his belly! His tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are close-knit. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like rods of iron. He ranks first among the works of God...The hills bring him their produce, and all the wild animals play nearby. Under the lotus plants he lies, hidden among the reeds in the marsh. The lotuses conceal him in their shadow; the poplars by the stream surround him. When the river rages, he is not alarmed; he is secure, though Jordan should surge against his mouth. Can anyone capture him by the eyes, or trap him and pierce his nose?"


Sorry, but a boar or bison does not have a tail that sways like a cedar. Besides, the Bible never does say that dinosaurs never existed. In fact, there are many places where translations could easily allude to dinosaurs being mentioned in the Bible. Why not just take the literal translation (which is obviously intended in this scenario)?

Let's think about it this way. We know that dinosaurs existed (fossils). The Bible says that God created every living thing (including dinosaurs). Therefore, God created dinosaurs. In this case, the description is of a powerful and incredibly strong animal. I really don't see how you could take this description any way but the intended version.

When it talks about "piercing the nose", the Bible is talking about being able to subdue it; not because it is related to "farm animals" but because it is so powerful. The entire section of text is talking about the strength of this magnificent creation.

There is literal and metaphorical references everywhere in the Bible. You must be able to realize from the context which is supposed to be used. Most of the time it is quite obvious while other times it isn't. Still, we are pretty sure from understanding the rest of the Bible that we can then decide some of the more difficult passages. (This is really the only way that we can understand Revelation).

All of those dating methods are really inaccurate. Scientists try to make you think that they are right because they want to push their agenda. I will post some quotes from a book, "Origin Answers Book":

"Carbon-14 dating is userful for much archaeological work, when used with great care. As with all age estimating systems, many variables and assumptions are involved.
Creationist dating experts believe Earth was devastated by a worldwide flood cataclysm thousands of years ago. They stress that such an event would have to be taken into account to properly calibrate the Carbon-14 method. There are other problems and erroneous age estimates, as well. Both Creationists and Evolutionist agree Carbon-14 would be useless for estimating the age of anything that is supposed to be millions of years old. Carbon-14 has a relatively short life, and there would be no useful measurable amount left in 30 to 100 thousand years."

"Age estimates which are obviously wrong or contradictory are sometimes produced. For example, new rock in the form of hardened lava flows produced estimated ages as great as 3 billion to 10.5 billion years, when they were actually less than 200 years old.
A popular and supposedly foolproof method was used on two lava flows in the Grand Canyon that should be ideal for radioactive age estimation. The results were similarly bad. Young basalt rock at the Canyon's top produced an age estimate 270 million years older than ancient basalt rock at the Ccanyon's bottom. The problem seems to arise from basic wrong assumptions in the method (rubidium-strontium isochron)."

So basically these methods are quite flawed. Also, you have to remember that when scientists developed these methods, they assumed that the earth was 4.5 billion years old. Then they started using these methods allowing much more time. If there truly was an accurate dating method, you would have to use the data collected from it first and then decide the age of the earth.

Is this actually an argument about whether the Bible mentions dinosaurs or not? Seriously? Facepalm?

Evolution and creation will obviously interfere with religion. The major topics people mostly argue on are spurred by religion.

No... creation and religion will interfere with evolution. Bwahahaha.

Umm, that's why I made the religion thread...

I do apologize Keku. Let me expound my statement. The discussion of whether evolution or creation came first is really "spiked" by religion.

True say, but religion tends to do that to a lot of things. ;]

Sort of. Creationists believe that dinos were on the earth at the same time as man and that the bible makes reference to one or two of them. Can't debate the creationist v evolution thing without spending a little time on something like that.

Creation started billions of years ago. Evolution in human history occured 300,000 years ago...way before the Greeks, Romans, Sumarians...ect. However, the idea of evolution was thought during the times of the Greeks. Is that what you are refering to?