Behemoth

From CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science

There is a graphic descriptions of an animal in the Bible that may be a dinosaur, the Behemoth is described as an immense land animal, which is believed by some creationists to be a Sauropod.

Job 40:15-24 Look at the behemoth, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox. What strength he has in his loins, what power in the muscles of his belly! His tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are close-knit. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like rods of iron. He ranks first among the works of God, yet his Maker can approach him with his sword. The hills bring him their produce, and all the wild animals play nearby. Under the lotus plants he lies, hidden among the reeds in the marsh. The lotuses conceal him in their shadow; the poplars by the stream surround him. When the river rages, he is not alarmed; he is secure, though the Jordan should surge against his mouth. Can anyone capture him by the eyes, or trap him and pierce his nose?

In the first edition of the King James Bible (1611), and the earlier Geneva Bible (1599), a marginal note said Behemoth may be an elephant. By the 1800s several commentators had realized the description in Job didn't match an elephant.

William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible (first published in 1863, then later expanded and revised) was an influential authority of that era. Despite the Bible's description not matching that of a hippopotamus, Smith knew of no other creature it could be, so he confidently identified it as a hippo. Under the headword Behemoth, Smith's entry began: "There can be little or no doubt that by this word (Job xl. 15-24) the hippopotamus is intended, since all the details descriptive of the behemoth accord entirely with the ascertained habits of that animal ..."[1] The main problems with this identification are listed below.

James Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (first published in 1890) followed the line William Smith had taken. Strong translated Behemoth in his Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary as "a water-ox, i.e. the hippopotamus or Nile-horse." Strong's definition influenced the translators of the Authorized Standard Version of the Bible in 1901 to change "behemoth" to "hippopotamus" in the biblical text.

The main problems with trying to identify Behemoth as a hippo are:

A hippopotamus's tail is not like a cedar (Job 40:17 ). It is more like a piece of thick rope.
Hippopotamuses don't go up to mountain fields to get their food (Job 40:20 ). They generally feed on water plants and vegetation near the shore or river bank.

As stated before, many creationists have instead suggested that Behemoth may be a type of dinosaur. The creation interpretation of Earth history argues that dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time. This is supported by the most straightforward reading of the book of Genesis which states that all land animals and humans were created on the sixth day of creation. It is also stated that such animals were placed on board Noah's ark and saved from the flood, therefore living along with humans for some time afterwards. Almost all creationists today agree that Behemoth could not be a Hippopotamus or an Elephant because neither of these two animals has a tail like a cedar, nor "bones like tubes of bronze" or "limbs like rods of iron".