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Dragons! You’ve got to be kidding! No one believes in Dragons, so how can we have a serious discussion about them?
Yet in connection with the marvels of the created world, mention is made in the Bible of a terrifying sea creature called “leviathan.”
The precise identification of this huge animal is shrouded in a few verses: Job 3:8, 41:1-34, Psalms 74:14, Psalms 104:24-26 and Isaiah 27:1.
It obviously was some sort of majestic and awe inspiring aquatic creature. The margin notes in some Bible versions (ASV, RSV) speculate that the creature was a whale, though this description does not appear to even closely match what the Bible describes.
Other scholars identify this animal as a huge crocodile, but these are found mainly in inland waters and would therefore not be described as great beasts of the sea (Psalm 104:25–26). Nor are crocodiles so terrifying that no one dares tackle them—as they are regularly trapped and killed by native tribes.
A third presuppositions is that Leviathan may have been some variety of ancient dinosaur – now extinct (see Duane Gish, Dinosaurs – Those Terrible Lizards, San Diego: Creation-Life Publishers, 1977, pp. 30, 51-54). But this, of course, is also nonsense, as dinosaurs became extinct long before the creation of man.
Then there are expositors inclined to identify leviathan as a “mythological” entity, or as poetic imagery
“All five occurrences are in poetic passages and belong to ‘dead mythology,’ i.e., old mythological concepts are employed without suggestion that they are still believed” (The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, page 912).
However, the description in this section of scripture (as we shall see shortly) treats leviathan as a real sea “monster,” with which the ancients were quite familiar. (more…)
The Apple Of God's Eye 