There's another dangerous monster known as Leviathan. Like Behemoth, creationists claim Leviathan to be a dinosaur. Job 41 is a chapter in the Bible that deals entirely with this fearsome sea creature. However, just like Behemoth, the assertion of Leviathan being a dinosaur is false.
Here's what creationists like Dan Lietha imagined Kronosaurus as according to their distorted view of Psalms 104 and Job 41:
This depiction is apparently modeled after the classic images depicting Tylosaurus with a row of ridges on its back, something Tylosaurus is now known to completely lack. Kronosaurus also lack such ridges as well as impenetrable armor and a fiery breath, but that doesn't stop creationists from taking liberties in creating false images of Kronosaurus (like the one above) with armor and fiery breath and say that this is Leviathan while ignoring all the details saying it's not.
Here's what Kronosaurus looks like in real life:
Image from Wikipedia
First off, Leviathan, like Behemoth, was a water loving creature. Secondly, Leviathan was much harder to kill than Behemoth due to his impenetrable, unbreakable, armor plating covering his entire body. No dinosaur, not even their underwater contemporaries that resembled crocodiles such as Kronosaurus, Tylosaurus, and Liopleurodon ever had such armor let alone a fiery breath. Archelon, the giant Cretaceous sea turtle, had only tough skin supported by bony struts as its shell. It would have sunk like a stone and drown if it had a hard, heavy bony shell. So, Archelon does not count as Leviathan, either.
Ankylosaurs, on the other hand, did have impenetrable armor, but only on their backs. Their underbellies completely lacked armor on them, not to mentioned the hatchling versions of these dinosaurs bearing very soft armor on their backs, making them more vulnerable to predators like Gorgosaurus, Troodon, and Velociraptor than the adults. So, they're not at all invincible like Leviathan was. Unlike Leviathan, Ankylosaurs, who were only land dwellers, were docile plant eaters that only fought back when attacked. They would either swing their bony tail clubs, which some of them do have, or gore their enemies with their huge shoulders spikes to drive them away and look for easy meals elsewhere.
And third, the word "Leviathan" comes from the Hebrew word meaning "one who twist and coils," or "the winding one." Obviously Leviathan is described to be a snake-like sea creature. No dinosaur along with their sea going contemporaries ever had bodies that twists and coils like a snake. All dinosaurs including Ankylosaurs lived only on land. Some dinosaurs do occasionally swim, however. But none of them lived their entire lives in the water. So, Leviathan is overall neither a dinosaur, nor a Mesozoic Marine reptile.
Gish's Make-Believe Fire Breathing Dinosaur
Now Leviathan, in Job 41:18-21, is described to be a fire breather. Except in Mythology, no animal ever breathed fire, not even a dinosaur. Retired YEC, Duane Gish, however, used his imagination and pretends that the crests of the Lambeosaurines including Parasaurolophus contains special glands inside their crests that contain special hot liquids of some sort they used to help breathe out hot gasses and fiery liquids on their enemies when threatened. He put down his imaginary claim in his 2 pseudo dinosaur books, Dinosaurs: Those Terrible Lizards (p.51-55) and Dinosaurs by Design (p. 82-83). Gish made this up by taking the metaphoric passages literally and invoke a special insect known as the bombardier beetle to help justify his fire-breathing claim. While he's at it, he brings out the falsehood he repeats over and over again despite people's efforts to point out to him that what he's saying is completely false.
According to Gish's recycled lie, if you mixed 2 certain chemicals found inside the beetle, the hydrogen peroxide and the hydroquinone, together without a chemical inhibitor, they will explode. 2 scientists tried the experiment out only to find the 2 chemicals combining together to make just brown liquid, no explosion. Nevertheless, he simply reasons that if insects like the bombardier beetle can have special glands inside of its abdomen that stored such hot chemicals inside its body to help it spray hot liquid on its enemies, which it does, then so can dinosaurs like Parsaurolophus have the exact same thing in their crests which they used to help breathe fire and charred their enemies on the spot just as depicted on page 83 in Dinosaurs By Design and on page 51 in Dinosaurs Those Terrible Lizards.
This is all make-believe. There is no such thing as a dinosaur with fire-inducing, hot, liquid glands inside its body. None of such things exist inside the hollow crests of the Lambeosaurines, such as Parasaurolophus. What Gish claimed is entirely laughable and all made up from his own head But this doesn't stop him from preaching this unfounded, imaginary tripe to his lay audience who believed every stupid lie he tells without giving themselves a second thought.
The Real Functions of The Crests
In reality, the crests of these social dinosaurs were nothing more than naturally made musical instruments that serve as a vital communication tool to keep in touch with their own kind. Scientists have studied the crests and found that the crests must have operated like a brass instrument such as a trumpet and a trombone for instance. The crest of Parasaurolophus is shaped very much like a trombone. When air from the lungs traveled through the resonating chamber, it vibrated the walls to create a low pitched sound as the air exits through the dinosaur's nostrils.
The Dinosaur Trumpeter in Real Life
David Weishampel of Johns Hopkins University, to test the idea out, created a large model version of the crest and blew right through it. The model created a very low-pitched sound as the air traveled through the tubes (while vibrating the chamber walls along the way) and out of the model. Just like what you do when you blow through a trumpet, a tuba, or even a vacuum cleaner pipe. With this experiment he is able to show to the people that Parasaurolophus' crest may have been most likely used as a natural-made brass musical instrument— a much better explanation than Gish's fabled fire glands.
The Lambeosaurine crests must have been a vital tool used for communication, for these dinosaurs lived in herds for protection against the likes of Gorgosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, and Daspletosaurus, since they have no weapons on them at all to fight against their enemies when attacked. As the herd browsed, some of the members would be on the look out for danger. When danger is near, and one of the herd's member senses it, a loud bellow would rang out from its hollow crest and the herd would run away to escape from danger.
Then, two scientists from The New Mexico Museum of Natural History made a computer program to help them study the hollow crests and came up with a computer image of a sound they think Parasaurolophus has made when it was alive and well 75 million years ago as it was calling to one of the members of his own kind. Download the .wav file from their web page and hear what the dinosaur's voice may have sounded like 75 million years ago.
Another explanation for the crests is that they also were probably used to help the dinosaurs to recognize each other as well as to increase their sense of smell. No two crests were exactly alike. Some have solid crests while other have hollow crests on their heads. The males have much bigger, more elaborate crests while the females have much smaller crests and the juveniles have either a tiny crests or no crests at all. But, as they grow older, their crests will develop into full size by the time they reach adulthood.
The passage involving Leviathan breathing fire may have been a metaphor for either bad breath or a water mist being sprayed out of the creature's snout while swimming at the water's surface, not at all what Gish has made up from his head. However, although it is likely that the passage of Job 41 refers to the crocodile by itself, there are other supplemental verses, especially coming from the Jewish midrash as well as from other books of the Bible, that clearly tells us that Leviathan is in fact neither a crocodilian like Sarcosuchus, nor a Mesozoic reptile like Kronosaurus. And neither is Leviathan a dinosaur like Tyrannosaurus Rex and Parasaurolophus, but rather a creature of myth.
The Real Behemoth and Leviathan
Both Behemoth and Leviathan are really in fact monsters of Jewish folklore. Behemoth or Behemot is a mammalian monster in form of a bull ox, a male cow. Leviathan is a fish monster in form of a coiling, serpentine eel-like fish that serves as one of the gatekeepers of Hell, with eyes and scales that glow and illuminate from many miles around. Both Behemoth and Leviathan are also 2 parts of the Triune Beasts of Jewish Folklore. The Bull monster Behemoth lives in a mountain range made up of the Yabul Stream flowing from Eden or Paradise and a thousand hills that provided him with plenty of grass to feed on as reference to the midrash supplement to Psalm 50:10. Leviathan makes his home in the Mediterranean, where when he gets hungry, he churns up the waters with his hot, fiery breath to make them boil. And the bird monster Ziz makes his home in the sky where the spreading of his wingspan is known to block the sun. Ziz resembles the mythical griffin, while Leviathan resembles the serpentine fish, and Behemoth resembles a raging bull ox. According to midrash recording traditions supplement to Genesis 1:21 and 1:24, God created 2 Leviathans, male and female and one Ziz on the 5th day of Creation Week. The next day, God created 2 Behemoths, both male and female. But realizing these 2 monsters, Behemoth and Leviathan, could produce offspring that would destroy the whole world, God killed off the females and place the males into 2 different locations each, where they will remain until the End Times come and both Behemoth and Leviathan would rise up from their places and battle one another to the death, with Behemoth interlocking Leviathan with his horns while Leviathan flails back with his fins until God intervenes and kill both monsters along with Ziz and use their remains and their meat to provide His people in the New Heaven and New Earth with luxurious meals, jewelry, tent skins and wall coverings to decorate Jerusalem's protective wall.
Behemoth is known as the King of all mammals and the Chief of the Ways of God while Leviathan is the King of all fish as well as King of all the children of pride and Ziz is the King of all birds in the air. Unlike all of today's animals, all three of these supernatural animals are the only animals man cannot control. They can only be controlled and killed off by the One who created them in the first place — God.
These 3 supernatural beasts can never be dinosaurs left over from Noah's Flood. For unlike dinosaurs, these 3 monsters are all supernatural beings. None of them resemble dinosaurs in every way, nor can they be controlled and killed off by man. And neither can they explain why are there no dinosaur remains found alongside human remains anywhere on earth even if they are what creationists falsely claim they were.
According to the verses in the book of Psalms, we find that Leviathan, as a pseudonym of the Devil, is mentioned to have multiple (up to seven) heads (Psalms 74:13-14) like the Hydra Hercules slew in Greek Mythology. No dinosaur or sea contemporaries of theirs ever had multiple heads. In the passage, we find that God destroyed the creature by smashing Leviathan's heads and throwing his body into the desert for the animals living there to eat. In fact, some biblical scholars aren't sure if the Leviathan of Psalms is the same creature as the Leviathan of the Book of Job. It could have been that the author of Psalms confused the sea beast mentioned in Job with Satan, (one of Satan's nicknames being "the old serpent"), and borrowed from the description of either the Greek Hydra, or the dragon form of the Babylonian progenitor goddess Tiamat (both of whom were said to have at least seven heads).
In other passages we find Leviathan frolicking among the ships as they sail close by (Psalms 104:26). This verse is what YECs used as they try to make a worthless case for Leviathan being either a Kronosaur or a Liopleurodon being witness by the sailors as they sail nearby as they frolic. Case in point: Ken Ham's idiot Book, The Great Dinosaur Mystery Solved! where on pages 38-41, we find Ham falsely asserting Leviathan to be Kronosaurus, a pliosaur that lived 112 million years ago, while being ignorant of the fact that Kronosaurus didn't have armor, 7 heads, a fiery breath, nor did he saw people and ships sail by since no post-Mesozoic fossils of this pliosaur has been found, not alongside with man even. The verse may have been referring to a frolicking, playful whale like for instance the dolphin (since dolphins have known to be seen near ships) or the humpback whale. Definitely not the imaginary, fabled Kronosaur as seen in the Lietha's illustration above the verse was referring to.
Despite efforts made by creationists to regard Leviathan to be a dinosaur or a sea reptile like Kronosaurus, careful examination reveals to us that the assertion of Leviathan being a dinosaur is completely false. Neither dinosaur, nor their contemporaries ever breathed fire, None of them ever had multiple heads, nor do they have impenetrable armor. Even if it does describe a dinosaur, it still does not explain how come we find no traces of any remains of human, dinosaur, plesiosaur, pliosaur, ichthyosaur, and mosasaur found mixed together in the fossil record. To know more about the real Leviathan, the snake-like sea monster, visit these sites.
http://www.bibleandscience.com/science/dinosaurs.htm
