Can science and the Bible prove dragons existed?

If this has already been posted, sorry. I don't have too much time to myself because I am always busy. but the truth needs to be told.

As an added note, these reasons for belief and explanations are my own personal observations in the physical world as well as the spiritual world. What is recorded in this post is strictly my findings and noone else's.

The way I see it, the world mainly constists of two kinds of people- those who believe what the Bible and those who believe what science can prove. I have supporting evidence from the Bible and may have something on how science can prove them.

For those who believe the Bible- in the book of Job, chapter 41, the Bible describes a creature called the leviathan.

1 "Can you pull in the leviathan [a] with a fishhook
or tie down his tongue with a rope?
2 Can you put a cord through his nose
or pierce his jaw with a hook?
3 Will he keep begging you for mercy?
Will he speak to you with gentle words?
4 Will he make an agreement with you
for you to take him as your slave for life?
5 Can you make a pet of him like a bird
or put him on a leash for your girls?
6 Will traders barter for him?
Will they divide him up among the merchants?
7 Can you fill his hide with harpoons
or his head with fishing spears?
8 If you lay a hand on him,
you will remember the struggle and never do it again!
9 Any hope of subduing him is false;
the mere sight of him is overpowering.
10 No one is fierce enough to rouse him.
Who then is able to stand against me?
11 Who has a claim against me that I must pay?
Everything under heaven belongs to me.
12 "I will not fail to speak of his limbs,
his strength and his graceful form.
13 Who can strip off his outer coat?
Who would approach him with a bridle?
14 Who dares open the doors of his mouth,
ringed about with his fearsome teeth?
15 His back has rows of shields
tightly sealed together;
16 each is so close to the next
that no air can pass between.
17 They are joined fast to one another;
they cling together and cannot be parted.
18 His snorting throws out flashes of light;
his eyes are like the rays of dawn.
19 Firebrands stream from his mouth;
sparks of fire shoot out.
20 Smoke pours from his nostrils
as from a boiling pot over a fire of reeds.
21 His breath sets coals ablaze,
and flames dart from his mouth.
22 Strength resides in his neck;
dismay goes before him.
23 The folds of his flesh are tightly joined;
they are firm and immovable.
24 His chest is hard as rock,
hard as a lower millstone.
25 When he rises up, the mighty are terrified;
they retreat before his thrashing.
26 The sword that reaches him has no effect,
nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.
27 Iron he treats like straw
and bronze like rotten wood.
28 Arrows do not make him flee;
slingstones are like chaff to him.
29 A club seems to him but a piece of straw;
he laughs at the rattling of the lance.
30 His undersides are jagged potsherds,
leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge.
31 He makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron
and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.
32 Behind him he leaves a glistening wake;
one would think the deep had white hair.
33 Nothing on earth is his equal—
a creature without fear.
34 He looks down on all that are haughty;
he is king over all that are proud."

The leviathan, as it is described in the Bible, sounds much like the normal mental picture of a dragon, except for the fact that it lives in the water.

The leviathan is also mentioned in Psalm 74:13-14 and Isaiah 27:1. I will post a second part to this post to talk about the other evidence of the dragons' existence- science.

Dragons in the Bible. Never thought this would be brought up. But the Bible, over time, could have been added to over time. I'm not tring to hurt anyone with religion, but really we know that the Noah's flood thing wasn't as big as the Bible desribes. In that era it would have seems huge, but now it's more of a flash flood. And the thing with the animal pairs is just a pair of pigs, goats, chicken, goose, and that's about it. So the Bible was most likely exaggerated a little bit. This could be one of those moments.

Falcon out...

Alright, here's part 2.

This is for all the science believers. I don't have too much supporting evidence for how science proves the existence of dragons, but I will say what I can.

The overall bodily structure of dragons, as I have seen and studied them, is extremely similar to that of humans, so I am basing these opinions and comparisons off of my studies of dragons and humans alike. I don't know all of the technical scientific terms for the bodily structures and bones of the body, so I will put it in terms of names you may or may not know, but these names are widely known, so I am calling them by common names.

Dragons' wings seem like a humans' shoulder blades. In fact, some humans can move their shoulder blades at will, and some end up separating from their backs to resemble wings and they can move them, so they seem like wings.
Dragons' wings resemble skull protrusions in humans. If you want proof of that, feel the back of your head on the left and right sides.
Dragons' scales resemble the hard palate in humans, which is located inside the mouth, and it is on the top frontal part of the mouth of every human.
The limbs of dragons highly resemble the arms and legs of humans in the way they are formed and the way they move. Humans can move their arms and legs in the same exact way that dragons can.
Dragons' teeth resemble humans' teeth in the same way. Human incisors are sharp, and so are all the teeth of every dragon.

[edit on 18-5-2007 by bobbyboy]

I think the bible is a huge exageration of everything... most likely they are talking about a crocodile or something. The thing with the bible is you dont know what to take literally. You got rabbis and priest, etc telling you what is literal and what is figurative.

I see what you guys mean with it being a huge exaggeration, but keep in mind that most of the Bible is the words of people. In this instance, God is speaking. When God speaks in the Bible, it is not exaggerated. It says in the Bible that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. It also says in the Bible that the flood covered the mountains to over 138 meters. That means every mountain, including Everest. Plus, the verse before that mentions that all the high mountains were covered and the Earth was flooded for 150 days. See Genesis 7:12, 7:17-20, and 7:24.

One idea I've heard is that our ancestors used to find old dinosaur bones in the ground every now and then and needed an explanation for the gigantic bones. This may be why people have believed in dragons all over the Earth but doesn't explain the similarlity over geologically remote cultures. Why, for instance, are dragons usually flying reptiles?

Originally posted by niv
One idea I've heard is that our ancestors used to find old dinosaur bones in the ground every now and then and needed an explanation for the gigantic bones. This may be why people have believed in dragons all over the Earth but doesn't explain the similarlity over geologically remote cultures. Why, for instance, are dragons usually flying reptiles?

Yeah, i'm with you on that comment. People always want an explanation for everything. I think the reason dragons are usually flying reptiles is the fact that almost every culture, past and present, has a record of a picture of a description of a dragon, or both. That is one of the reasons I started this thread. I believe that every culture saw dragons and recorded them. And there is always the point that I live in two worlds, so I get the side of both.

This was bad timing for this thread, though. I might not be on this site much during the next little while. I might be on for a couple of hours a day, but I have been busy lately.

[edit on 18-5-2007 by bobbyboy]

I think the description of the Leviathan referred to the large whales.

Consider that it speaks of smoke pouring from it's nostrils and its mouth... early representations of whales had them pointing their heads upwards and 'smoking' from the mouth. Later it was changed to them shooting from the mouth and finally shooting water, but their size was always something that drew attention.



Take that image for example, the whale is depicted as a large fish with scales (shields). There were many stories of ships landing on a whale's back and thinking they had found land. They would disembark and make a fire which would send the whale into the depth's, dragging them with it.

My point is, whales were the great monster's of the sea in the past. They were huge monsters which sprayed fire and were as big as an island, when in fact they were only ever near the surface to breathe and wouldn't stay still long enough to be 'settled'.
Consider the idea of the Leviathan's furious wrath... any ship that tried to harpoon a whale in the past would have had a hard time keeping it harpooned in a rickety wooden ship. It would have been pulled under immediately.

Actually, Leviathan was seen as a demon, a dragon, a sea dragon and a serpent.

More in the bible about leviathan,

Isaiah 27:1: "In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea

Psalms 74:14: "Thou didst crush the heads of the Leviathan, thou didst give him for food to the creatures of the desert." NIV

Psalms 104:25,26: "O Lord, how manifold thy works, in wisdom you have created them all. So is this great and wide sea... there go the ships and the Leviathan which you have created to play therein" (AV);

It could just be a story that was passed by generations and end up as tale in the bible, but perhaps none of the people that wrote the bible actually see it, but just heard about it.

It is said that in Genesis 1:21:”God created the great sea monsters”-Taninim” but the translation is “sea monster, crocodile or large snake”.

Perhaps it was nothing more than a giant crododile mistaken by a dragon or snake.

Suppousely it has a mate but the female was killed and salted for the righteous, because if they procreate it was not room in the world for them.

If you take all the references to this sea monsters or dragons it brings you to a close related stories of other mythological creatures from the stories of other cultures.

This only can prove that the bible when written had been mix with the believes of other cultures.

All kind of monsters have existed throughou history. in fact it is said that all the huge monsters and huge humans that the greeks tall about, for example Hercules, exually existed becasue their DNA somehow has manipulated by Aliens.

Originally posted by mhector3500
All kind of monsters have existed throughou history. in fact it is said that all the huge monsters and huge humans that the greeks tall about, for example Hercules, exually existed becasue their DNA somehow has manipulated by Aliens.

Actually its most likely that the heroes of Ancient Greece (many of which were much bigger than normal humans) were the uncovered fossils of extinct megafauna. There was a documentary about it on the History Channel which had actually a very convincing amount of evidence (and I'm quite sceptical about fossils interpreted as things like dragons and gryphons etc).

It looked at a lot of the sites where the heroes remains were discovered (coincidentally a place where fossils are naturally forced up from the ground), and Central Asia, where protoceratops skulls were the inspiration for the gold guarding griffons.
There is an EXCELLENT book on the subject called The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times by Adrienne Mayor

There are many acient cultures that have Dragon myths and they all could all be traced back to the Garden of Eden. When the Original Serpent was cursed it lost its limbs and was forced to be on its belly. It appeared to be licking the dust because it had to lay on the ground from then on. The bible book of Revelation says that the Dragon was the Original Serpent, a reptilian creature with limbs (possibly with wings) that Satan the Devil began to be identified with because he spoke through it. Satan chose a cool beast to speak through and so God debased it, to be a reminder that rebellion was not to be tollerated.

Leviathan is the Hebrew variant of the Canaanite Lotan, the Seven headed dragon of the Sea deity Yam. In modern Hebrew it means Whale while Yam means Sea.

Lotan in Canaanite myth is defeated by Ba'al similar to Marduk's defeat of Tiamat in the Enuma Elish. Like Tiamat it represents Chaos. The Book of Enoch draws even more parallels with Tiamat. It depicts Leviathan living in the Abyss, the primordial deep.

Yam himself is a deity of Primordial Chaos.
Yam was orginally cast out of Tsion by the Elohim( the Canaanite Pantheon) to his palace in the Abyss/Tehom. His arch enemy is Ba'al (the Lord) called the first born Son of El. Lotan is his pet or servant.

Lotan/Leviathan/Tiamat is not unique to the Middle East. Between it and Yam there are a number of corresponding beings from other myths. The Hittite dragon Illuyanka, Jörmungandr of Norse myth, Apep of Egyptian myth, Typhon, Ophion, and Ladon of Greek myth, and Vritra of Vedic myth.

My personal opinon is that the description of a multi headed sea serpent might infact be a depiction of a sea creature with multiple tentacles. Something like the Giant Squid or Octopus.

Either way here's a interesting tidbit, The Bloop.
" The Bloop is the name given to an ultra-low frequency underwater sound detected by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration...The sound, traced to somewhere around 50° S 100° W (South American southwest coast), was detected repeatedly by the Equatorial Pacific Ocean autonomous hydrophone array, which uses U.S. Navy equipment originally designed to detect Soviet submarines. According to the NOAA description, it "rises rapidly in frequency over about one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors, at a range of over 5,000 km." Though it matches the audio profile of a living creature, there is no known animal that could have produced the sound. If it is an animal, it would have to be, reportedly, much larger than even a Blue Whale, according to scientists who have studied the phenomenon."

and even more bizarre,
" The site of the Bloop is remarkably close to the site of the fictional city of R'lyeh from H. P. Lovecraft's short story The Call of Cthulhu, where an ancient undersea monster (Cthulhu) lies sleeping. Lovecraft said that R'lyeh is located at 47°9′S, 123°43′W in the southern Pacific Ocean, with the bloop also being targeted somewhere in that range."

en.wikipedia.org...

So maybe there is a real Leviathan out there.

I thought people had already said that Leviathan (or another similar Biblical monster) was actually describing a hippopotomus or elephant.

As for the title, "Can science and the Bible prove dragons existed", the Bible can't be used to prove anything because the bible itself cannot be verified and proven. Not to start a big debate, but the bible is not a reliable source and cannot be used as scientific evidence.

Originally posted by Yarcofin
As for the title, "Can science and the Bible prove dragons existed", the Bible can't be used to prove anything because the bible itself cannot be verified and proven. Not to start a big debate, but the bible is not a reliable source and cannot be used as scientific evidence.

I agree completely with that statement. The Bible is not an empiricial source of objective data. It is a collection of 'round the fire' stories that have been passed down and down and down again. And let's not forget all the problems in translating it from one language to another.

Originally posted by Yarcofin
I thought people had already said that Leviathan (or another similar Biblical monster) was actually describing a hippopotomus or elephant.

As for the title, "Can science and the Bible prove dragons existed", the Bible can't be used to prove anything because the bible itself cannot be verified and proven. Not to start a big debate, but the bible is not a reliable source and cannot be used as scientific evidence.

Believe your thinking of the Behemoth.

en.wikipedia.org...

There appears to be another creature called the Ziz.

en.wikipedia.org...


Its really sad that you two feel that way about the Bible. Who cares what science says. There's things we are not meant to understand. The miracles of life so forth. The Bible is a excellent source of information. That is if you actally take the time to read it. It mentions in the Bible twice of another book that speaks of past events. Its the book of Jasher.
The miracles of God is unlimited and he dosn't need science to prove it.

[edit on 5/19/2007 by Leyla]

Originally posted by Yarcofin
I thought people had already said that Leviathan (or another similar Biblical monster) was actually describing a hippopotomus or elephant.

As for the title, "Can science and the Bible prove dragons existed", the Bible can't be used to prove anything because the bible itself cannot be verified and proven. Not to start a big debate, but the bible is not a reliable source and cannot be used as scientific evidence.

Your thinking of Behemoth. It has been argued Behemoth is actually an Elephant or Hippo. In Jewish legend its usually portrayed as a giant ox.

I agree you can't use the Bible to prove the existence of Dragons, but you can use it to verify things like the House of David, the Hittites, and various historical information that were thought by scholars at one time to be just in the Bible.

You can say the same thing about Homer as well look at Troy and Knossos.

Originally posted by Leyla

Originally posted by Yarcofin
I thought people had already said that Leviathan (or another similar Biblical monster) was actually describing a hippopotomus or elephant.

As for the title, "Can science and the Bible prove dragons existed", the Bible can't be used to prove anything because the bible itself cannot be verified and proven. Not to start a big debate, but the bible is not a reliable source and cannot be used as scientific evidence.

Believe your thinking of the Behemoth.

en.wikipedia.org...

There appears to be another creature called the Ziz.

en.wikipedia.org...

I ve always thought Israel should make a moster movie Godzilla style with all three of them in it. Ziz is kind of like Rodan

I can imagine that dragons most likely came from people finding dinosaur skeletons and needing to wonder where they came from. After that it was like playing telephone.

Just my two cents.

Dragons in the bible are nothing but dinosaurs. The word dinosaur just wasn't around then, so they called them dragons.