I Don’t Understand The Behemoth Magazine

Well, the editors of Christianity Today have announced a new project. They started The Behemoth, a magazine that “aims to help people behold the glory of God all around them, in the worlds of science, history, theology, medicine, sociology, Bible, and personal narrative.”  Behemoth is the name of a great beast God describes to Job beginning in Job 40:15.

Now, we at Answers in Genesis believe it’s very important to marvel at God’s creation—and an understanding of the miraculous six-day creation in Genesis 1 is a vital part of understanding and appreciating God’s creation.  But we also know that Christianity Today promotes compromise positions on Genesis and has not been friendly at all toward AiG and the position we hold on the authority of God’s Word from Genesis 1:1. So we are fairly sure we know what this new magazine will be promoting!

Ted Olsen, managing editor of The Behemoth, wrote an article  to explain the purpose of the magazine while also talking about this magnificent creature called “behemoth,” as described in Job 40. But consider Olsen’s opening line: “I don’t understand the Behemoth.”

It’s one thing not to understand the purpose of some creatures. The intended purpose of parts of God’s creation is not always clear. But Olsen doesn’t just mean he doesn’t understand the purpose of behemoth—he doesn’t even understand what it was!

Olsen writes that behemoth is a “mysterious” and “odd-looking” creature—and even a “supernatural beast”! He talks a lot about the false idea that behemoth was actually a hippopotamus—and while he doesn’t seem to accept that conclusion, he never considers that behemoth could possibly be a dinosaur! Of course, to accept this possibility flies in the face of the secularists who teach that dinosaurs supposedly died out millions of years before humans!

Well, in the book of Job, God gives us a very detailed description of behemoth:

Look now at the behemoth, which I made along with you; he eats grass like an ox. See now, his strength is in his hips, and his power is in his stomach muscles. He moves his tail like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are tightly knit. His bones are like beams of bronze, his ribs like bars of iron. He is the first of the ways of God; only He who made him can bring near His sword. Surely the mountains yield food for him, and all the beasts of the field play there. He lies under the lotus trees, in a covert of reeds and marsh. The lotus trees cover him with their shade; the willows by the brook surround him. Indeed the river may rage, yet he is not disturbed; he is confident, though the Jordan gushes into his mouth, though he takes it in his eyes, or one pierces his nose with a snare. (Job 40:15–24)

There are no living creatures that match this description—but details about behemoth are very much like Brachiosaurus, one of the large sauropod dinosaurs. In fact, fossil evidence shows that these large dinosaurs were much larger than any known land animal alive today! (For more information, see Could Behemoth Have Been a Dinosaur? And incidentally, a more recently discovered group of sauropods, the titanosaurs, apparently dwarfed the enormous Brachiosaurus. Be watching our website in the next few days for more about the Dreadnoughtus, possibly the largest creature to ever walk the Earth, and a dinosaur whose enormity should bring God our Creator glory.)

But Olsen never once mentions the possibility that behemoth was a great dinosaur. I suggest that his beliefs have nothing to do with the description as given in the Bible, but everything to do with not wanting to argue against the evolutionary teaching of our age that dinosaurs supposedly lived from 65–200 million years ago. Of course, he claims that this new magazine will “look at God’s creation, God’s history, God’s people, and the glorious study of God”—but if this first article is any indication, The Behemoth will be looking at man’s fallible views (such as the evolutionary view of dinosaurs) and compromising the Bible with them (just as Christianity Today is well known for).

Olsen may not understand behemoth, but I don’t understand The Behemoth magazine. Why publish something meant to consider God’s creation when dinosaurs—which are God’s creation—are totally ignored—obviously because of the influence of evolutionary ideas? I urge you, if you want to know what the Bible really says about dinosaurs, visit our website, answersingenesis.org.

And I urge you to subscribe to a magazine that honors God’s Word beginning in Genesis—the award winning Answers magazine. This is the leading creationist/Christian worldview magazine for the whole family. This is a magazine that truly does “help people behold the glory of God all around them, in the worlds of science, history, theology, medicine, sociology,” and so on. To find out more information about Answers magazine, go to answersingenesis.org/answers/magazine/.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.