“What does the Bible say about dragons?”……Answer: The Bible mentions a dragon in Revelation chapters 12, 13, 16, and 20. Revelation 20:2 identifies the dragon, “He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.” The Bible is not teaching that dragons ever truly existed. Rather, it is only comparing Satan to a fire-breathing monster.……It is very interesting to note, however, that nearly every major ancient culture has myths and legends about giant reptiles. How would all of these civilizations, continents and millennia apart, all come up with legends of giant reptile creatures? Evolutionary scientists tell us that dinosaurs existed millions of years before human beings. Dinosaur fossils were not discovered until thousands of years after the myths of giants reptiles began. How can this be?……The Bible mentions two creatures that seem remarkably similar to the dinosaurs, the leviathan and behemoth, in Job chapters 40-41. It is the view of Creation scientists that all the “dragon” myths came from real contact between human beings and dinosaurs. The Bible tells us that all animals were created around 6000 years ago and co-existed with human beings. That would explain how all human cultures have myths about giant reptiles—because they actually saw them! The “fire-breathing” aspect of a dragon is possibly a myth (although there have been some interesting discoveries), but the universal legends of giant reptiles point to real contact between human beings and dinosaurs.

Is There Some Truth to Dragon Myths?

by Brian Thomas, M.S. *

Harry Potter fans are looking forward to the boy wizard’s next screen adventure, when Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince opens this month. Pottermania broke loose when J. K. Rowling’s first book appeared on bookstands in 1997, prompting the creation of films, fan websites, and dozens of similarly themed books. Rowling’s world of wizardry has even inspired the name of a dinosaur fossil, Dracorexhogwartsia. But serious researchers are seeing evidence that dragons were more than just fantastical creatures.

Adrienne Mayor, a Stanford visiting scholar, has found solid links between certain dinosaur fossils and dragons—enough information, in fact, for her to write three books on the subject. Mayor was consulted in 2008 by the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, which built a dragon exhibit that presented some of her research.

Legends of dragons have existed throughout the world and across many, if not all, ancient cultures. Mayor believes that these tales emerged from ancient imaginings of what fossil dinosaurs would have looked like in life. In her view, if ancient people had unearthed a fossil that looked like Dracorexhogwartsia, it is easy to speculate that they would have come up with dragon stories to explain it.

Dracorex “surprised the scientists” when it was discovered because of its long muzzle and spiky horns. In a StanfordUniversity press release, Mayor stated, “The skull looks strangely familiar to anyone who has studied dragons! Dracorex has a remarkable resemblance to the dragons of ancient China and medieval Europe.”1

Dracorexis apparently a one-of-a-kind fossil that was uncovered in North America, not China or Europe. So how did the ancient Chinese, Australian aboriginal, Egyptian, Babylonian, Welsh, and so many other cultures come up with such robust dragon lore if the fossils that fueled their fancies were so rare and located on the other side of the world?2

There are other reasons to doubt that dragon legends arose from fossil-based speculations. Tales of dragons are almost universal and were incorporated into the historical background of virtually every people group on every continent.3 How could so many different cultures conjure up such similar details in their dragon legends, unless their ancestors actually encountered them?

It would be easily explained if humans had actually seen living dinosaurs. The book of Job in the Bible records one such event. God spoke to a troubled Job, “Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee…he moveth his tail like a cedar.”4 However, if this and so many other accounts are to be taken at face value, it would jeopardize the scientific consensus that dinosaurs and humans did not live at the same time. Thus, one of the main reasons to reject these voluminous accounts of encounters with real dragons is the presupposition of a separate dinosaur age.

Over a decade ago, a creation scientist wrote, “The creation model of origins makes many predictions, one of them being that evidence will be found that tells us that in the recent past, dinosaurs and man have co-existed.”2 Indeed, evidence continues to fulfill this prediction.5 Whereas most of the Harry Potter world is grounded firmly in fancy, the concept that certain “strangely familiar”1 dragon-looking dinosaurs existed with humans has a broad foundation in history.