European Youth Olympic Festival 2015 - exclusive offers
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Dinosaurs in Noah’s Vineyard?
DINOSAURS IN NOAH’S VINEYARD?
by David C. Lewis
Published in Creation magazine, Volume 37, Issue 2
April 2015
 |
| Wall carving on Gergeti Sameba, Kazbegi |
THE CARVING depicted here, which appears to show
two dinosaurs, is on an outside wall of the bell-tower of a fourteenth century
church in the Republic of Georgia. Holy Trinity Church (also known as Tsminda
Sameba) is on Mount Gergeti, near Stephantsminda village, in the Mount Kazbegi
area – close to the borders with North Ossetia and Ingushetia.
When I visited this area in 2006 and saw the
carvings, I asked a Georgian cleric at the church what they depicted. He
commented that they looked like dinosaurs, and he had no idea when or why they
were carved on the bell-tower.
However, there is no reason to believe that they
are later additions. The carvings are integral to the whole window and have
evidently been weathered to the same extent as the surrounding brickwork.
Moreover, local people would likely have resisted any defacement of the church.
The church is so highly regarded that in the eighteenth century the cross of St
Nino and the treasures from Mtskheta were brought to this church for
safekeeping.1 Even when a cable-car was built next to the
church by the Soviet authorities in 1988, it was destroyed by the locals
because it was felt to be defiling a sacred place. So the carvings most likely
date from the fourteenth century, when the church was built.
 |
| Gergeti Sameba in Kazbegi |
Others have also commented that the carvings
look like dinosaurs.2 Inside the church is also an icon
depicting St. George slaying a (snake-like) dragon. This is a very common motif
in Georgia (and also in neighbouring Ossetia), where St. George has been
revered since the fourth century.3 Are the apparent dinosaur
carvings above the window of the bell-tower in any way related to the tales of
dragons that are widespread in many parts of the world?
Creationists have often suggested that many
stories of “dragons” (also often labelled “serpents”) are likely inspired by
actual sightings of living dinosaurs, distorted through time and retelling.4 If
so, these carvings from Georgia are consistent with medieval engravings and
sculptures, from as far away as Britain and Cambodia, showing what look just
like known types of dinosaurs.5
Just as dodos, mammoths and other
well-documented living creatures that were contemporary with humans
subsequently became extinct, the same happened to the descendants of the
various kinds of dinosaurs that were on Noah’s Ark.
The Ark came to rest on the “mountains of
Ararat” (Genesis 8:4). The Bible also refers to Ararat as a state (2 Kings
19:37; Jeremiah 51:27), which Assyrian sources referred to as Urartu. It was
centred around the Lake Van region of what is now Eastern Turkey, and, besides
all of what is now Armenia, also included substantial portions of modern-day
Georgia and Azerbaijan.
Agriculture had already been practiced before
the Flood (Genesis 3:17–19; 4:2–3) but was reintroduced afterwards by Noah and
his sons. There is widespread archaeological agreement that the first
domesticated varieties of wheat, barley and other crops occur in Middle Eastern
sites located in upland areas of what are now Eastern Turkey, Armenia, Georgia,
Azerbaijan, Iran and adjacent territories. (Within a biblical timeline of
history, these would be the “first” domesticated varieties reintroduced after
the Flood.) This is the same general region as that in which Noah’s Ark came to
rest.
THE FIRST (POST-FLOOD) VINEYARD
Many scholars also consider this the region
where grapes were first cultivated and wine first produced.6 Genesis
9:20 states that Noah planted a vineyard, presumably the first cultivation of
grapes after the Flood.
Nowadays the Republic of Georgia is famous for
its wine. Seeing the dinosaur carvings makes one pause to consider; the local
varieties of vines might even be descended from those originally cultivated by
Noah, in this same region of the world.
REFERENCES AND NOTES
1. As per eurasia.travel, accessed 25 August
2014.
2. E.g. eurasia.travel and the Lonely
Planet Guide to Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, 2008, p. 102.
3. St. Nino, the woman from Cappadocia who in
the fourth century brought the Christian gospel to the Georgians, is said to
have been related to St. George on her father’s side: en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/555366;
absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Saint_Nino;
dictionary.sensagent.com/Saint_Nino/en-en/, all accessed 26th August 2014.
4. Entering ‘dragon’ in the search engine on
creation.com gives a host of examples.
5. See e.g. creation.com/bb and
creation.com/angkor-stegosaur.
6. E. Hyams, Dionysius: A Social History
of the Wine Vine, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1965, p. 28;
R. Jackson, Wine Science: Principles and Applications, Burlington,
MA; London; San Diego: Academic Press, third edition, 2008, p. 23; Bakhtang
Sh. Ayba (Вахтанг Шутиевич Айба) Аборигенные сорта винограда Республики Абхазия—агробиологическая оценка и перспективы производства [Aborigennye sorta
vinograda Pespubliki Abkhazia—agrobiologicheskaya otsenka i
perspektivy proizvodstva] (Krasnodar: Agricultural Sciences PhD.
thesis synopsis, 2011; available at www.dissercat.com, accessed
4 July 2014.
DAVID LEWIS, M.A.
(Cantab.), M.A. (Econ.), Ph.D., FRAI is a Social Anthropologist who has taught at
universities in England and East Asia. For more:
creation.com/david-lewis
Monday, February 16, 2015
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)