Satirist Andy Borowitz is now writing for the St. Pete Times, and you can read his first column here. Of interest to local skeptics:

In other news, in St. Petersburg, Mayor-elect Bill Foster’s contention that the Earth is only 6,000 years old was challenged today when it was pointed out that many residents of St. Petersburg are older than that.

A follow-up of sorts on my earlier post about local mayoral candidate Bill Foster and his belief that there are dinosaurs in the Bible. Today the St. Petersburg Times ran the results of recent polling of “likely voters” on subjects that have to do with next month’s mayoral election. One of the questions asked was “Bill Foster believes the earth was created in six literal days and that, contrary to the view of most scientists, dinosaurs and humans lived on earth at the same time. How much does this concern you?” The results of that poll were as follows.

A lot – 27%

Some – 12%

A little – 15%

Not at all – 44%

Don’t know/Refused – 2%

I suppose the good news here for those of us with a rational, evidence-based worldview is that at least 54% of likely voters (as I understand it, likely voters are usually self-identified during the polling process) don’t agree with Bill Foster’s Young Earth creationism. I say “at least” because it’s possible there are people in the 44% who say they aren’t worried by his Young Earth views who don’t agree with those views, but don’t feel the need to take them into account when voting for a mayoral candidate. It may be a small group, but I bet it exists. (It’s tough to imagine that the opposite group could exist: people who are worried by Foster’s beliefs and agree with them.)

Certainly, I wish the number of my fellow citizens who accepted science was higher, but at least we’re not in the minority in St. Pete.

Here in St. Petersburg, the November mayoral election has come down to a choice between two distinct candidates: lawyer and former city council member Bill Foster, and lawyer and former city council member Kathleen Ford. While there are plenty of important issues facing the electorate, I would like to highlight one minor sideshow of interest to skeptics.

Back in September, the St. Petersburg Times reported that candidate Bill Foster is a young Earth creationist. He says this shouldn’t matter, and it’s up to voters to decide if that’s true. Luckily, the mayor has little power over public education. But I was struck by the following, which verges on a factual claim:

“Dinosaurs are mentioned in Job, so I don’t have any problem believing that dinosaurs roamed the earth,” [Foster] said, referring to the book of Job, which mentions the “behemoth.” He said he believes dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time, though most scientists say there is a gap of at least 60 million years between dinosaurs and mankind.

Leaving aside that whole 65-million-year gap, are dinosaurs mentioned in the Book of Job? That’s certainly an interesting claim, and one I’d like to examine.

The Book of Job is part of the Hebrew Bible, and is accepted as part of the Old Testament by Christians. In it God and Satan (not the devil, but another deity that acts as God’s enforcer) discuss the pious man Job. To discover the source of Job’s piety God instructs Satan to destroy Job’s life. Job’s worldly possessions are all destroyed, and his children are killed. Job still doesn’t curse God, so God gives Satan permission to physically harm Job as much as possible without killing him. Job is inflicted with boils and other horrible diseases. Finally, Job breaks and laments that he was ever born. What follows is debate among Job and his friends over why Job suffers so. This goes on for a while, until God, in the form of a whirlwind, interrupts and proceeds to kvetch to Job about how hard it is to be God and how Job should just be glad that there’s someone willing to do it. It’s in this part of the story, as God describes some of the more high-maintenance parts of His creation, that Christian fundamentalists find a description of a dinosaur:

Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.

Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.

He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.

His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.

He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him.

Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play.

He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens.

The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about.

Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth.

He taketh it with his eyes: his nose pierceth through snares.

(From the King James Bible.)

The first thing that strikes me is that this description isn’t very descriptive. The Behemoth is big and strong and eats a lot, but what does it actually look like? The passage says almost nothing on the subject. No “he hath a head like a snake” or “he resembleth a giant lizard.” How do Biblical literalists get a dinosaur out of the passage? They focus on the line “He moveth his tail like a cedar.” The only animal, they claim, with a tail that resembles a tree (or at least a tree trunk) is a dinosaur. Creationists.org is quite adamant on this point, and other fundamentalist scholars make similar arguments. But why describe the physical appearance of only the tail of the Behemoth, when most of the other lines are similes about strength? The answer can be found by looking at the passage in the original Hebrew:

His tail hardens like a cedar; the sinews of his testicles are knit together.

(Translation by Rabbi A.J. Rosenberg)

It’s a bit more obvious that the “tail” being referred to is not a literal tail, but something else. Something attached to the testicles, something that gets hard like a tree, and something that is called throughout the Bible by many euphemisms, including “tail,” “thigh” and “foot.”

I think it’s safe to say that the Behemoth is a giant bull. All the attributes given to it match those of a bull, and the lack of a physical description would suggest it’s an animal that would have been familiar to the Hebrews. Furthermore, God’s explanation of its place in the scheme of creation is similar to that of the “Bull of Heaven” of Sumerian mythology and the Epic of Gilgamesh, down to it drinking up whole rivers. This would make sense because the Book of Job may be based on an earlier Sumerian story. In any case there’s absolutely no part of the passage that is more likely to be referring to a dinosaur than some mundane (if mythologically embiggened) animal.

It’s disturbing that Bill Foster is using badly translated literature from 2500 years ago to form his view of the natural world rather than taking time to learn about the facts.

"Behemoth and Leviathan" by William Blake. I'm guessing Blake imagined Behemoth to be a hippopotamus. The dragon is Leviathan, which is a whole other can of worms.