One of the questions that we can be certain to face when discussing creation vs. evolution is the question of dinosaurs.  What do we do with them?  Our culture, including many Christians, has been conditioned to believe without even a thought that dinosaurs existed in their own time, before man and “modern” animals.  The Bible makes no allowance for this belief, and outlines the creation of all life within a six-day period.  Since this is God's Word on the matter, we believe Him.  We believe that man, dinosaurs, and all living things lived together, separated only by the days upon which God created them. The next logical question is whether or not the Bible makes any mention of dinosaurs.  The Bible does not use the word “dinosaur,”nor could it, as Sir Richard Owen only coined the term in 1842.  However, the Hebrew word “tanniyn” is used in Nehemiah 2:13, Psalm 91:13, Isaiah 27:1 and 51:9 and Jeremiah 51:34.  Until recently, English translations of the Bible used the word “dragon” in most instances of “tanniyn.” Some English translations still do.  Its plural, “tanniym,” is used in Deuteronomy 32:33, Job 30:29, Psalm 44:19, 74:13, 148:7, Isaiah 13:22, 34:13, 35:7, 43:20, Jeremiah 9:11, 10:22, 14:6, 49:33, 51:37, Lamentations 4:3, Micah 1:8, and Malachi 1:3.

Most Christians' minds immediately go to the great Behemoth and Leviathan from the book of Job when dinosaurs in the Bible are discussed.  These may very well be creatures that the modern evolutionist would call "prehistoric."  Many scholars have timidly floated the notion that the Behemoth may be an elephant or hippopotamus, and that the Leviathan may be (and here they mutter for a few seconds with a cough thrown in sporadically).  The Biblical descriptions of these creatures are such that they could be easily understood by any reasonably intelligent child.  But, since my reasonably intelligent children have already gone to bed, I'll have to take a shot at it myself.   There is no way that these creatures are any animal that modern zoology recognizes.  The description of the Behemoth does however, perfectly match the anatomy of some sauropod dinosaurs.  And the Behemoth matches the description of the sarcosuchus, an enormous supposedly "prehistoric" crocodilian.  When I say enormous I mean that the skull alone is in the neighborhood of six feet in length.

Many people, though, run into a wall when they read Job 41:18-21, where the Leviathan is said to breathe fire.  Now don't abandon ship just yet.  In the tip of the snout of the sarcosuchus is a bulbous cavity.  It's function and purpose are unknown.  It has been suggested by some that this cavity may be a reservoir or gland where chemicals are mixed that allow the sarcosuchus to breathe fire.  Consider the electric eel and the many species of bombardier beetle.  The bombardier beetle features an abdominal cavity where chemicals are held and then mixed together to react, forming a corrosive boiling spray that serves as a defense.  If we observe these two creatures today, why would it be so far fetched to imagine that a now extinct creature could have generated fire biochemically?

Extra-Biblical history also records many pieces of evidence that dinosaurs coexisted with man.  Alexander the Great reported seeing a giant dragon in an Indian cave. He said that it hissed (Gould).  Jewish historian Flavius Josephus recorded the existence of small flying reptiles in Arabia and Egypt (Cobbin).  Greek historian Herodotus (famously meticulous and accurate in his documentation of animals) also reported the existence of flying reptiles in Arabia (Herodotus).  Marco Polo reported monstrous terrifying dragon-like monsters from his Asian travels (Polo).

The Roman historian Cassius Dio recounted how a Roman army once killed a dragon. The original fragment from Book 11 of his Roman History, now lost, was repeated by John of Damascus (AD ~676–749), in his book On Dragons and Ghosts: “One day, when Regulus, a Roman consul, was fighting against Carthage, a dragon suddenly crept up and settled behind the wall of the Roman army. The Romans killed it by order of Regulus, skinned it and sent the hide to the Roman senate. When the dragon’s hide, as Dio says, was measured by order of the senate, it happened to be, amazingly, one hundred and twenty feet long, and the thickness was fitting to the length” (Hodge).

The Chinese calendar features twelve creatures, one of them being the dragon.  Every other creature on the calendar is recognized by zoology.  Why not the dragon?  Virtually every culture in the history of the world has dragon stories, and dragon representations in their works of art.  Descriptions tend to be very consistent, even when comparing peoples that had no contact with each other.

On display in the Louvre is a Mesopotamian cylinder seal that bears the undeniable image of sauropod dinosaurs.  Bishop Bell's 600 year-old tomb in Northwestern England's Carlisle Cathedral is adorned with engravings of sauropod dinosaurs.  Ancient Egypt's Narmer Palette is a memorial to Pharaoh Narmer.  It documents his exploits with depictions of his conquests and his servants holding sauropod dinosaurs with leash-like devices.

Recorded history is full of documented encounters with dragons and other creatures that evolutionists would have us believe predated mankind by tens of millions of years.  Whom do you believe?

• Gould, Charles, Mythical Monsters, W.H. Allen & Co., London, 1886, pp. 382-383.

• Cobbin, Ingram, Condensed Commentary and Family Exposition on the Whole Bible, 1837, p. 171.

• Herodotus, Historiae, tr. Henry Clay, 1850, pp. 75-76.

• Polo, Marco, The Travels of Marco Polo, 1961, pp. 158-159.

• Hodge, Bodie. "Dragon Legends-Truths Behind the Tales." Answers Magazine. Answers in Genesis, 1 Oct. 2011. Web. 10 Aug. 2016. <https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/dragon-legends/dragon-legends-truths-behind-the-tales/>.