The following, reprinted with permission, was written by Pete Mackevich, Wildlife Lecturer at the Pocono Snake and Animal Farm in Marshalls Creek PA, a short distance north of I-80 near Stroudsburg and the Delaware Water Gap.
My name is Pete Mackevich. I appreciated your message on how the Bible is reliable. I especially liked when you brought up about how scripture agrees with true science. That's one of my favorite subjects. I've got one other example for you about dinosaurs and the Bible. The word dinosaur was coined in 1842 by Sir Richard Owen, so of course the word is not found in the Word, but an eye witness description is. In Job, believed by many to be the oldest written book of the Bible, chapter 40:15 – 24 is an anatomically accurate account of a dinosaur.
First is the name "behemoth". It's the original Hebrew word, and although many have interpreted it to be a hippopotamus, the text doesn't bear it out. The word behemoth is associated with something BIG. Behemoth existed with man. How else could Job be commanded to look at it? Verse 15 tells us that this large animal was a vegetarian. So we have a large vegetarian animal.
Verse 17 shows it can't be a hippo, elephant, or any other large vegetarian mammal alive now or extinct (that we know of). It describes it's tail appearing like a cedar tree. All known large herbivorous mammals, present or extinct, have puny tails compared to their body. A hippo's tail is so scrawny compared to it's body, you hardly notice it! Now we have a large vegetarian with a long cylindrical tail.
From the NKJ version verse 17 also says “The sinews of his thighs are tightly knit.” The King James says “The sinews of his stones”. The actual Hebrew word is testicles. This is important. In most mammals testis hang outside the body cavity to stay cooler. In reptiles and birds the testicles are inside the body cavity, usually above the kidneys, and wrapped in connective tissue, sinew.
So it can't be a large mammal, and birds, even the largest, wouldn't be considered a behemoth, plus they don't have tails. It has to be a reptile. The only creatures that fit this picture are dinosaurs, either hadrosaurs, better known as duckbills, or sauropods, the “brontosaur” style.
From verse 16 and 18 the NKJ says that his strength is in his hips, and that his bones are like beams of iron. In all dinosaurs, bipeds and quadrupeds, and also alligators and crocks, most of the body weight is born by the hips. With the huge sauropods the leg bones were like a column or beam, only having a 15 degree flex maximum at the joints to bear the weight. Because of this I believe behemoth is one of the sauropods.
Verse 16 tells us that his power is in his stomach muscles. A sauropod, like many dinosaurs, crocodiles, and birds, had a gizzard to break up and, in effect, chew their food. It's believed the larger sauropods may have had gizzards over 3 foot wide with muscle walls a foot thick. These gizzards could grind down almost anything.
Verse 20 says the mountains yield food for him. Up until the 1970's scientists generally believed that sauropods lived in water, that they weighed too much for their legs to support them on land. There are many convincing paintings, done under the guidance of paleontologists. It is known now, from fossil track ways, that they not only walked on land, but many species frequented low mountain, their valleys and surrounding areas. So the mountains did yield food to him. Talk about the Bible being ahead of science!
Verse 22 says the lotus trees cover him with their shade. Modern day reptiles need to sun themselves to warm up, they are cold blooded. I do not agree with the general assumption of paleontologists that dinosaurs were warm blooded. But there is the principle of mass homeothermy, because the proportion of surface area to mass goes down as the mass increases, big animals retain heat. While cold blooded, reptiles do generate a small amount of heat from muscle movement. At a large sauropod's size, the problem wouldn't be getting warm, it would be cooling off. So it would need the shade of trees.
Verse 19 says he is the first in the ways of God. This word has been translated many different ways. I get the general feeling that it means he is so impressive that it calls attention to it's creator. The largest sauropods may have been as long as 150 feet, and weigh almost twice as much as a blue whale. I'm constantly amazed at God's creative hand when I look at animals, I can only imagine if I could see one of those!
So long before scientists ever had a name for them, long before they gave accurate reconstructions of them, the Lord recorded them in His Word. I think it is interesting because dinosaurs are so often used to support evolution, and in the long run discredit the Bible, and yet it is in the Bible that we have the oldest account of them.
I know you most likely remember me, but I'm the person associated with the Pocono Snake & Animal Farm, and I talked to after one service about the witness of the blood cell. You asked me to e mail you those notes, and I have to admit, it slipped my mind till Sunday. I will get them together for you.
