Are dragons evil and should Christians avoid them?

[coffee4u]

Which one of these had 7 heads? I'm pretty sure you haven't read what the Hebrew word for Leviathan is a cognate of! Look at it this way - just as a passionate and prophetic sermon today might analyse and dissect the cultural metaphors of our day - the bible often appropriates and re-writes other ancient pagan memes. It reinterprets and corrects them! See my Noah post above. Also, Yahweh is the "cloud rider" - not Baal or other Mesopotamian Gods that claim to be the "cloud rider". It's too big to go into now and I've already used my blogging time up on the post above - but the bible OFTEN quotes and refers to and reinterprets other ancient pagan mythologies. Deal with it! Here's the wiki on the other Leviathan cognates and memes.

Lotan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The Destruction of Leviathan by Gustave Doré (1865)
Lotan (Ugaritic: -ltn, transliterated Lôtān,[1] Litan,[2] or Litānu,[3] meaning "coiled") is a servant of the sea god Yam defeated by the storm god Hadad-Baʿal in the Ugaritic Baal Cycle.[3] possibly with the help or by the hand of his sister ʿAnat.[4] Lotan seems to have been prefigured by the serpent Têmtum represented in Syrian seals of the 18th–16th century BC, [5] and finds a later reflex in the sea monster Leviathan, whose defeat at the hands of Yahweh is alluded to in the biblical Book of Job and in Isaiah 27:1.[5][3] Lambert (2003) went as far as the claim that Isaiah 27:1 is a direct quote lifted from the Ugaritic text, correctly rendering Ugaritic bṯn "snake" as Hebrew nḥš "snake".[6][7]

Lotan (ltn) is an adjectival formation meaning "coiled", here used as a proper name;[4] the same creature has a number of possible epitheta, including "the fugitive serpent" (bṯn brḥ) and maybe (with some uncertainty deriving from manuscript lacunae) "the wriggling serpent" (bṯn ʿqltn) and "the mighty one with seven heads" (šlyṭ d.šbʿt rašm).[5]

The myth of Hadad defeating Lotan, Yahweh defeating Leviathan, Marduk defeating Tiamat (etc.) in the mythologies of the Ancient Near East are classical examples of the Chaoskampf mytheme, also reflected in Zeus' slaying of Typhon in Greek mythology,[8] Thor's struggle against Jörmungandr in the Gylfaginning portion of the Prose Edda,[9] and the vedic battle between Indra and Vritra (from Sanskrit वृत्र, vṛtrá, meaning enveloper, cover and therefore obstacle) who is accused as a dragon of hoarding the waters and the rains, as a dasa of stealing cows, and as an anti-god of hiding the Sun,[10] concentrating on Vritra several demonization processes, the pattern of good versus evil, darkness versus light (hiding the Sun), and comparisons to forces of nature and monsters whose tentacles span the earth.

The Litani River that winds through the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon is named after Lotan as the river was believed to be the personification of the god.[11][12]
Lotan - Wikipedia

The only reason you claim Leviathon is mystical is due to your belief in evolution. Nothing in scripture teaches evolution, or even hints at it, which it would do if God had used it. You believe in evolution because science has said so, not from any scripture study.

Sin caused death.
Yet if evolution occurred for million of years death would also be occurring for million of years. Scripture says that death is Gods worn enemy, yet you think he happily allowed it to help shape his creation and then called it "very good".
What explanation do you use to wave away those two vital points? None I'm guessing, all the evolution believers I have encountered on here would rather ignore those two points. Or claim that death is only spiritual.
"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
Pretty sure Adam could tell that wasn't just spiritual. He had already died spiritually before God spoke the curse.
Genesis 3:7
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
Physical and spiritual death. Jesus died both a physical and spiritual death because sin caused both spiritual and physical death.

The Bible clearly teaches that creation took 6 days.
Exodus 20
11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Job 40 "Created alongside of you" God said, because these huge animals were created alongside of mankind and Lot knew exactly what those animal were.
A very Thorough description of a dragon/dinosaur is given.

Dragon tales are known around the world because mankind from vastly different cultures and countries have all have known these great creatures. Its not simply a coincident that China has had dragon tales going back more than 5,000 years. That Babylonian, Greece, Egyptian and others all had dragon tales. Dinosaurs are simply dragons by another name, a name not invented until 1841.

"the bible often appropriates and re-writes other ancient pagan memes"
2 Timothy 3: 16 All Scripture is God-breathed
To claim parts are nothing but appropriation would make God's word nothing more than a collection of man made tales. It either stands complete with every word God breathed or none of it stands. Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
If any of it is man made tales that then places it on the same level as any other book. If you can deny creation, then deny the flood, what about the crossing of the Red Sea? The donkey who spoke? Jesus turning water into wine? Why should the words of Jesus be any more believable than any other parts of scripture? Faith is not situational or conditional. It's not something we can claim simply because someone has not 'proved' it to be untrue. It's either all or nothing.
Revelation 3:16
So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
3:19
Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent.

 

[eclipsenow]

The only reason you claim Leviathon is mystical is due to your belief in evolution.

No - it's from hermeneutics which is the historical discipline of trying to understand how the original audience received it. The cultural context into which Job was written actually involved use of a 7 headed monster lizard creature. Mythical. This is referencing it as a force of nature and you're just ignoring the hermeneutical evidence because you're a YEC.

Nothing in scripture teaches evolution, or even hints at it, which it would do if God had used it. You believe in evolution because science has said so, not from any scripture study.

Yes I accept the science.

But I also see very strong literary clues in early Genesis that it is mytho-history.

Literal YEC's would read Shakespeare's "What light from yonder window breaks - it is the east - and Juliet is the sun!" and conclude Juliet was a giant ball of fusing hydrogen millions of kilometres across! YEC's do not seem good at recognising literary genres. So what clues are there in Genesis as to what genre of literature it even is in the first place - before we go hating on science too much?

EG: Day 1 - let there be light. Day 4 introduces the sun and moon. Conclusion? There's no light without sun and moon, so therefore the passage is literary, not literal. It's describing something through a literary form. Let's see if this checks out in the rest of the passage.

Day 2: "Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water". Oops! That's the heavenly vault made of some sort of GLASS or diamond being referenced there! It's borrowing from the Ancient Middle-Eastern Cosmology (AMEC for short). AMEC shows up again in the Noah story because the 'floodgates of heaven' open and the water comes through. Why are their floodgates? Because of the glass vault above the sky! But what happens 3 days later? Day 5: Birds fly in the sky and great creatures fill the sea. Ah, a literary pattern is developing! The first days are the natural FORM - the second three days the FILLING of the form with appropriate creatures. This is a poem about a God who makes things beautiful, in certain relationships to each other, and in the right place. Let's see if the pattern repeats in the next sequence.

Day 3: Land appears out of the ocean, with vegetation. The FORM? LAND!
3 days later is Day 6 - animals and mankind FILL the FORM. And mankind is put in charge to care for it all.

And what happens on Day 7? We enter God's perfect rest - a concept taken up later in scripture to refer to security in the promised land and finally security in heaven. And note something? Day 7 never ends with the stanza "morning and evening" - it's like we are still meant to be in it. But then the story continues on and Adam and Eve rebel and we're kicked out of that perfect rest. The whole bible is about restoring us to it.

So there's plenty of true theological statements in there - but it's just not meant to be a scientific "How God made the world" sort of statement. Juliet is not a star - Shakespeare wrote a metaphor. And Genesis 1 is mytho-history - in that there was a real first couple at some point in the past - but it's so dressed up in theological language I'm not sure what Adam and Eve would have looked like or how long ago they came to be. I haven't even touched on the mathematical nuances in the chapter - the many multiples of 7. Did you know the centuries older Babylonian myth was written on 7 clay tablets and read out once a year in a big national holiday a bit like 4th July and Christmas combined? The number 7 was a BIG deal. Check this out - from my historian friend and Christian apologist, Dr John Dickson.

---------------​

"In Genesis 1, multiples of seven appear in extraordinary ways. For ancient readers, who were accustomed to taking notice of such things, these multiples of seven conveyed a powerful message. Seven was the divine number, the number of goodness and perfection. Its omnipresence in the opening chapter of the Bible makes an unmistakable point about the origin and nature of the universe itself. Consider the following: The first sentence of Genesis 1 consists of seven Hebrew words. Instantly, the ancient reader’s attention is focused;

The second sentence contains exactly fourteen words. A pattern is developing;

The word ‘earth’—one half of the created sphere—appears in the chapter 21 times;

The word ‘heaven’—the other half of the created sphere—also appears 21 times.

‘God’, the lead actor, is mentioned exactly 35 times.

The refrain ‘and it was so,’ which concludes each creative act, occurs exactly seven times;

The summary statement ‘God saw that it was good’ also occurs seven times;

It hardly needs to be pointed out that the whole account is structured around seven scenes or seven days of the week.

The artistry of the chapter is stunning and, to ancient readers, unmistakable. It casts the creation as a work of art, sharing in the perfection of God and deriving from him. My point is obvious: short of including a prescript for the benefit of modern readers the original author could hardly have made it clearer that his message is being conveyed through literary rather than prosaic means. What we find in Genesis 1 is not exactly poetry of the type we find in the biblical book of Psalms but nor is it recognizable as simple prose. It is a rhythmic, symbolically-charged inventory of divine commands." https://www.publicchristianity.org/the-genre-of-genesis-1-an-historical-approach/ More at his podcast. https://undeceptions.com/podcast/six-days

 

[Estrid]

The only reason you claim Leviathon is mystical is due to your belief in evolution. Nothing in scripture teaches evolution, or even hints at it, which it would do if God had used it. You believe in evolution because science has said so, not from any scripture study.

Sin caused death.
Yet if evolution occurred for million of years death would also be occurring for million of years. Scripture says that death is Gods worn enemy, yet you think he happily allowed it to help shape his creation and then called it "very good".
What explanation do you use to wave away those two vital points? None I'm guessing, all the evolution believers I have encountered on here would rather ignore those two points. Or claim that death is only spiritual.
"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
Pretty sure Adam could tell that wasn't just spiritual. He had already died spiritually before God spoke the curse.
Genesis 3:7
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
Physical and spiritual death. Jesus died both a physical and spiritual death because sin caused both spiritual and physical death.

The Bible clearly teaches that creation took 6 days.
Exodus 20
11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Job 40 "Created alongside of you" God said, because these huge animals were created alongside of mankind and Lot knew exactly what those animal were.
A very Thorough description of a dragon/dinosaur is given.

Dragon tales are known around the world because mankind from vastly different cultures and countries have all have known these great creatures. Its not simply a coincident that China has had dragon tales going back more than 5,000 years. That Babylonian, Greece, Egyptian and others all had dragon tales. Dinosaurs are simply dragons by another name, a name not invented until 1841.

"the bible often appropriates and re-writes other ancient pagan memes"
2 Timothy 3: 16 All Scripture is God-breathed
To claim parts are nothing but appropriation would make God's word nothing more than a collection of man made tales. It either stands complete with every word God breathed or none of it stands. Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
If any of it is man made tales that then places it on the same level as any other book. If you can deny creation, then deny the flood, what about the crossing of the Red Sea? The donkey who spoke? Jesus turning water into wine? Why should the words of Jesus be any more believable than any other parts of scripture? Faith is not situational or conditional. It's not something we can claim simply because someone has not 'proved' it to be untrue. It's either all or nothing.
Revelation 3:16
So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
3:19
Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent.

Your take requires vastly more than a mere hand wave of a
couple of controversial points within one
particular religion.

Like hand wave every contrary
interpretation of the Bible as wrong, assuming to
yourself the One True reading.

You are also hand waving that zero (zero)
actual physical evidence on planet earth
happens to match your chosen belief.

And assuming to yourself knowledge and
understanding that you could not possibly have,
specifically that you know more than any researcher
on earth.

One making such assertions might find it behooves them
to pause and reflect though most would prove to be
too vain and shallow to react otherwise than with
self righteous denial.

 

[Jipsah]

We talking about European or Asian "dragons"? Dramatically different critters.

 

[eclipsenow]

We talking about European or Asian "dragons"? Dramatically different critters.

Exactly! This stuff is so genre specific or literary in nuance. It's not just "All dragons bad".

 

[Estrid]

Exactly! This stuff is so genre specific or literary in nuance. It's not just "All dragons bad".

And, pssst, none of them are real!

 

[eclipsenow]

And, pssst, none of them are real!

Yes - but the people concerned about this accept the bible's account of Jesus showing us that God is real. Therefore they're conscious that we have an enemy out to deceive us - who is also very real. I'm just not convinced that because the bible uses the images of a dragon in Revelation to represent Satan and his influence over the Roman empire that was about to start persecuting Christians and sawing children in half in front of their parents that therefore ALL dragons represented in ALL fiction are somehow associated with the devil. They're not. Some are greedy treasure mongers that wipe out villages - like Smaug. Some are luck dragons like Never Ending Story. Context matters.