#4. Dragons
(At the behest of one of my favorite fans (xy), this post is all about dragons. If you don’t want to read about dragons and their place in the Bible, then you shouldn’t read this post.)
Smoke curled from the dragon’s nose as it slept. The ground rumbled as the monster breathed, its scales reflecting the light from the knight’s torch as he crept closer. The knight squinted, discerning the glimmering piles of gold from the dragon’s hide. He eased his feet one after the other, careful not to step on any branches or pebbles, careful not to wake the beast.
With every inhalation of the dragon, the knight felt himself drawn in as if someone were pulling at his tunic, and with every exhalation, any exposed skin burned as if he were near flames. He winced in pain as the dragon’s hot breath rushed past him and out the opening of the cave.
The knight stood next to the dragon’s neck and drew his sword, careful not to make a sound. He raised the blade high above his head, ready to strike.
“Back to Hell with you, devil!” He shouted as he pushed the tip of the sword down into the nape of the dragon’s neck. Its eyes sprang open, wings unfurled and the beast flailed around spewing its acidic blood. The knight backed away quickly, but some blood seared into his arm.
Flames flew from the dragon’s mouth like a river, engulfing everything in the cave. Gold and jewels melted in the heat and the knight’s skin and clothing took flame incinerating him instantaneously. The fire soon gurgled from the dragon’s mouth, and was replaced with blood as it choked and died of the mortal wound inflicted by the knight.
There’re a lot of stories of dragons in the world, but not nearly in as many cultures as some other creatures. The main places they persist are in England and Asia. Why is this? I’m not terribly sure. I did some research, but couldn’t find many explanations of regional heritage for dragons.
The difference in depiction and characteristics is very interesting. Asian dragons are much more lizard/serpent like, and the English dragons take on a much more powerful reptilian monster feel with bat-like wings and such. Perhaps the difference was in creatures that survived time from the dinosaur’s age, I’m not sure.
But, I knew of references in the Bible to dragons, and had to find out the connection. There are sixteen references to dragons in the Bible… as long as you’re reading the King James Version (and some references to the English Standard Version)… It makes sense because in feudal England, dragons were big time. Most of the legends and tales were of dragons around that time period, so when the Bible needed a terrible creature to make the peasants not want to be like… dragons were the perfect candidates. In the Amplified Bible, it says that dragon is the symbol for Egypt (which is interesting because an Egyptian myth
One dragon survives the jumps in translation. That’s the dragon from Revelation.
Why do you think the dragon remains the same in Revelation?
(Or, share your favorite dragon story/myth/Bible reference with everyone!)
