Dinosaurs
Modern interpretations of Behemoth tend to fall into several categories:
Behemoth is an animal of the modern natural world, most often the hippopotamus (e.g. in Russian where the word "begemot" refers more often to hippopotamus rather than the Biblical animal), although the elephant, the water buffalo. All three consume grass and chew it as an ox would, and have mobile, sprucy tails that sway in a similar manner to a Lebanese cedar tree.
Behemoth was an invention of the poet who wrote the Book of Job.
Behemoth and Leviathan were both separate mythical chaos-beasts.
In 2003, French scientists working in Baluchistan, Pakistan, claimed to have discovered an extinct variety of rhinoceros called a baluchitherium, which was much larger and matched the physicial description given in Job.[8]
Additionally some fundamentalists[citation needed] have tried to claim that the Behemoth of Job is a dinosaur. Though this view is criticized and discredited, because it does not appear to fit the text.
Leviathan, Behemoth and Ziz. Ambrosiana Bible, Ulm, 1238 - Biblioteca Ambrosiana
Behemoth and Leviathan, watercolour by William Blake from his Illustrations of the Book of Job (1826).
Based on resonances with Second Isaiah (for example, Job 9:8, Isa 44:24), Lamentations (Job 19:7-8, Lam 3:7-9), and Jeremiah (Job 3:3, Job 3:10-11, Jer 20:14-18), which are all exilic texts, one can imagine that the biblical text of Job developed from traditional materials during the period of the Exile. This makes sense contextually, because the themes of Job and the bitterness of the poetic dialogues would have resonated with readers of that time. Moreover, the reference to raiding Chaldeans in the Transjordan (Job 1:15-17) would make sense only during the relatively brief period of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. This would place the poetic dialogues somewhere in the sixth or fifth centuries B.C.E., produced by scribes attempting to explore the theological and ethical ramifications of the experience of exile and the destruction of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. Possible editing and further compositional work, including Elihu's speeches, would have a fourth-to-third century date. The book also appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls, so the latest date of compositional work in the proto-Masoretic version would be 200 B.C.E.
