In 1824, the president of the Royal Geological Society, Sir William Buckland, informed his scientists that the bones found in England in 1815 (near Oxford, in a limestone quarry) most likely belonged to a giant lizard that lived in prehistoric times.
Then similar finds began to follow one after another, and in 1842 the term "dinosaurs" appeared. From decade to decade, as new finds appeared, information about giant reptiles that lived millions of years ago became more and more, and in the very fact of their existence many saw a crushing blow to the religious worldview.
The wrong crocodiles
First, the very picture of the creation of the world presented in the Bible collapsed, which, as it turned out, has existed not for several thousand, but hundreds of millions of years, and already in such a distant past was inhabited by various animals. Second, it turned out that the same Bible does not contain, as Jewish and Christian mystics claimed, all the secrets of the universe.
For example, militant atheists pointed out, not a word is said about the same dinosaurs. Thus, the question "Where does the Bible say about dinosaurs ?!" acquired a fundamental character for both believers and atheists.
Attempts by theologians to claim that dinosaurs never actually existed, that it was either a clever scientific falsification, or the remains of the giants that are mentioned in the Bible, sounded ridiculous. Theologians denied the obvious and thus only put themselves in an awkward position.
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Meanwhile, dinosaurs are certainly mentioned in the Bible and accompanying ancient sources. To verify this, simply open the Book of Books. But to open it not in translation into this or that language, but in the original, that is, in Hebrew, or in "Hebrew", as this language was called only a little over a hundred years ago.
"And God created great fish, and every soul of animals …" (Genesis 1:21) - says the Synodal translation of the Bible. This phrase sounds almost the same in many other translations of the Bible into Russian, including those made by various Jewish translators.
However, in the original, the same phrase reads as follows: "Va-ivra Elo-gim et ha-taninim ha-gdolim ve-kol ne-fesh haya …"
But "tannim" is anything but fish. In modern Hebrew, the word "tannin" means "crocodile". But it clearly does not correspond to its original meaning, so it would be wrong to translate “And God created large crocodiles …”, although in any case it is much more accurate.
Not fish, but … lizards
The second time we come across the word "tannin" in the Bible is in the story of Moses. It is in "tannin" that the staff of Moses turns at the command of the Almighty, but in this case the majority translate this word as "snake".
The word "tannin" is also found in other books of the Bible. For example, in the 90th psalm, but there it is suddenly translated as "dragon".
However, it clearly follows from ancient and medieval Jewish sources that in fact "tannins" ("tannins") are not fish or crocodiles, but lizards. Simply put, "big tannins" are dinosaurs. Much closer to the original is the translation of this passage from the Book of Genesis performed by Frima Gurfinkel.
“And God created great monsters and every living, creeping soul …” - this is how the phrase about “tannin” sounds in its interpretation.
Another, also extremely close to the original, version of the translation was proposed by Gedalia Spandiel: "God created huge aquatic creatures and all crawling living creatures …"
Stegosaurus on an ancient Cambodian temple
The idea that “tannin” in this passage should be understood as fish, apparently, arose in connection with a mistake, quite forgivable for that time, made by the outstanding medieval commentator of the Bible, Rashi (1040-1105). He believed that since the "tannins" are said to be born in water, then they should be attributed to fish.
But Rashi immediately refers readers to the ancient legend, according to which the legendary biblical Leviathan also belonged to the "tannins". Leviathan himself, says this legend closely related to the Bible, continues to live in the depths of the ocean, but all other "big monsters" disappeared from the face of the Earth, or, in the language of legend, were destroyed by the decision of God.
This destruction itself, the legend explains, was due to the fact that God understood: given the enormous needs of the giants for food, other species of animals simply cannot coexist with them. Thus, if we start from this idea, the reason for the death of the dinosaurs could be a lack of food resources, the inability of the planet to feed a large number of such giants. Another conclusion follows from this: modern life forms were able to develop only thanks to the disappearance of dinosaurs. Together they simply could not coexist due to lack of food resources.
About reproduction
Another fact testifies to the fact that Jewish scholars of the Bible and related oral traditions knew not only about the existence of dinosaurs, but also about some features of their life. The method of reproduction of dinosaurs became known to scientists only in 1859 (before that this question was the subject of heated discussions).
However, in the Talmud, compiled in antiquity, it is said that "tannins" reproduced with the help of eggs. “Those that came out of the water reproduce and reproduce by laying eggs, and those that were created on land reproduce and reproduce through childbirth,” explains the Jewish sage Rabbi Elazar in this famous body of laws and traditions.
On the pages of the Talmud, you can find information that the "tannins" were oviparous
From this rule formulated by him, ancient scientists concluded that the ancestors of whales, dolphins and other marine mammals were originally land animals, which science has confirmed relatively recently.
Cosmic cataclysm
As for the question of what was the cause of the death of the dinosaurs, then here you can also look for the answer in the Bible and accompanying ancient sources. According to the Kabbalistic Book of Zohar, which is the basis of Jewish and modern European mysticism (tradition attributes its authorship to Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yohai), long before the creation of the world in its present form, “Holy One, may He be blessed, created various worlds and destroyed them to the ground”.
Hence, many theologians conclude that dinosaurs were representatives of one of such previously created worlds that were destroyed by the Creator through a global cataclysm. Others believe that modern science was mistaken in the very dating of the death of dinosaurs, and at least some of the species of these giants coexisted for some time with humans - here, they say, and one should look for the origins of almost all peoples of dragon legends. Finally, according to one of the opinions, the dinosaurs died during the Flood, when on the Earth began, on the one hand, geological shifts and volcanic eruptions, and on the other - showers of extraordinary strength, that is, there was a sharp climate change.
This is how commentators interpret the words of the Bible that in the days of the flood “all the sources of the great abyss (that is, those located under the earth's crust) were opened and the windows of heaven were opened” (Genesis 7:11).
Biblical legends assert that the physical reason for the flood was that for the sins of mankind, God changed the laws of the universe and brought the constellation of the Pleiades closer to the Earth - so that "two stars from the Pleiades hung in the sky, and the flood came."
Without a doubt, in this case we are talking about some kind of cosmic cataclysm - whether about the fall of two giant meteorites ("two stars hung in the sky"), or about the approach of certain large celestial bodies with our planet, which inevitably should have caused powerful ocean tides, and disturbances in her bowels.
Noah saved the dinosaurs?
But again, one cannot fail to notice that these versions of biblical sources surprisingly coincide with various versions of scientists who claim that the cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs was the fall of a giant meteorite, a sharp change in climate, etc.
In response, convinced atheists immediately remind sarcastically that, according to the Bible, Noah took all the animals into his ark during the flood. "So why didn't he bring the dinosaurs with him?" - these critics of the Bible reasonably ask.
But the supporters of the religious worldview have an answer to this too. First, they say, in fact, not all representatives of the terrestrial fauna entered the ark of Noah - there were probably those species that disappeared without a trace as a result of the flood.
Second, who said that Noah didn't take dinosaurs into the ark at all? That is, the dinosaurs themselves, he may not have taken because of their size. But he could take the cubs of some of them. Thanks to this, giant lizards can remain in some hidden corners of the planet to this day.
As a possibility of such a development of events, the supporters of this version recall the legend that King David in his youth once met a sleeping beast, which the Bible calls "Reem". Outwardly, Reem resembled a two-horned rhino, but its size was so great that David mistook him for a hill and, together with his herd, climbed to its withers.
Finally, we find references to dragons and their images in a variety of ancient sources. For example, the famous Roman mosaic of the 1st century BC captured the hunt for the beast, which, according to the signature, the Romans called "KROKODILOPARDALIS" ("tiger crocodile"), however, both by its size and by the structure of the body and head it is clear that it is about a dinosaur.
Many ancient Chinese dragon figurines are also remarkably similar to dinosaurs, whose appearance has been reconstructed by paleobiologists. And, finally, how not to recall the various hypotheses of cryptozoologists about surviving dinosaurs in certain corners of the Earth ?!
It remains for us to state that one can believe or not believe in God, but the Bible, of course, is a unique repository of the historical memory of mankind and ancient knowledge. And therefore, it is clearly not worthwhile to dismiss it or draw conclusions based on an extremely superficial acquaintance with its text.
Peter LYUKIMSON
