At Element we are currently almost two-thirds of our way through our summer series called What in the World Part 2. It is part two because we did part one last year. During part one I asked you to submit any questions you had about the bible and we would address them this year. The shorter to answer questions we are doing in Blog form because they are not long enough to take up an entire sermon. Today’s question is one that gets asked any time anyone opens a general, “hey, ask question about the bible here” type forum. Today’s question about the bible is, “What does the Bible say about Dinosaurs?”
 
First off, the short answer is “not much.” Why is that? Because the Bible isn’t a book about dinosaurs…or a whole host of other things that people ask about, it is a book about God and what He will do to redeem mankind. The Bible spends its time showing humanities plight and the redemptive arc of God’s covenant of grace.
 
Much of the debate and questions about “dinosaurs” come to a head because of the different views of the age of the earth. There are young earth people who say that the bible does talk about dinosaurs, and old earth people who say that dinosaurs died off for one reason or another before God started His work in the garden into which He was going to place man so the Bible doesn’t talk about it.
 
The main word that most scholars agree refer to some sort of dinosaur is tanniyn. It is a Hebrew word that has been translated as dragon, serpent, or sea monster. In Genesis 2:21 the English Standard Version just says, “great sea creature.” There is another word “behemoth” which is said to be the mightiest of God’s creatures (Job 40:15-19). Some have said this is a hippo or an elephant, but others point to his tail being like a “cedar” (that’s a tree) and hippos and elephants don’t have tails like that and it must be a dinosaur.
 
Needless to say, there are hours of endless debate on this subject and nothing is certain (though everyone who debates it acts like they are certain). Almost all ancient peoples have some sort of art that depicts dinosaurs (from North America to South America, from Babylon to Mayan, from Rome to Asia). So I am sure the debate will continue. One site argues that if they did exist then after Noah’s flood the earth’s conditions probably changed so much that dinosaurs couldn’t survive…or if they did live when man was around then man hunted them to extension.
 
Either way, the matter is far from settled and the only thing we need to remember is that if they existed before or during man’s life on the earth, God made them and they were His creatures. We must be careful not to make the Genesis narrative into some sort of scientific textbook as that was not the point of it, Genesis was to show that in the end, all that is or ever will be, was created by God. We should become a people who trust Him for what He has revealed about life, truth, hope, love, and grace in the Scriptures.