dragons in Genesis?

[apothanein kerdos]

Dragons are different across cultures. They are wingless and benevolent in China - powerful, intelligent, cosmic creatures - while in Europe, they were monsters, bellicose, bestial and greedy. The representations of them vary; some breathe fire; others do not. Wyverns have only two legs, while other dragons have arms, too. Chinese dragons can fly, but are wingless, and vary in their number of limbs - these can also be feathered. A lot of other creatures, however, are draconic when we're looking across cultures for the similarities, but were not necessarily called dragons, like generically large monsters or somesuch.

Mythologically, I'd say there's more symbolic similarity between the thunderbird, phoenix, bennu bird and roc than between different types of dragon - at least as far as behaviour and cultural perception is concerned.

Fair enough assessment. It is something I have admittedly not looked into at all really.

[secondeve]

Dragons are different across cultures. They are wingless and benevolent in China - powerful, intelligent, cosmic creatures - while in Europe, they were monsters, bellicose, bestial and greedy. The representations of them vary; some breathe fire; others do not. Wyverns have only two legs, while other dragons have arms, too. Chinese dragons can fly, but are wingless, and vary in their number of limbs - these can also be feathered. A lot of other creatures, however, are draconic when we're looking across cultures for the similarities, but were not necessarily called dragons, like generically large monsters or somesuch.

Mythologically, I'd say there's more symbolic similarity between the thunderbird, phoenix, bennu bird and roc than between different types of dragon - at least as far as behaviour and cultural perception is concerned.

Fair enough assessment. It is something I have admittedly not looked into at all really.

It's kind of a pet topic of mine, mythology nerd that I am. In Assyrian/Babylonian myths, Tiamat and Bahamut were two gods who were also dragons, violent and evil; Tiamat was (I think) a firebreather and also a death-goddess. The dragons you find in Nordic myths are much more like Smaug in The Hobbit, big monsters that hoard treasure - that's where Tolkein got his ideas a lot of the time. Then you've got Jormundgur, the World Serpent, which some people now will call a dragon - really, though, it's a sea-serpent, so huge it encircles the world. Compare that to something like a five-clawed Chinese dragon, which hatches from an egg that incubates for a thousand years and which then grows to its full size in a heartbeat. Those dragons look a lot like Falcor from the Neverending Story, and can be either benevolent or angry; I think the different number of claws can vary how intelligent or kind they are. Then take St George and the Dragon - similar to the Greek myth of Andromeda, where the original monster was a sea-beast (see also Psyche). Finally, how many cultures don't have dragons - as in Africa, India, the Middle East? Anyway, I'll shush now.

[Joshua-777]

Dragons are different across cultures. They are wingless and benevolent in China - powerful, intelligent, cosmic creatures - while in Europe, they were monsters, bellicose, bestial and greedy. The representations of them vary; some breathe fire; others do not. Wyverns have only two legs, while other dragons have arms, too. Chinese dragons can fly, but are wingless, and vary in their number of limbs - these can also be feathered. A lot of other creatures, however, are draconic when we're looking across cultures for the similarities, but were not necessarily called dragons, like generically large monsters or somesuch.

Mythologically, I'd say there's more symbolic similarity between the thunderbird, phoenix, bennu bird and roc than between different types of dragon - at least as far as behaviour and cultural perception is concerned.

Fair enough assessment. It is something I have admittedly not looked into at all really.

It's kind of a pet topic of mine, mythology nerd that I am. In Assyrian/Babylonian myths, Tiamat and Bahamut were two gods who were also dragons, violent and evil; Tiamat was (I think) a firebreather and also a death-goddess. The dragons you find in Nordic myths are much more like Smaug in The Hobbit, big monsters that hoard treasure - that's where Tolkein got his ideas a lot of the time. Then you've got Jormundgur, the World Serpent, which some people now will call a dragon - really, though, it's a sea-serpent, so huge it encircles the world. Compare that to something like a five-clawed Chinese dragon, which hatches from an egg that incubates for a thousand years and which then grows to its full size in a heartbeat. Those dragons look a lot like Falcor from the Neverending Story, and can be either benevolent or angry; I think the different number of claws can vary how intelligent or kind they are. Then take St George and the Dragon - similar to the Greek myth of Andromeda, where the original monster was a sea-beast (see also Psyche). Finally, how many cultures don't have dragons - as in Africa, India, the Middle East? Anyway, I'll shush now.

where did the Idea's of these creatures come from? I believe it is very possible that man walked with dinosaur at one time, I believe these myths, over exagerated came from a true nature, Dinosaurs.

[secondeve]

where did the Idea's of these creatures come from? I believe it is very possible that man walked with dinosaur at one time, I believe these myths, over exagerated came from a true nature, Dinosaurs.

As I said before - dino bones. You dig up a big skeleton or a massive femur, if you don't know how old it is, you're going to think that kind of creature might still be around.

[tdrehfal]

where did the Idea's of these creatures come from? I believe it is very possible that man walked with dinosaur at one time, I believe these myths, over exagerated came from a true nature, Dinosaurs.

As I said before - dino bones. You dig up a big skeleton or a massive femur, if you don't know how old it is, you're going to think that kind of creature might still be around.

I seriously doubt there was a team of ancient paleontologists digging up bones and then rendering images of what they thought they might have looked like.

Logical conclusion: They saw something, and rendered an image of it.

[Joshua-777]

where did the Idea's of these creatures come from? I believe it is very possible that man walked with dinosaur at one time, I believe these myths, over exagerated came from a true nature, Dinosaurs.

As I said before - dino bones. You dig up a big skeleton or a massive femur, if you don't know how old it is, you're going to think that kind of creature might still be around.

I seriously doubt there was a team of ancient paleontologists digging up bones and then rendering images of what they thought they might have looked like.

Logical conclusion: They saw something, and rendered an image of it.

That seems more logical to me,

[maguschris]

Dragons are different across cultures. They are wingless and benevolent in China - powerful, intelligent, cosmic creatures - while in Europe, they were monsters, bellicose, bestial and greedy. The representations of them vary; some breathe fire; others do not. Wyverns have only two legs, while other dragons have arms, too. Chinese dragons can fly, but are wingless, and vary in their number of limbs - these can also be feathered. A lot of other creatures, however, are draconic when we're looking across cultures for the similarities, but were not necessarily called dragons, like generically large monsters or somesuch.

Mythologically, I'd say there's more symbolic similarity between the thunderbird, phoenix, bennu bird and roc than between different types of dragon - at least as far as behaviour and cultural perception is concerned.

Fair enough assessment. It is something I have admittedly not looked into at all really.

It's kind of a pet topic of mine, mythology nerd that I am. In Assyrian/Babylonian myths, Tiamat and Bahamut were two gods who were also dragons, violent and evil; Tiamat was (I think) a firebreather and also a death-goddess. The dragons you find in Nordic myths are much more like Smaug in The Hobbit, big monsters that hoard treasure - that's where Tolkein got his ideas a lot of the time. Then you've got Jormundgur, the World Serpent, which some people now will call a dragon - really, though, it's a sea-serpent, so huge it encircles the world. Compare that to something like a five-clawed Chinese dragon, which hatches from an egg that incubates for a thousand years and which then grows to its full size in a heartbeat. Those dragons look a lot like Falcor from the Neverending Story, and can be either benevolent or angry; I think the different number of claws can vary how intelligent or kind they are. Then take St George and the Dragon - similar to the Greek myth of Andromeda, where the original monster was a sea-beast (see also Psyche). Finally, how many cultures don't have dragons - as in Africa, India, the Middle East? Anyway, I'll shush now.

Actually your doin good so far lol. In china the number of claws also represented the royalty...who could possess images of...each typ eof dragon. Images of 5 clawed dragons could only be owned or commisioned by the Emporer himself. It became similar to his royal seal.

Interestingly enough the accounts of "dragons" popped up all over the world at about the same ime in history.

Personally, I believe they existed once as a late type of dinosaur. And you most certainly can't say somehting that big couldn't fly because we have found skeletons of huge flying dinos, Teradyctal for example. Myths always come from somewhere OTHER than straight out fiction. I highly doubt they were digging up fossils in the dark ages (not to mention extracting the fossils from the stone around them)

Therefore, I believe they existed in the past, if not in some parts of the world today which have not yet been explored.

Is it possible "dragons" are another type of supernatural creature like "angles" or "demons". If you believe in "angels" or "demons" how can you immediately reject the idea of "dragons" being incorporeal and taking physical form whenever they choose, much like angels or demons.

[secondeve]

where did the Idea's of these creatures come from? I believe it is very possible that man walked with dinosaur at one time, I believe these myths, over exagerated came from a true nature, Dinosaurs.

As I said before - dino bones. You dig up a big skeleton or a massive femur, if you don't know how old it is, you're going to think that kind of creature might still be around.

I seriously doubt there was a team of ancient paleontologists digging up bones and then rendering images of what they thought they might have looked like.

Logical conclusion: They saw something, and rendered an image of it.

The fact that there were no paelentologists doesn't mean nobody was digging. A lot of the dino bones found in the 19th centuary were discovered by accident when people were exavating for other purposes. Imagine you were digging the foundations for a massive city like Antioch, and you come across some massive bones - or in places where earthquakes reshape the land, bringing up older bedrock or stone with bones in them. And as for 'rendering an image,' you're looking at it the wrong way. Imagine your culture already has an idea of monsters - then someone finds some bones which don't fit to anything else. Clearly, they belong to the culture monster. And if you find a skeleton intact, as people sometimes do today, then that only helps - but give a little credit to human imagination. You can see how you'd get dragons from dinosaurs, but human imagination is still going to be responsible for things like the chimera or the bunyip. You're looking at this as if these ancient folks were sitting down like we would today. Probably, they didn't, and a lot of the process would have been fuelled by pre-existing folklore or mythology and then garbled by word-of-mouth accounts of these so-called remains, changing the appearance again.

[secondeve]

Personally, I believe they existed once as a late type of dinosaur. And you most certainly can't say somehting that big couldn't fly because we have found skeletons of huge flying dinos, Teradyctal for example.

The biggest flying dinos were hollow-boned and pretty much all wing. Compare that to an image of something the size and weight of a T-Rex trying to get off the ground. I'm not averse to the idea that pterodactyls and rhamphoryncus were the inspiration for dinosaurs having wings, but I don't think any kind of 'dragon' ever existed that looks like we think of them now: massive creatures who are somehow still light enough to fly. Unless you believe in creatures for which the normal laws of gravity don't work, there's no way any creature that fits our current preconception of 'dragon' ever existed - maybe something similar did in the dino era, but with absolutely zero evidence to suggest that humans and dinos ever lived during the same period (bar one or two now-debunked hoaxes), I can't see how you can make a case for us getting the idea from what we saw, unless it was inferred through the mixing of pre-existing cultural ideas of monsters and then reinforced by the accidental finding of dino bones.

[maguschris]

Personally, I believe they existed once as a late type of dinosaur. And you most certainly can't say somehting that big couldn't fly because we have found skeletons of huge flying dinos, Teradyctal for example.

The biggest flying dinos were hollow-boned and pretty much all wing. Compare that to an image of something the size and weight of a T-Rex trying to get off the ground. I'm not averse to the idea that pterodactyls and rhamphoryncus were the inspiration for dinosaurs having wings, but I don't think any kind of 'dragon' ever existed that looks like we think of them now: massive creatures who are somehow still light enough to fly. Unless you believe in creatures for which the normal laws of gravity don't work, there's no way any creature that fits our current preconception of 'dragon' ever existed - maybe something similar did in the dino era, but with absolutely zero evidence to suggest that humans and dinos ever lived during the same period (bar one or two now-debunked hoaxes), I can't see how you can make a case for us getting the idea from what we saw, unless it was inferred through the mixing of pre-existing cultural ideas of monsters and then reinforced by the accidental finding of dino bones.

Your missing the fact that you DONT have all the answers and since we dont have dragon fossils to study heh we can't make a judgement on whether they could or could not have ever existed or if they could or could not have taken flight. Remember something flying only needs to be calculated by lift vs. drag (drag includes gravity). hence: IF dragosn were really the humungous monsters we think of then heh if their wings grew according to their size they'd be able to fly. I dont think if dragosn ever existed they were behemoths.

no one to take on that other part i said about dragons possibly being incorporeal