Mythical creatures in the bible

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6glargento

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in the bible, there are over 48 referances to dragons

“Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.
Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.
He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.” (job 40:15-17)

obviously he cannot be just a huge animal because he has a long tail like a cedar tree.

and psalm 44:19 which says

“Though thou hast sore broken us in the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death.”

“Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.”
(Psalms 74:13)

“And in that same place there was a great dragon, which they of Babylon worshipped.
But give me leave, O king, and I shall slay this dragon without sword or staff. The king said, I give thee leave.
Then Daniel took pitch, and fat, and hair, and did seethe them together, and made lumps thereof: this he put in the dragon’s mouth, and so the dragon burst in sunder : and Daniel said, Lo, these are the gods ye worship.
When they of Babylon heard that, they took great indignation, and conspired against the king, saying, The king is become a Jew, and he hath destroyed Bel, he hath slain the dragon, and put the priests to death.” (Daniel: Bel and the Dragon 23-28)

what should we make of all of this? Were these creatures really dinosaurs or prehistoric creatures as mony creationists suggest? (some creationists believe that noah took dinosaurs on his ark)

but what about the fire breathing dragon in Daniel? how could a dinousaur breath fire?

and what about unicorns?

“His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth: and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh.” (dueteronomy 33:17)

“Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns” (psalms 22:21)

“And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.” (isa 34:17)

would a unicorn simply be a horse whith a single horn or antler that went extinct?

how should we resond to skeptics who say that the mystical creatures in the bible question its authenticity.
 
There are three possible responses:

  1. *]Was the original word in Hebrew translated correctly? It is entirely possible that the unicorns mentioned referred to some genuine type of creature rather than the fantasy creature we envision today.
    *]It appears most renderings of the mythical creatures are meant to be metaphorical, as in the psalm, or intended to have represented a statue, as in Daniel.
    *]Even in the cases of animals such as behemoth or leviathan, their existence may simply be the misreported sightings of such animals as whales, rhinoceroses, elephants or other such massive creatures.
    The bottom line is that in no case does the non-existence of any of these creatures impeach the moral teachings that the Bible is meant to convey. Even today in English, we carry around linguistic misconceptions of what animals do in order to illustrate larger points. The image of an ostrich burying its head in the sand is usually meant to illustrate the practice remaining ignorant of the world around us rather than deal with harsh realities. That the ostrich does not actually do this does not blunt the underlying reality of willful ignorance.

    Therefore, if it happens that the pages of the Bible are populated with dragons, unicorns, gremlins, fairies, griffins, yeti or the Loch Ness monster, the thing to do is not to fixate on the non-existence of such creatures but to attempt to discern what it is that the use of those creatures in the passage is meant to illustrate.
 
I read somewhere that the leviathan was the crocodile and the behemoth was the hippopotamus.
 
6glargento said:
in the bible, there are over 48 referances to dragons

“Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.
Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.
He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.” (job 40:15-17)

obviously he cannot be just a huge animal because he has a long tail like a cedar tree.

and psalm 44:19 which says

“Though thou hast sore broken us in the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death.”

“Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.”
(Psalms 74:13)

“And in that same place there was a great dragon, which they of Babylon worshipped.
But give me leave, O king, and I shall slay this dragon without sword or staff. The king said, I give thee leave.
Then Daniel took pitch, and fat, and hair, and did seethe them together, and made lumps thereof: this he put in the dragon’s mouth, and so the dragon burst in sunder : and Daniel said, Lo, these are the gods ye worship.
When they of Babylon heard that, they took great indignation, and conspired against the king, saying, The king is become a Jew, and he hath destroyed Bel, he hath slain the dragon, and put the priests to death.” (Daniel: Bel and the Dragon 23-28)

what should we make of all of this? Were these creatures really dinosaurs or prehistoric creatures as mony creationists suggest? (some creationists believe that noah took dinosaurs on his ark)

but what about the fire breathing dragon in Daniel? how could a dinousaur breath fire?

and what about unicorns?

“His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth: and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh.” (dueteronomy 33:17)

“Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns” (psalms 22:21)

“And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.” (isa 34:17)

would a unicorn simply be a horse whith a single horn or antler that went extinct?

how should we resond to skeptics who say that the mystical creatures in the bible question its authenticity.
Click to expand...

1. The “unicorn” is almost certainly the aurochs, which is a very large and wild species of bull with massive horns.​

  1. It is completely unnecessary to imagine that imaginary beasts such as the unicorn or dragon ever existed. To do so is just one step away from attributing thunder to the voice of Baal (or of Jahweh, for that matter).
  2. The pre-scientific peoples of the Ancient Near East have left literatures full of dragons, man-scorpions, winged bulls with human heads, gryphon-vultures, human-headed eagles, fish-men, & so forth. The writers of the OT belonged to this culture, so they expressed themselves accordingly. Which is why they talk of their god’s tent, sword, arrows, sons, etc.
  3. It is the height of stupidity for people to assume that people living three thousand years ago are somehow obliged to express themselves like modern Westerners. The sooner that those who are astonished that ancient Israelites should write like ancient Israelites learn the humility not to insist that their own culture is eternally & universally valid, the better for us all. It isn’t: one day, the USA will be as half-forgotten as Hatti, Assyria, or Mitanni - all of which were great kingdoms in their day. And it will seem as incomprehensible to the archaeologists of the future as the Bible does to the arrogant Westerners of today
  4. Fundamentalists are horribly mistaken when they fall into that very trap.
  5. Gods had sacred animals
  6. Some of these texts are satirical - such as Bel & the Dragon; they are not straightforward descriptions. Is the US really “the same thing as” a bald eagle or an old man in US colours ? No. A straightforward description of the US does not involve describing it as a bald eagle - its a country, not a bird
Hope that helps.
 
leviathan is Lotan of the Ancient Near Eastern Literature.

I highly recommend,

Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (Hardcover)
by Leland Ryken (Editor), Jim Wilhoit (Editor), Tremper Longman (Editor), Colin Duriez (Editor), Douglas Penney (Editor), Daniel G. Reid (Editor)
ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=1451

Fact is, the Bible was written in cultural contexts based on when each book was written.

Many of these same “mythical creatures” were used in the literature of the day, for example there is the monster of chaos.

leviathan or Lotan had seven heads.

Psalm 74:14
It was you who crushed the **heads of Leviathan **and gave him as food to the creatures of the desert.

There were even composite animals in the Bible like Eze 1 for example.

Unicorn is used only in the king james and it is simply a mistranslation.

library.yale.edu/div/moreanci.htm

google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=Ancient+Near+Eastern+Literature+&btnG=Search

google.com/search?hl=en&q=Ugaritic+Literature+Lotan
 
Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable…People saw creatures such as the elephant,the rhinoceros & the hippopotamus, & called them by strange names.
Giant squids, whales & dolphins (amongst other sea life) were transmuted into sea serpents, sea monstrers, “kracken”(sp?), & even mermaids…

None of this reflects on the Biblical record. It simply uses the best known names for creatures to explain what they are talking about…

God bless.
 
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