by VM44 32 Replies latest jw friends
Inside the front cover of the green New World Translation
Bibles is a map, and in the map is a drawing of a dinosaur.
Does anyone know why the dinosaur is there?
This is something I have actually wondered about for years.
Perhaps someone here might know the answer.
--VM44
It is a subliminal image that represents the thinking of the GB.
Seriously now, I understand that the Brother who drew the image was not very good at drawing horses but he was enthusiastic.
HS
VM44, I believe the dinosaur was to entertain the kiddies. or at least mess up their minds when they were in science class. I had forgotten about that endsheet. j2bf
I asumed that since dinosaurs roamed about alongside men from Adam to Methuselah it was an appropriate reminder. If only Noah had built a bigger ark they might still be with us today.
I am currently reading a book about Australias mega fauna .. palaeontologists say the biggest most ferocious mamalian killing machine was the marsupial lion, about the same size as a sabre tooth tiger and weighing 170kg it's just as well Noah didn't let any of these on his floating zoo as it is I bet Adam was shit scared just naming 'em.
The dinosaur is there because at the time the "Green Bible" was first published, the Society's premier 'thinkers' believed that dinosaurs coexisted with mankind back around the time of Adam. This idea was taken from publications of the Seventh Day Adventists and other Young-Earth Creationists from the 1950s-early-1960s.
The funny thing was that the Society's main 'thinkers' were not quite YECs, but almost in that they rejected the idea of a literal 24-hour "creative day" but taught the nearly identical notion -- geologically speaking -- of a 7,000-year "creative day". They accepted nearly all of the nonsense published by those bozos in the 1950s and 1960s, but failed to give 'credit' where 'credit' was due. Most JWs figured that the Society's 'thinkers' thought all the nonsense up on their own, but in reality they borrowed 99% of it.
Astonishingly, YECS today still believe that dinosaurs and man coexisted before "Noah's Flood". I suspect that a few of the Society's oldest and most ossified leaders still believe this tripe, as do a goodly number of older R&F JWs, but the younger JW set has no clue that this is what their organization actually teaches.
AlanF
Hello Alan,
thanks for your great answer.
It is a pity that I don't have anymore a copy of
"the green..." version but I'll look around.
I do think your statement is correct:
" ...This idea was taken from publications
of the Seventh Day Adventists..."
like many other things , from the early times of
Charles Taze Russell.
Greetings, J.C.MacHislopp
" One who has an accurate knowledge
of God's Word will have no problem
in refuting false religious ideas".
Yes, I remember the dinosaur and always wondered about it! When I first started looking into things it was to do with dinosaurs and was amazed to realise that the society thought that they dies out during the flood (ie. only 4,000 years ago).
That dinosaur was my friend and helped while away many a boring hour at the meeting...
You mean you dont know who the dinosaur is?
Its Fred franz.
It was the only way he could get his picture in there.
Questions From Readers w73 7/15
When did God create dinosaurs, and when did they become extinct?—U.S.A.
The Bible does not provide specific answers to this question. According to the Genesis account, animals were created during the fifth and sixth creative periods or ‘days.’ If the Hebrew expression translated “great sea monsters” [Hebrew, tan·ni·nim'] includes dinosaurs, which often inhabited swampy, watery areas, this would mean that dinosaurs were created on the fifth “day.” (Gen. 1:21) We do not know whether they continued to exist until man was created (toward the close of the sixth “day”). At the very latest it seems likely that they must have disappeared off the earth at the time of the flood of Noah’s day. Dinosaurs were reptiles, and some kinds of dinosaurs bear strong resemblance structurally and otherwise to lizards (sauros is, in fact, the Greek word for “lizard”; saura in Leviticus 11:29, LXX). Not all types of dinosaurs were of such gigantic size. Hence, even if they had survived till the Flood, this would not have required taking pairs of the mammoth varieties into the ark. Other smaller members of the particular family or “kind” to which these belonged would have sufficed to fulfill the divine command.—Gen. 6:19, 20; 7:14.
I have a copy of that bible. I'll scan the page later this week. Gotta run now.
