The Dinosaurs, the Bible and the Fossil Record: How Can They Be Related?

When most people write about dinosaurs, they are usually comfortable including the fossil record in support of their assertions about their age and history. This time I have inserted the word "Bible" between Dinosaurs and Fossil Record, and this is fairly unusual. I would like to make a few points to illustrate how the Bible can offer some context to what we can learn about the dinosaurs.

The term "dinosaur" itself can help us learn something about them. The term was first used by Richard Owen, who called them dinosaur in his 1841 report on British fossil reptiles. The term means terrible lizard, and has been used since to describe the animals we find in fossils across the world. A similar word, dragon (or leviathan in some translations), is used in the Bible to describe creatures like dinosaurs, which would have been created on day 5 (sea creatures) or day 6 (land creatures). The world flood in Noah's time (within about 1500 years of creation) would have been a plausible cause of the demise of nearly all dinosaurs, burying them in sea beds for out later discovery. Even today, dinosaur-like creatures are occasionally discovered, especially in the open oceans, and are displayed to a gawking public. Call them dinosaurs, dragons, leviathan, sea monsters, or other name, we are talking about creatures that the Bible recognizes for their creation, existence, and their near total demise.

At this point, we can see that the dinosaur fossil record, the Bible and modern history come together. Dinosaur-like creatures have been described in historical accounts by nearly all cultures around the world. Of course, dragons are described in European literature, but other, credible accounts of similar creatures are given by Josephus, Herodotus, Alexander the Great, Marco Polo, Pliny the Elder, and even aboriginal cave dwellers. Eyewitness accounts as described in early historical documents fair well with ancient Biblical writings and the relatively modern discovery and cataloging of fossils. Recent discoveries of tissue within actual dinosaur bones have moved the timeline of dinosaur life much closer to that of humans, and, as mentioned above, the existence of similar creatures in the present time is also being discovered. A total rethinking of the geological timeline, which is often supported by circular reasoning of rock to rock layer aging and then rock layer to rock aging, would put the current facts, historical and Biblical accounts, and the fossil record into a more accurate context.

There are other reasons to rethink the current theories that exclude the Bible from history and present science. Hopefully this essay has opened your mind to the possibility that dinosaurs, the Bible and the fossil record are compatible.

Information for this article was provided by Dr. Grady McMurtry, Creation Worldview Ministries.