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What is the Torah view on the dinosaurs? There's no mention of them in the Torah, only that the world was created in 6 days.
You'd think the existence of a former world of huge alien creatures would have some sort of mention in midrashim, etc. and some sort of purpose in G-d's plan. How do we view this from a torah pespective?
Prof. Nathan Aviezer wrote a book "בראשית ברא" answering questions about the creation in torah view.
There he claims the 6 days of creation to be 6 periods of time that didn't necessarily last 24 hours. Moreover - maybe it was one cycle of dark&light, but things happened at a quicker pace.
Take, for example, a person's growth. If you were to calculate the rate of growth during his first two years, you would conclude that at the age of 20 he'd be as tall as a skyscraper. Similarly, scientists calculate age of things according to he worlds' pace today, but things may have worked differently in the past.
Hence, dinosaurs might have lived and died prior to Adam Harishon. Maybe created on "day" 5 and extinct before 6.
(Somewhat related: What is the meaning of יוֹם (yowm) in Bereshit?)
The Malbim (on Noach 7:23) addresses "large animals" that couldn't be "wiped out" by the flood, but were buried in depths of the earth following quakes the Mabul created. He is clearly addressing dinosaurs since he's talking about (my free translation): "... geologists who dig and find large animals who have become extinct, they use this to show earth existed long before Bereshis creation..."
Some attribute "התנינים הגדולים" (Bereshis 1:21) to the dinosaurs as a reference of their existing (not mentioned in Malbim).
Another opinion I've heard from reliable people (suggested by the Lubavitcher Rebbe in this letter) is that the world was created "old", such as Adam Harishon was created as a man of 20 and not a newborn baby. Hence, dinosaurs could have either existed - or their remains and footprints were melded into the creation.
In the sefer "Q&A Thursday Nights With Rabbi Avigdor Miller" Volume 2, pg 284, he was asked why were the dinosaurs and the mastodon not saved from the mabul? He answered simply because there was no room for them on the teivah (ark) .He said that all species fit but the extra big ones simply didn't fit.
Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb addresses this issue in many shiurim (check out Evolution & the Age of the Universe for example).
His general approach follows the general chareidi approach (he is a Bostoner Chassid teaching in Ohr Samayach, indeed due to his background many Rabbonim will refer you to his lectures if you ask this question), and has done a lot of research into the scientific reconciliations such as Dr. Schroeder's relativity solution, and uses his background as a professor of mathematical logic with special interest in philosophy of science to deal with this in a manner that doesn't compromise Torah positions at all but is still palatable to someone who wants rational, logical solutions.
To summarise what he says, the consensus among the gadolei adar is that the 6 days of creation are 24 hours (our hours) each. I've personally asked him if he holds that we pasken hashkafa and he said yes, referencing several sources in Rambam. There is room for interesting resolutions, that the history of the universe did play out, but faster, for example, but the 24 hours is important.
So we have to now deal with fossils, and the general solution offered is the same as Lubavitcher Rebbe (see Yaacov Deane's comment below for more on this citation); the universe was created aged rather than embryonic, in the same way that Adam was created aged, as that of a man of 20 (Bereshit Rabba). Indeed, it would take 13.8 billion years to make a universe like ours from an embryonic state, and dinosaurs would be an important step in the evolution of the body of man, but Hashem skipped all that (in some sense) and created year zero 5783.5 years ago, with a universe "aged" 13.8 billion years.
One might ask, isn't this deceptive? He makes it one way, but makes it appear another, and (as some people claim) He did so to give us free will - this makes people uncomfortable. Rabbi Gottlieb gives the philosophical answer: Hashem isn't deceiving us because He told us in the Torah how old the universe is. The reason the world looks older is irrelevant, whether it is purely for free will, or simply because Hashem loves nature (Derashot HaRan 8:63a), or any other reason.
So, the rational thinking Torah Jew doesn't have to have a position on dinosaurs. He doesn't have to say "they didn't exist and anyone who says so is an apikorus" (see this and this answer), but he also shouldn't feel boxed in to insist that they did exist otherwise he's an anti-science irrational religious zealot, even though you'll certainly find authorities holding by both sides (as always CYLOR). He can simply say it certainly looks like they existed, and the science done on their bones paints a very cool story of what they were like and one can be impressed about that in the same way all of nature impresses one to the awesome ways of Hashem*. If he wants to follow a strong opinion in the traditional Torah world that the days were 24 hours, then he has philosophical feet to stand on.
Remember, rational thinking knows limits. Science is not history and historical theories are never theorems. Torah tells us absolute truths but it also leaves out a lot of the history in its pshat. So what actually happened is something we currently don't know for sure. Rabbi Gottlieb places a lot of stress on not getting too worked up about this. As a younger man I found that hard to hear; I wanted to know! I still do, but it's clear that there's no point taking a definite position without definite facts, and that Hashem doesn't have to have done it the way I think would be the most sensible or cool. As cool as dinosaurs are**, I'm sure if I ever find out how Hashem did it, I'll agree He did it in the most fantastic way, far beyond anything I could have imagined :)
*I'll say from experience that there are many traditional households that do not hold like this, and one should be respectful. Scientism has been a damaging enemy to the religious world over the centuries and some people have felt it more than others, and have their own reasons for not wanting to teach their children about dinosaurs.
**Do note though, the world of the dinosaurs is an especially hard one to reconcile with the idea of goodness. In a world where there were no humans with free will to accomplish a great good that makes creation worth while, for a hundred and fifty million years there was violence and horrific death we can't imagine, an ever ongoing arms race of size and teeth and poison and claws and every nasty horror in nature...
Taninim Hagedolim can possibly mean dinosaurs. The word Tanin means a reptile or serpent (like when Aharon's stick become a sepent - Vayehi l'tanin. The dinosaurs were reptiles. See Dr. Schroeder's "The Science of G-d" which discusses this.
after reading parts of Michael Denton's Nature's Destiny I would speculate that God has designed every possible form of creature that could possibly exist within the confines of the laws of physics (and the laws of physics need to be almost exactly as they are to support human life as explained there).
Denton says there that there is a limit to the size of an animal due to various factors such as the speed of nerve signal transmission which is determined by the diffusion rate of ions. the current values for these are crucial to life. He explains there that for an animal of 100 meters it would take roughly 4 seconds for certain nerve impulses to travel and that would be way too slow for the animal to be nimble.
So perhaps the dinosaurs were a hashlama (completion) to the possible types of life forms that could exist on earth as part of the perfection of nature. Only that they needed to no co-exist with us for safety reasons.
To answer your first question: Most people would say that dinosaurs are not mentioned in the Bible. And they would be wrong. Oranges are also not mentioned in the Bible and yet no one would deny an orange for supper. Contrary to popular belief, dinosaurs are mentioned in the Torah, and no, it's not what you think. No, it's not Genesis 1:21's "taninim gedolim", translated as "great sea monsters" and it's not Leviathan, either, which means whale.[1] Rather, the first time we read about dinosaurs is in the beginning, as you would expect.
And G-d said, "Let the waters swarm a swarming of living creatures, and let fowl fly over the earth, across the expanse of the heavens."
On the fifth day, G-d created birds. True, birds do not look like dinosaurs, and dinosaurs do not look like birds, but archaeologists have proven that birds are not only modern descendants of dinosaurs, they are dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are mentioned elsewhere in the Bible. A lot of people would laugh at the notion that Noah saved the dinosaurs on the Ark. He did. Noah sent a raven and a dove to look for land.
As to your second question: Even if readers do not like this approach and admit that dinosaurs, as in giant reptiles or Tyrannosaurus are not mentioned in the Torah, we can answer that “the Torah speaks in human language” (Rabbi Ishmael). Because the Torah was given to the generation of emancipated slaves, it could not expect them to understand science and evolutionary biology. As a result, it had to work with the time it was given.
[1] Although some read taneneem to mean crocodiles, snakes, or dragons
