The simplest answer to this question is that dinosaurs lived millions and millions of years ago, way before humans came onto the scene. The Bible was written between 2,000 and 5,000 years ago and dinosaur fossils were discovered about 200 years ago. Therefore the writers of the Bible lived way before dinosaurs were discovered and way after dinosaurs were alive. They had no knowledge of such creatures. 

There are two main questions or objections that I suspect could follow from this simple answer. The first question would be: “If God helped the writers of the Bible know what to write, then why didn’t he tell them about dinosaurs?” The second question would be: “Doesn’t Genesis 1 say that on the sixth day God made all the living creatures including humans?” I will take these two questions in turn. (Certainly there are more questions that are raised by my simple answer, but as I don’t want to stray too far from the topic at hand I will leave those for another post.)

To the first question, certainly, God could have told Moses, or King David, or Isaiah the prophet, or any other character in the Bible about dinosaurs and had them mentioned in the Bible. But that is true for so many things. God could have looked forward in time and had the writers mention various technologies like trains or the internet. God could have had the writers of the Bible use a system of government like Medieval England had. God could have even had the writers of the Bible mention things that were happening on the Asian or American continents during biblical times, but we find none of that in the Bible. There aren’t even cats mentioned in the Bible! There are plenty of things that we know of now that were never mentioned in the Bible. This is because the Bible tells a story that is rooted in a particular area of the world during a specific time-frame. The Bible is concerned with telling its story, not telling us every story in the history of the world. 

The second question is a little more complicated, but not much. The answer is centered on the idea that Genesis 1, along with many of the other parts of the Bible, is not meant to be read as a scientific explanation of something. Genesis 1 does not use modern science to tell us how God made the universe. Genesis 1 is a celebration of what God did, not an explanation of how he did it. It is poetic. It reads more like a song than a page from an ancient text book. You don’t have to take my word for this, just read Genesis 1 as if it were scientifically accurate. You won’t get far before you run into problems. For example: 

• Before God created anything there was a watery abyss.

• God speaks before there was material for sound to pass through or time for it to propagate. (This may not seem like a big deal to you, but to Saint Augustine, this was very important.)

• Light is made days before there are any stars or suns in the sky. 

• There is a vault above the dry land that holds back cosmic waters (see also Gen. 7:11).

• Three days pass before there are lights in the sky that mark the passing of days. 

I bet you can find some more oddities if you read it carefully yourself. And even more if you start comparing Genesis 1 with Genesis 2. There are good reasons why Genesis 1 is written like it is, and I would recommend this book to you if you are interested in exploring those reasons more. 

What is most important is that we don’t force the Bible to be something it was never meant to be. The Bible you read is a collection of writings from dozens of different authors, written over thousands of years, and translated from three ancient languages. It contains all kinds of genres of literature, from poetry and songs, to genealogies and histories; from parables and theological conversations, to wisdom sayings and prophecies. There is no reason why we must read Genesis 1 as scientifically or historically accurate if that’s not what it was written to be. So when we read that on the sixth day God created all living creatures and humans too, we can simply join the Bible in celebrating that we are part of God’s amazing creation, just like the dinosaurs were 65 millions years ago.