The Narrow Path Ministries

I have always believed the book of Job was the oldest in the Bible. I don't think I looked into it myself. It was just the common thing I heard said, and assumed it was true.

This interesting thread on r/academicBiblical goes into the reasons some people believe its late date, including connecting Behemoth and Leviathan to dinosaurs.

What are your opinions? re: dating, leviathan, and behemoth.

Jeff

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblic ... ob_is_the/

The Hebrew is the most difficult, that at least is one concrete and verifiable fact I'm pretty sure. As for dinosaurs, I don't suppose these were concurrent in Job's days but perhaps there were legends passed down (and for all these ancients would know, these beasts still lived somewhere far away).

Saying it has to be more ancient because it has to fit one's (Ken Ham's) theology that dinosaurs lived with humans (hanna barbera got it right with the Flinstones!) isn't very honest. In other words, that should never be the reason one says it is the most ancient. If it is the most ancient on other grounds, wonderful. No problem.

I guess I am just stubborn and will never be convinced that dinosaurs co-existed with man. If they did, they would have been at the top of the food chain and there would be far more references in scripture to them than a couple of cryptic possibilities. Could you imagine the shepherds tending Job's flocks having to ward off T-Rex or velociraptors with a staff or sling?

TK

TK wrote:I guess I am just stubborn and will never be convinced that dinosaurs co-existed with man. If they did, they would have been at the top of the food chain and there would be far more references in scripture to them than a couple of cryptic possibilities. Could you imagine the shepherds tending Job's flocks having to ward off T-Rex or velociraptors with a staff or sling?

TK

Lol, yea, absolutely, all the scientific evidence is completely against man co-existing with dinosaurs as well as the practical ramifications of running around from T-rexes. Still the ancients could have thought they existed somewhere (maybe saw some bones of it.) One early church father thought the Phoenix bird literally existed somewhere in Saudi Arabia.

Dizerner wrote:One early church father thought the Phoenix bird literally existed somewhere in Saudi Arabia.

How do you know it doesn't exist? Even in our day? There was only one of its kind. It is pretty difficult to prove that something does not exist, when there is only one. Even new kinds of modern animals and birds have been discovered recently, that had previously been unknown.

We find the Phoenix bird in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament which the New Testament writers used). This is a translation from a form of Hebrew that differs from that of the Masoretic Hebrew text and which is found in cave 4 at Qumran).

Job's words as recorded in the Septuagint may be translated:

And I said, "My age shall continue as that of the Phoenix; I shall live a long while." (Job 28:18)

Here is a link that indicates that Clement in his letter to the Corinthians (that "early church father" that you mention, who was early indeed—the apostle Paul's fellow worker Philippians 4:3) derived his teaching about the Phoenix from the above passage. Clement, of course, read from the Septuagint like all other Christians of his period.

http://taylormarshall.com/2007/06/phoen ... ition.html
However, it seems that Dr. Taylor Marshall in the link above made the mistake of quoting the verse from the Hebrew and injecting "Phoenix" in place of "sand" rather quoting the entire verse from the Septuagint.

The Greek word is "φοινιξ" (phoinix) or in modern English. "Phoenix" is most often used in the Septuagint to mean "palm tree". Thus we have "Phoenix, Arizona", the city of Palms. Even some translations of Job 28:18 translate as "the stem of a palm" instead of "Phoenix."

The verse is different in the Hebrew from which most modern Bibles have been translated:

Then I said, ‘I shall die in my nest, And multiply my days as the sand. (NKJV)

Well I don't know for sure. There's some pretty amazing birds that lived in New Zealand that seemed large enough to carry off even a small child. I imagine a bird like that could easily be the stuff of legend. That's some interesting info, Paidion, thanks for sharing it.