dragons in Genesis?

[ayin jade]

Job describes a living animal, not what they imagined from the bones of a dead animal.

Bible prophecy is more precise than that rh. You should check out each prophecy for yourself.

[secondeve]

Prophecy is a funny idea. Often, I wonder how much of it could come from reasonable intellectual speculations or beliefs. For instance: say I made a prophecy that 'the great empire will fall.' The concept of empire is an enduring one, and it is also finite. Every empire ever built will fall, sooner or later, and so all I'm really doing is stating the obvious. Let's extrapolate further: at the time I predict this, there is no global power that could be called an empire. But perhaps one forms after my death - or maybe I even saw the political genesis of that empire in my time. At any rate, it forms, grows powerful, and when it eventually (inveitably) fails - as history dictates it must - I am hailed as a prophet well after my death, for saying nothing which wasn't true as a hypothetical. I could specify the area in which that empire arose; chances are that, at some point, an empire would exist in that place - especially if one had already been there before, or if I am politically savvy enough to observe the foundations for one being built.

The most interesting kind of prophecy is that about inidivudal people, because I don't see how the fact that the prophecy exists can't influence the emergence of the figure, unless nobody knew about it until long after the event - and even then, see above. But let's say I (the prophet) belong to a persecuted group. I want to give my people hope. I describe an individual unshackled by the problems I percieve as hindering my society - but who is nonetheless a part of it - as coming at some time in the future to save us from bondage. This is pretty much wishful thinking in a way, but it also increases the odds in favour of that happening, if only because of the potential for people in the future to know this prophecy exists and try to insert themselves into it, either because they believe it means them, or because it potentially could, or because they can, and because doing so would help people - not to mention the fact that it implies an automatic support base in the form of believers. But also think of it socially. Nothing is finite. A group once persecuted cannot remain persecuted indefinitely; it will either fade away into obscuirty (in which case, my prophecy is likely forgotten) or it will revolt and become more powerful. That is, again, a truism in some sense - because nothing endures for ever. Impose conditions on a man and he can still meet them, either coincidentally, through work or through claims (or a combination thereof). The point is, the 'verity' of prophecy rests in the interpretation of other people, i.e., their belief that it has actually happened, and not any such proof of the prophet actually being psychic or gifted. Da Vinci designed tanks in the 14th century; that just made him incredibly bright, not a soothsayer. So I'd say that prophecy is made up of desire for a given outcome in the mind of the prophet, knowledge of the way history and the world works, current politics and human creativity/flair for description - hence the ambiguity and poetic structure of a lot of prophecies.

And also: I think it should be mentioned that there's more than one Biblical or non-canonical prophecy where it mentions that, coincidentally, prior to speaking, the prophet went out into the desert and ate a special kind of mushroom, and then didn't stop talking for forty days. Psychadelic, man.

[secondeve]

With such an absurd claim, you need to cite a passage. Its certainly nothing like that in the Bible.

It must be in the apocrypha, then. I know we studied it at Uni in Biblical Studies. Give me a mo to try and hunt it down: from memory, it was a prophet who consumed some kind of plant or herb and then, surrounded by numerous scribes, spoke continuously for some weeks with all of them writing down what he said verbatim.

[secondeve]

Well, I can't find it. It was fairly obscure - something I just remembered from class - but until I can back it up (or unless Apothenain knows what I might be talking about?) I'll retract the comment.

[Joshua-777]

Well, given that mythology tends to contain a lot of dinosauric creatures - but that the fossil record in no way supports the idea that man and dinosaurs lived together - my theory is that people dug up the bones and skeletons of dead dinos and thought, perhaps fearfully, that these creatures must still exist somewhere.

True, mythology contains alot of dinosauric creatures, it had to come from somewhere, could they have found fossiles back then and made up storys about it? Or could they have actualy lived with dinosaurs, fossil record actualy isn't clear on wether or not dinosaurs and man lived together, They have found footsteps of man with dinosaurs, and also in older cultures, do have simbolism of dinosaurs, like the Indians myth of the "Thunderbird"

http://www.creationists.org/mananddinos.html

http://www.creationists.org/ysP2d12yiu73/c...ngoprints02.jpg

[Guest Natures Girl]

Job describes a living animal, not what they imagined from the bones of a dead animal.

Bible prophecy is more precise than that rh. You should check out each prophecy for yourself.

Many people wrongly describe a creature they have never seen before. Especially primative people who thought the world was full of monsters and understood almost nothing of the natural world. How about accounts of sea serpents, mermaids, sirens, unicorns, leprechauns, gnomes and fairies, the lochness monster, bigfoot... The list of creatures described by people who claim to have witnessed these animals is long and useless. Do you really believe St. George actually slayed dragons?

How come cave drawings by primative peoples depict all manner of animals but no dinosaurs living among them? How come there is not widespread writing from ancient peoples about dinosaur like (sized) creatures? There is one account of a strange creature in the bible but we have MANY different types of dinosaur fossils. If T-Rex or Allosaurus was running around during a time when man could write, don't you think we'd have a lot of writing on it? Wouldn't the large carnivorus dinosaurs be the most incredibly dangerous animal to man on the planet and wouldn't there be writtings and stories of cities or villages being attacked? Doesn't the lack of info from people who could write give you a clue that maybe dinosaurs were long gone before man could write or paint a picture/draw on a cave wall?

What does bible prophecy have to do with the existence of dragons?

Josh-13, what mythology are you talking about?

[secondeve]

Well, given that mythology tends to contain a lot of dinosauric creatures - but that the fossil record in no way supports the idea that man and dinosaurs lived together - my theory is that people dug up the bones and skeletons of dead dinos and thought, perhaps fearfully, that these creatures must still exist somewhere.

True, mythology contains alot of dinosauric creatures, it had to come from somewhere, could they have found fossiles back then and made up storys about it? Or could they have actualy lived with dinosaurs, fossil record actualy isn't clear on wether or not dinosaurs and man lived together, They have found footsteps of man with dinosaurs, and also in older cultures, do have simbolism of dinosaurs, like the Indians myth of the "Thunderbird"

http://www.creationists.org/mananddinos.html

http://www.creationists.org/ysP2d12yiu73/c...ngoprints02.jpg

The 'man and dino' footprint has long been debunked as a hoax. Google it. Apart from that and the works of other fraudsters, there is nothing in the fossil record to put man and dionsaurs together. Also, I think humans are imaginative enough to invent animals from bones without having actually seen them. We speak here of a species which came up with the manticore, the chimera, the sphinx and the basilisk. Somehow, I think there's a lot more imagiantion than historical rememberance in the idea of a giant snake-lizard hatched from a rooster's egg incubated by a toad, which turns you to stone with its eyes and which repels spiders. Or, for that matter, in a fire-breathing creature with the three front heads of a goat, eagle and lion with a tail that is actually a snake.

[secondeve]

Dragons (as literature describes them) do not and never have existed. They are product of ignorance and imagination. If you were a primative (yes the dark ages were also primative) mind and found a dinosaur fossil you'd naturally make up a story to explain it... like the genesis account. "mommy how did the world begin..." Genesis; "mommy why do people speak different languages..." the tower of babel...

I think it is a stretch to say there were no dragons. From a biological standpoint, it has been proven that the chemical reactions neccessary for a "fire breathing" dragon would be no more complicated that luminous reactions of deep sea bottom feeders.

The fact that it's chemcially possible isn't evidence. I'd say the fact that such large creatures couldn't actually fly, plus the complete absence of skeletons, is telling enough.

[apothanein kerdos]

I am not arguing at all that dragons existed - there is literally no evidence outside of fables to say that they did.

My question is where did the myths come from. Though it is possible that dinosaur bones are to account for it, the fact that the tales are so very similar in China, Norse stories, and pre-Saxon England does raise some questions on how this could occur.

Again, I don't think they existed, but I think dinosaur bones don't account for it either. Keep in mind that each culture would certainly translate the findings differently.

[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.