Why is there no mention of dinosaurs in the great book?

[Justtristo]

This whole thread made me remember something about Six Day (Young Earth) Creationists saying that the leviathan and behemoth mentioned in the book of Job were a plesiosaur and sauropod.

Yeah right, I seriously doubt the plesiosaurs could breathe fire out of their nostrils. Because the Book of Job states that leviathan does to do that. Although the more sane Christians would say that leviathan was a crocodile. But still do you know any crocodiles that breathe out fire, seriously?

There should be a warning label put on the cover of bibles, stating that this is a book of myths, not book which can be anything remotely historical. I look forward to the day when society views the bible the same way they see the myths of the Greeks or other societies.

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That's because the dinosaurs never existed and all those fossils were just put in the ground by Satan in order to deceive man. And the evil, God-hating scientists fell for it because they were on a mission to disprove God, so they took a few old bones and invented giant lizards out of them.

A YEC actually told me this in a real conversation.

Actually that is sort of plausible, compared to other Six Day (Young Earth) Creationist explanations I have heard and read.

[TudorGothicSerpent]

This whole thread made me remember something about Six Day (Young Earth) Creationists saying that the leviathan and behemoth mentioned in the book of Job were a plesiosaur and sauropod.

Yeah right, I seriously doubt the plesiosaurs could breathe fire out of their nostrils. Because the Book of Job states that leviathan does to do that. Although the more sane Christians would say that leviathan was a crocodile. But still do you know any crocodiles that breathe out fire, seriously?

I think that the most reasonable are those who just admit that the Leviathan was obviously a mythical creature, because really, any other argument is just special pleading to keep the idea of Biblical inerrancy alive.

[Minimalist]

There were giants in the earth in those days;

Hmmm...

Genesis 6:4 (American Standard Version)
4 The Nephilim were in the earth in those days,

Many translators are more honest than the KJV. They admit that they have no idea what "nephilim" means and do not translate it as "giants."

[TudorGothicSerpent]

Many translators are more honest than the KJV. They admit that they have no idea what "nephilim" means and do not translate it as "giants."

I'm not entirely sure that the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures had any idea what it meant, other than the person who actually wrote that verse. By the time when Numbers was written, there was a pretty strong tradition that they were giants. That's why I chose the King James translation.

And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, "The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size.
We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them."

Here, I chose a more modern translation (the NIV), to keep the Hebrew original rather than the translated KJV version. Regardless, you still find other references to giants in the Torah. It's clear that the ancient Hebrews believed that there had been a race of giant human beings in the past, and that by the time when Numbers was completed, the identification of giants with the nephilim was probably already widely accepted.

[Minimalist]

I'm not entirely sure that the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures

The root word for nephilim (naphal) means "to fall." Where they got "giants" from is beyond me. Again, this is why the KJV is considered a horrible translation...no matter how much the fundies swear by it.

http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/...aphal.html

[TudorGothicSerpent]

I'm not entirely sure that the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures

The root word for nephilim (naphal) means "to fall." Where they got "giants" from is beyond me. Again, this is why the KJV is considered a horrible translation...no matter how much the fundies swear by it.

http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/...aphal.html

The KJV definitely isn't the best translation, but I do think that here, it's following in a long tradition of interpreting the phrase as referring to giant human beings. Whether that was what the original author intended is harder to know. His note that the nephilim were "men of renown" suggests that his readers would have known what he was going for, but whatever legends he was referring to are long lost. At the point when Numbers was written, though, the nephilim were already apparently interpreted as giants. When the Book of Enoch was written in 300 B.C.E., the description was being applied to the nephilim in Genesis, so even if the earlier nephilim and those mentioned in Numbers were understood as different by the original readers (the word isn't one used often enough in ancient Hebrew for us to have any certainty about what it means, so that's a possibility), they were conflated by the Hellenic period.

[Minimalist]

it's following in a long tradition of interpreting the phrase as referring to giant human beings.

Xtians have lots of "traditions." Most of them they seem to have pulled out of their asses. So what?

Wrong is wrong.

[TudorGothicSerpent]

Xtians have lots of "traditions." Most of them they seem to have pulled out of their asses. So what?

Wrong is wrong.

I don't think that the traditional interpretation is irrelevant in this context. Nephilim is an unusual word. The etymology appears to go back to a verb meaning "fall", but we only have two uses of the term in Hebrew writings predating the Hellenistic period that have survived to the present day. From both of them, the term appears to apply to a mythological set of half human beings, kind of like the Greek demigods. If the understanding of people as early as the author of Numbers is that the beings referred to were giants, then there's a good chance that was an original part of the mythology about them.

At any rate, within a few centuries of the emergence of that tradition (which was probably an oral legend long before it was recorded in the written record), the ancient Hebrews believed that there were giants. Josephus, in the first century, noted that the bones of giants slain by the ancient Hebrews could still be found on display in Hebron, and that they were terrifying and "entirely unlike other men". More likely than not, he was referring to uncovered fossil remains, and these remains had inspired original legends of giants which are recorded in the Biblical text.

[LostLocke]

Yeah right, I seriously doubt the plesiosaurs could breathe fire out of their nostrils. Because the Book of Job states that leviathan does to do that. Although the more sane Christians would say that leviathan was a crocodile. But still do you know any crocodiles that breathe out fire, seriously?

Back in my JW days our interpretation (or, at least the interpretation the Watchtower Society gave us) was that Leviathan was just a very large crocodile and the fire breathing was not literal, just a metaphor for the power it had in size and strength.

[Minimalist]

Sorry. Don't buy it.

When you read the whole passage you find:

Genesis 6

English Standard Version (ESV)
Increasing Corruption on Earth

6 When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them,

2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.

3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in[a] man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.”

4 The Nephilim[b] were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

We have man multiplying on the earth... then the "sons of god" (whoever the fuck they may have been!) getting horny for human women - yes, very Greek like there. Then we have this rather pointless observation that man will only live 120 years...which must have been news to everyone who was dying at 35. Then this random "nephilim" comment and then we are back to the aforementioned "sons of god" getting laid. The "sons of god" and the mortal women produced the "mighty men of old." Nephilim seems like a rather pointless, random thought.

I hate to invoke the context argument but so often I find xtians who pick a word or phrase out of this pile of gibberish and concoct an entire story around it which suits their needs.

Other examples of this phenomenon include the "Bethlehem prophecy"
and the "suffering servant."