Did dinosaurs ever really exist? YES they did.

The Bible refers to many the common animals we know today. The list includes lions, wolves, bears, sheep, cattle and dogs along with various kinds of birds, rodents, reptiles, and insects. What is interesting is that this extensive list includes three animals that we no longer recognize. These three are (in the original Hebrew language) tanniyn, b@hemowth (yes, it’s spelled correctly—at least as close as we can get in Roman characters), and livyathan.

Although we alter the spelling of behemoth and Leviathan slightly, we still use those same words in bibles today. However, tanniyn is always translated into another word when we write it in English. Tanniyn occurs 28 times in the Bible and is normally translated “dragon.” It is also translated “serpent,” “sea monster,” “dinosaur,” “great creature,” and “reptile.” Behemoth and Leviathan are relatively specific creatures, perhaps each was a single kind of animal. Tanniyn is a more general term, and it can be thought of as the original version of the word “dinosaur.” The word “dinosaur” was originally coined in 1841, more than three thousand years after the Bible first referred to “Tanniyn.” To make things clearer, we constructed the following table comparing the scientific names with the Biblical names tanniyn, behemoth, and Leviathan.

Behemoth has the following attributes according to Job 40:15-24

• It “eats grass like an ox.”
• It “moves his tail like a cedar.” (In Hebrew, this literally reads, “he lets hang his tail like a cedar.”)
• Its “bones are like beams of bronze,
  His ribs like bars of iron.”
• “He is the first of the ways of God.”
• “He lies under the lotus trees,
  In a covert of reeds and marsh.”

Leviathan has the following attributes according to Job chapter 41, Psalm 104:25,26 and Isaiah 27:1. This is only a partial listing—just enough to make the point.

• “No one is so fierce that he would dare stir him up.”
• “Who can open the doors of his face, with his terrible teeth all around?”
• “His rows of scales are his pride, shut up tightly as with a seal; one is so near another that no air can come between them; they are joined one to another, they stick together and cannot be parted.”
• “His sneezings flash forth light, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of his mouth go burning lights; sparks of fire shoot out. Smoke goes out of his nostrils, as from a boiling pot and burning rushes. His breath kindles coals, and a flame goes out of his mouth.”
• “Though the sword reaches him, it cannot avail; nor does spear, dart, or javelin. He regards iron as straw, and bronze as rotten wood. The arrow cannot make him flee; slingstones become like stubble to him. Darts are regarded as straw; he laughs at the threat of javelins.”
• “On earth there is nothing like him, which is made without fear.”
• Leviathan “played” in the “great and wide sea” (a paraphrase of Psalm 104 verses 25 and 26—get the exact sense by reading them yourself).
• Leviathan is a “reptile [a] that is in the sea.” (Isaiah 27:1)

  [a] Note: The word translated “reptile” here is the Hebrew word tanniyn. This shows that “Leviathan” was also a “tanniyn” (dragon).

According to the Bible: Dinosaurs first existed around 6,000 years ago. God made the dinosaurs, along with the other land animals, on Day Six of the Creation Week (Gen. 1:20–25, 31)Adam and Eve were also made on day six—so dinosaurs lived at the same time as people, not separated by eons of time. Dinosaurs could not have died out before people appeared, because dinosaurs had not previously existed, and death, bloodshed, disease and suffering are a result of Adam’s sin (Rom. 5:12,14, 1 Cor. 15:21–22).

Representatives of all the kinds of air-breathing land animals, including the dinosaur kinds, went on board Noah’s Ark. All those left outside the Ark died in the cataclysmic circumstances of the Flood—many of their remains became fossils.

After the Flood (around 4,500 years ago), the remnant of the land animals, including dinosaurs, came off the Ark and lived in the present world, along with people. Because of sin, the judgments of the Curse and the Flood have greatly changed the earth. Post-Flood climatic change, lack of food, disease, and man’s activities caused many types of animals to become extinct. The dinosaurs, like many other creatures, died out.

At the end of the Flood, Noah, his family and the animals came out of the Ark (Gen. 8:15–17). The dinosaurs thus began a new life in a new world. Along with the other animals, the dinosaurs came out to breed and repopulate the earth. They would have left the landing place of the Ark and spread over the earth’s surface. The descendants of these dinosaurs gave rise to the dragon legends.

But the world they came out to repopulate differed from the one they knew before Noah’s Flood. The Flood had devastated it. It was now a much more difficult world in which to survive.

After the Flood God told Noah that from then on the animals would fear him, and man could eat their flesh (Gen. 9:1–7). Even for man, the world had become a harsher place. To survive, the once easily obtained plant nutrition would now have to be supplemented by animal sources.

Both animals and man would find their ability to survive tested to the utmost. We can see from the fossil record, from the written history of man, and from experience over recent centuries, that many forms of life on this planet have not survived that test.

We need to remember that many plants and air-breathing, land-dwelling animals have become extinct since the Flood—either due to man’s action or competition with other species, or because of the harsher post-Flood environment. Many groups are still becoming extinct. Dinosaurs seem to be numbered among the extinct groups.

If you want to reject evolution and believe the account in Genesis that God created all creatures as fully functioning — and much as we know them today — then the evidence is on your side.

Did dinosaurs exist?

They most certainly did. God made some incredible creatures!

The fact is that dinosaurs were created no more than one day before mankind, not many millions of years earlier—and we have evidence to support that statement. Therefore mankind were the one who ruled during that time.

Conclusion.

If we accept God’s Word, beginning with Genesis as being true and authoritative, then we can explain dinosaurs and make sense of the evidence we observe in the world around us. In doing this, we are helping people see that Genesis is absolutely trustworthy and logically defensible, and is what it claims to be—the true account of the history of the universe and mankind. And what one believes concerning the book of Genesis will ultimately determine what one believes about the rest of the Bible. This in turn will affect how a person views him or herself, and fellow human beings, and what life is all about, including their need for salvation.