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the ancient version of cosmology I had been taught, which held that the moon was a heavenly body that emitted its own light.

I find it interesting that the bible’s descriptions of things unknown to man at the time were broadly worded enough to fit the reality we now know. No biblical mentions of the moon, when translated to English, to not prevent the interpretation of it reflecting light. They are just not that specific.

I do find teh description of the Behemeth and Leviathan fascinating as well. They sound an awfully lot like dinosaurs.

Some think the behemoth and leviathan of Job may have been the hippopotamus and crocodile; in any event Job would have had to be aware of them or God’s mention of them would have seemed like so much nonsense to him.

There’s a book the First Fossil Hunters by Adrienne Mayor, which looks at the ways ancient people discovered and described fossils.

It’s really turned my thinking around. I mean, you get a person in 1000 B.C. or whatever finding a mastodon skeleton or dinosaur bones, what is he gonna think?

He’s gonna think this thing was a giant animal that was alive once, and he I’m sure he has eaten and picked apart enough of them to tell the difference between a reptile and a bird or mammal, etc

I’m convinced that fossil finds have reinforced and perhaps given rise to legends of mythical beasts. Humanity universally believed that the earth was once full of monsters....and you know what, it sure as heck was! Maybe they didn’t call it a pterodon, but a dragon, but that’s just semantics. The idea’s the same.