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Leviathan

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Breetai

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Breetai, Juvie: There's a whole history of mythological and metaphysical significance surrounding the ancients' understanding of Leviathan that I don't think you have an appreciation for. You can read more about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan

Again, with this complicated history in mind, I think it is a bit of a stretch to insist, based on one passage from the Bible, that Leviathan must have been just another everyday creature. The more I read about it, the more I come to agree with shernren and Saint Thomas Aquinas. The Leviathan represents something greater than flesh and bone.
I'm aware of these ideas, and I really do understand what you are getting at. Yet, you might also look at the lion, which is also a very real animal, in a similar way, which has a very heavy symbolism is ancient Hebrew thought.

I'm not convinced that what we see in Job were not real creatures. I am, however, open to further suggestions.
 
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Breetai

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No, I did not insult your faith in the least. I simply pointed out that I, too, have a high reading of Scripture (since you implied that I did not), and that it is possible that it could be even higher than yours since I know mine is as high as could possibly be for a human and I have no idea where yours is. So, it was an accurate description, and not insulting in the least. If your is as high as mine, great!
No worries, then. I do prefer not to describe my faith as "great", though. There is always infinite room to build it. I sincerely hope that you do not really believe that your "high reading of Scripture" is "as high as high as could possible be for a human". If mine is so high, then what is the point of further study?

If I insulted you earlier, then I apologize.

As for geocentrism, of course they were all geocentrists, since EVERYONE was a geocentrist until Copernicus, and most were even after him until Galileo's new scientific discoveries began to be accepted by the Church and Christians changed the way we read certain Scripture.
Uhhh, I need to stop posting at 4am. I had "flat-earth" in mind when I said that. From a certain perspective, you could say that the Earth is at the centre of the universe. :)

Since the scientific discovery that the earth revolved around the sun (and not the other way around) was not made until the 1500's, it is clear that every writer of the Bible (the last of whom died probably in the early 100's), would have held a geocentric view of the universe. Do you have any evidence to contradict that reasonable assumption?
Nope, I don't! I completely mixed up the geocentric believe with the idea of a flat-earth. :) It's easier to make a case at the earth is at the centre of the universe then to say the ancients believed that the sun revolved around the earth.
 
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Breetai

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If only we could all get away with redefining words to suit our own needs. ;)
It wouldn't be the first time "dinosaur" has been redefined!

At least I don't take redefining words as far as the Mormons do... :doh:
 
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Vance

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Oh, I don't want to give the impression in the least that I have nothing at all to learn about Scripture (that would sound too much like a strict literalist!), but only that I hold Scripture as high as a Christian can: as the holy, inspired and inerrant Word of God. You really can't get any higher than that, even if you don't understand it all. Not all Christians want to go that far, and I can respect that and don't find a belief in absolute inerrancy to be an essential of salvation, but that is still where I stand on the spectrum.

What is important is to realize that a person can have that "far right of the spectrum" position, and still not insist on literalness.

Edit to add: On the issue of geocentrism, I would agree that a more figurative reading of many of the Scriptures gets to the idea that Earth is the effective center of God's focus in the universe. The problem is that so many Christians were reading Scripture too literally, insisting that heliocentrism, as a scientific proposition, MUST be incorrect since it "clearly" contradicted Scripture. They forgot the one important thing that so many modern creationists forget: we are not talking simply about what God's Word says, but about how we, as fallible humans, interpret it to be saying. They got it wrong then, and the new scientific evidence about how things REALLY worked was able to inform them, and they were actually able to read Scripture more correctly.
 
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juvenissun

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Not that we know of. None have been found with osteoderms, if that's what you're getting at.


Sure. But again -- why in the world are you so keen on insisting the Leviathan is a dinosaur when there's nothing about the Bible's description of Leviathan that would have us believe that it is???
No, just as said in my OP, I do not insist on anything. I am exploring. It just happened that a dinosaur or a "saur" would have a few characters that fit the descriptions.

So you are saying those xxxsaurs lived in ocean did not have scales as hard as that of a croc. OK, I will make a note on this. In my simple recognition, they would then more like fishes. Right?
 
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gluadys

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No, OK, I will make a note on this. In my simple recognition, they would then more like fishes. Right?

No more that whales or dolphins are. Whales and dolphins are marine mammals. Plesiosaurs and mosasaurs are extinct marine reptiles. Fish were and are fish.
 
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LutheranChick

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We had a guest speaker at our church a few months ago, speaking on creationism vs evolution. One of the topics mentioned was the Behemoth and the Leviathan. If you look at a description of the 'Super Croc' discovered in the Saharah a few years ago, it perfectly fits the description of Leviathan. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/supercroc/

Our speaker explained the 'fire-breathing' could very well have been steam, or mist shooting out of the creature's nostrils, not literal 'fire'. (appearing like smoke) Just like the book of Job describes the behemoth as having a 'tail like a cedar' well, of course its tail wasn't made of wood- it is a metaphor. If you look at a picture of an apatasaurus, it fits very well with the description of the behemoth.
 
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juvenissun

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No more that whales or dolphins are. Whales and dolphins are marine mammals. Plesiosaurs and mosasaurs are extinct marine reptiles. Fish were and are fish.
Marine reptile. Do you mean they breathed air and breathed like dolphin and whale? Do we have any marine reptile today? Hmm.. turtle?
And their scales are harder than fish scales. Right? May be comparable to that of crocodile?
 
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Mallon

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If you look at a description of the 'Super Croc' discovered in the Saharah a few years ago, it perfectly fits the description of Leviathan. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/supercroc/
It may fit Job's description, but not the psalmist's description. Odd that YEC's do not combine these two different descriptions of Leviathan as they do the two different descriptions of creation.
And why would Super Croc fit the bill any better than a living crocodile?

Our speaker explained the 'fire-breathing' could very well have been steam, or mist shooting out of the creature's nostrils, not literal 'fire'. (appearing like smoke) Just like the book of Job describes the behemoth as having a 'tail like a cedar' well, of course its tail wasn't made of wood- it is a metaphor.
I agree that Job's description is quite metaphorical. So how do we know that Leviathan itself isn't a metaphor for something else? It seems quite surreal.

If you look at a picture of an apatasaurus, it fits very well with the description of the behemoth.
I disagree.
 
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juvenissun

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Our speaker explained the 'fire-breathing' could very well have been steam, or mist shooting out of the creature's nostrils, not literal 'fire'. (appearing like smoke)

Regard to the fiery breath, I am thinking about what would a 35% oxygen in the air do to this possibility. May be there were some methane or burnable gases in the breath of a dino? Even we released some H2S occasionally, right? :blush:
 
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Breetai

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Oh, I don't want to give the impression in the least that I have nothing at all to learn about Scripture (that would sound too much like a strict literalist!),
To be honest, that's how it sounded.

...but only that I hold Scripture as high as a Christian can: as the holy, inspired and inerrant Word of God. You really can't get any higher than that, even if you don't understand it all.
Okay!!! Now I'm clued in!

Not all Christians want to go that far, and I can respect that and don't find a belief in absolute inerrancy to be an essential of salvation, but that is still where I stand on the spectrum.

What is important is to realize that a person can have that "far right of the spectrum" position, and still not insist on literalness.
IMO, you can't take everything as literal. The leviathan, as it appears in Isaiah and the Psalms, for example, is not literal.

Edit to add: On the issue of geocentrism, I would agree that a more figurative reading of many of the Scriptures gets to the idea that Earth is the effective center of God's focus in the universe. The problem is that so many Christians were reading Scripture too literally, insisting that heliocentrism, as a scientific proposition, MUST be incorrect since it "clearly" contradicted Scripture. They forgot the one important thing that so many modern creationists forget: we are not talking simply about what God's Word says, but about how we, as fallible humans, interpret it to be saying. They got it wrong then, and the new scientific evidence about how things REALLY worked was able to inform them, and they were actually able to read Scripture more correctly.
Agreed!
 
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Breetai

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So you are saying those xxxsaurs lived in ocean did not have scales as hard as that of a croc. OK, I will make a note on this. In my simple recognition, they would then more like fishes. Right?
:swoon:

Think of them as water dinosaurs, except that nobody within the scientific community calls them dinosaurs. Birds are dinosaurs, but water dinosaurs are just big reptilian water creatures. Does that make sense? Probably not...
 
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LutheranChick

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If you look at a picture of an apatasaurus, it fits very well with the description of the behemoth.
Apatoman.GIF








Behold, Behemoth, which I made as I made you; he eats grass like an ox. (apatosaurus was an herbivore)
16 Behold, his strength in his loins, and his power in the muscles of his belly.
17 He makes his tail stiff like a cedar; (ever see a log of a cedar tree? thick at the bottom, coming to a point, no big branches coming off the main trunk)
the sinews of his thighs are knit together.
18 His bones are tubes of bronze,his limbs like bars of iron. (thick and heavy)
19 He is the first of the works of God; let him who made him bring near his sword!
20 For the mountains yield food for him where all the wild beasts play.
21 Under the lotus plants he lies, in the shelter of the reeds and in the marsh.
22 For his shade the lotus trees cover him; the willows of the brook surround him.
23 Behold, if the river is turbulent he is not frightened;
he is confident though Jordan rushes against his mouth. (a creature this size and mass would have no trouble wading through a rushing river)
24Can one take him by his eyes, or pierce his nose with a snare? (apatosaurus was about 15' tall, probably able to hold its head about 17' off the ground- too tall for a human to reach its eyes, or pierce it's nose - like one would pierce the nose of a bull to control it)
 
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Mallon

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Behold, Behemoth, which I made as I made you; he eats grass like an ox. (apatosaurus was an herbivore)
Except it would have been incapable of eating grass since grass is full of silica and requires very specialized teeth with thick enamel (hypsodonty) to process. Sauropods like Apatosaurus had very simple, peg-like teeth with thin enamel. All this to say nothing of the fact that sauropods and rush grasses have never been found in association (grasses didn't dominate the landscape until well after dinosaurs went extinct).

16 Behold, his strength in his loins, and his power in the muscles of his belly.
17 He makes his tail stiff like a cedar; (ever see a log of a cedar tree? thick at the bottom, coming to a point, no big branches coming off the main trunk)
The shape and size of the tail isn't what is being compared to a cedar in this passage. The movement of the tail is what is being compared to a cedar (check out a more up-to-date translation). And as we all know, cedars sway in the breeze, as most tails do.
All this to say nothing of the fact that many people read "tail" as a euphemism for "penis". In which case, we're clearly talking about a mammal; not a dinosaur (which have internal penes).

the sinews of his thighs are knit together.
18 His bones are tubes of bronze,his limbs like bars of iron. (thick and heavy)
Sauropod bones are actually quite light for their size because, like birds, they are hollow. Mammal bones are much denser and heavily built.

23 Behold, if the river is turbulent he is not frightened;
he is confident though Jordan rushes against his mouth. (a creature this size and mass would have no trouble wading through a rushing river)
Neither would, say, a much smaller hippo, which spends most of its time wading in rivers. We know from the palaeoenvironments in which they were found that sauropods did not spend a lot of time in water anyway.

24Can one take him by his eyes, or pierce his nose with a snare? (apatosaurus was about 15' tall, probably able to hold its head about 17' off the ground- too tall for a human to reach its eyes, or pierce it's nose - like one would pierce the nose of a bull to control it)
There are many reasons why one might not be able to pierce the nose of an animal, including the remoteness of the animal's habitat and its temperament (or its stature, as you suggested).

Sorry, but I just don't see any reason to assume Job was talking about a living dinosaur.
 
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LutheranChick

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It may fit Job's description, but not the psalmist's description. Odd that YEC's do not combine these two different descriptions of Leviathan as they do the two different descriptions of creation.
And why would Super Croc fit the bill any better than a living crocodile?


I agree that Job's description is quite metaphorical. So how do we know that Leviathan itself isn't a metaphor for something else? It seems quite surreal.


I disagree.
Super Croc was a huge creature- and most likely quite vicious- T-Rex probly wouldn't have even wanted to tangle with it! In the passages in Job, God is reminding Job of his awesome power, by referenceing the great and mighty creatures he has made- so huge that a puny human being cannot subdue them. If he is reminding Job of his awesome power, he is going to talk about creatures that Job knows of- not a metaphor- even though he does use metaphors to describe the creatures.
We do this all the time in our language. I can say that a bull chasing after me was like a speeding freight train coming down on me- that doesn't mean that the bull IS a train- and it also does not mean that the bull was not real.

Odd that YEC's do not combine these two different descriptions of Leviathan as they do the two different descriptions of creation.
We are talking about 2 different books of the Bible- Job and Psalms. Two completely different contexts. The accounts in Genesis were both written by the same author and are specifically referring to creation. You cannot take bible passages out of context and then try to compare them.
 
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Mallon

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Super Croc was a huge creature- and most likely quite vicious- T-Rex probly wouldn't have even wanted to tangle with it! In the passages in Job, God is reminding Job of his awesome power, by referenceing the great and mighty creatures he has made- so huge that a puny human being cannot subdue them. If he is reminding Job of his awesome power, he is going to talk about creatures that Job knows of- not a metaphor- even though he does use metaphors to describe the creatures.
You're more than welcome to believe that the author of Job was referring to Sarchosuchus when he wrote the book. The creature described does sound quite a bit like a croc, except for the whole fire-breathing thing. In which case, I will point out that by reinterpreting Job to explain away references to fire-breathing, you are taking liberties with the Bible in much the same way that YECs accuse evolutionary creationists of doing. I might just as well level AiG's tired old arguments against you, like "If you can't trust God's Word as given in Job, can you trust Him when it comes to the gospels?" or "If you interpret this passage metaphorically, what prevents you from interpreting the whole Bible metaphorically?"

Also, if you think David was being metaphorical when he spoke of a multi-headed Leviathan in Psalms, what do you think the multiple heads are a metaphor for?

We are talking about 2 different books of the Bible- Job and Psalms. Two completely different contexts. The accounts in Genesis were both written by the same author and are specifically referring to creation. You cannot take bible passages out of context and then try to compare them.
I think if you do a little reading, you'll find that Genesis 1 and 2 were written by two different authors since they use very different language (such as the names used to refer to God). But don't take my word for it, read for yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_according_to_Genesis#Structure_and_authorship
 
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LutheranChick

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Quote:
the sinews of his thighs are knit together.
18 His bones are tubes of bronze,his limbs like bars of iron. (thick and heavy)

Sauropod bones are actually quite light for their size because, like birds, they are hollow. Yes, like 'tubes of bronze' Mammal bones are much denser and heavily built. My reference above of 'thick an heavy' were to the limbs, not the bones.

There is a saying "There are none so blind as those who will not see".
 
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Mallon

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There is a saying "There are none so blind as those who will not see".
I'll say. You've managed to ignore all other evidence I've given against Behemoth being a dinosaur! ;)

Also, check out Job 40:21. How does a 75 ft-long, 23 ton apatosaur hide under lotus plants and reeds???
 
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LutheranChick

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(I inserted the bolded sentences as my answers- LC)

"If you interpret this passage metaphorically, what prevents you from interpreting the whole Bible metaphorically?" Yes, there ARE metaphors in the Bible. That does not mean the ENTIRE Bible is a metaphor. That's like saying 'if I use a metaphor the everything I say is a metaphor." You must look at the context of what is said.

Also, if you think David was being metaphorical when he spoke of a multi-headed Leviathan in Psalms, what do you think the multiple heads are a metaphor for? I'll get back to you on this one- I have a question in to my Pastor on the meaning of this passage.


I think if you do a little reading, you'll find that Genesis 1 and 2 were written by two different authors since they use very different language (such as the names used to refer to God). But don't take my word for it, read for yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_according_to_Genesis#Structure_and_authorship
Sorry, I don't use wikipedia as my source for Biblical answers. I go to my Pastor, and other church resources- people who have studied the Bible extensively, and also knows it in the original Hebrew language. WELS has a great website with answers to questions and here is what they say about Genesis:

http://www.wels.net/cgi-bin/site.pl?1518&cuTopic_topicID=72&cuItem_itemID=6981
By inspiration of the Holy Spirit Moses wrote the book of Genesis as a record of the beginning history God's saving activity. The book actually has a ten-fold outline that is easily noted in the Bible text. Each section begins with the Hebrew word "toledoth," translated as "account" in the NIV. Please note these headings:
The account of heaven and earth begins 2:4
The account of Adam begins 5:1
The account of Noah begins 6:9
The account of the sons of Noah begins 10:1
The account of Shem begins 11:10

The account of Terah begins 11:27
The account of Ishmael begins 25:12
The account of Isaac begins 25:19
The account of Esau begins 36:1
The account of Jacob begins 37:2

Note also how the first five divisions describe God's saving activity in the original world, and the last five divisions describe God's saving activity among the patriarchs. The ten fold division is not of equal size since God wants the reader to focus especially on his saving plan, so the spotlight will be on the descendants of Abraham that will be in the line of the Savior.

Why mention this in regard to your question? It is important to see the overall unity in the book of Genesis, and that it was written with an observable pattern. The Scripture is not always chronological in order, but sometimes thematic. Also keep in mind that the chapter and verse divisions were not part of the original text, but added much later (during the thirteenth centuryn AD, by the archbishop of Canterbury.)

With this background in mind, we can see that what is listed as Genesis 1 through 2:3 is really a background narrative and this portion is in chronological order as it describes creation week. The account of the heavens and earth which begins in 2:4 now selects a number of items from chapter one (a man, a garden, two trees, a woman) for special emphasis and discussion. This helps the reader better understand chapter 3 and the fall into sin. If we remember that the focus of Scripture is on God's plan to save, we can see why chapter 2 has the focus it does.

Now we will have answers to where sin came from, and God's powerful promise to send a Crusher, one who is seed of the woman but not of the man. This special child will step on Satan's head and crush him, thus rescuing sinners. We know from the New Testament that the seed of the woman is Jesus, the one born of a virgin. He came to step on Satan, as the apostle tells us, "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work" (1 John 3:8).


I'll say. You've managed to ignore all other evidence I've given against Behemoth being a dinosaur! ;)

Also, check out Job 40:21. How does a 75 ft-long, 23 ton apatosaur hide under lotus plants and reeds???
I saw your 'evidence' as very weak.
How do you know how big the reeds and lotuses were back then?
 
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