Answers in Genesis: Unicorns are Real!

[brooklynite]

Unicorns in the Bible?:

Some people claim the Bible is a book of fairy tales because it mentions unicorns. However, the biblical unicorn was a real animal, not an imaginary creature. The Bible refers to the unicorn in the context of familiar animals, such as peacocks, lambs, lions, bullocks, goats, donkeys, horses, dogs, eagles, and calves (Job 39 9–12).1 In Job 38–41, God reminded Job of the characteristics of a variety of impressive animals He had created, showing Job that God was far above man in power and strength.2

Job had to be familiar with the animals on God’s list for the illustration to be effective. God points out in Job 39 9–12 that the unicorn, “whose strength is great,” is useless for agricultural work, refusing to serve man or “harrow (plow) the valley.” This visual aid gave Job a glimpse of God’s greatness. An imaginary fantasy animal would have defeated the purpose of God’s illustration.

Modern readers have trouble with the Bible’s unicorns because we forget that a single-horned feature is not uncommon on God’s menu for animal design. (Consider the rhinoceros and narwhal.) The Bible describes unicorns skipping like calves (Psalm 29 6), traveling like bullocks, and bleeding when they die (Isaiah 34 7). The presence of a very strong horn on this powerful, independent-minded creature is intended to make readers think of strength.

The absence of a unicorn in the modern world should not cause us to doubt its past existence. (Think of the dodo bird. It does not exist today, but we do not doubt that it existed in the past.) Eighteenth century reports from southern Africa described rock drawings and eyewitness accounts of fierce, single-horned, equine-like animals. One such report describes “a single horn, directly in front, about as long as one’s arm, and at the base about as thick. . . . [It] had a sharp point; it was not attached to the bone of the forehead, but fixed only in the skin.”

[bvf]

1. Sometimes all you can do is shake your head. n/t.

[COLGATE4]

2. WTF?????????

[edgineered]

3. gawd would have helped job more by explaining

why not to play leapfrog with unicorns, an unmistakable point could have been made.

[cbayer]

8. Lol, that's a good one.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. You can't prove unicorns didn't exist.

So there are people here who claim that we must therefore keep an open mind regarding the existence of unicorns. But not santa claus, he's a fiction.

[AtheistCrusader]

6. Theyre real!

http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2012/201211/news29/20121129-20ee.html

[trotsky]

5. Dang.

Well, they are committed. Or should be, I guess.

[cbayer]

7. The site is priceless. Did you know that unicorns may have had 2 horns?

This was news to me.

[brooklynite]

9. Impossible...those are bicorns

[cbayer]

10. And that is where bacon comes from, I'm pretty sure.

[okasha]

11. The "unicorn" in Job

was probably a rhino, or possibly an antelope seen in profile. The later European version looks to me like an Arabian horse with antelope horn transplanted to forehead and goat's beard for a flourish.

[Warren Stupidity]

12. "an antelope seen in profile"

that would be in the picture book version of Job?

[okasha]

15. Check with the children's section in your local library.

I'm sure they can help you out.

[Warren Stupidity]

18. ok

Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.

16 Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.

17 He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.

18 His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.

19 He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him.

20 Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play.

21 He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens.

22 The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about.

23 Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth.

24 He taketh it with his eyes: his nose pierceth through snares.

[enki23]

22. It was oginally an ancient oral tradition of an antelope seen in profile.

.

[trotsky]

13. Well then that's easy to clear up.

Could you write to the AnswersInGenesis folks to point out their error? That would be great! I had no idea it was so simple to correct people's religious beliefs.

[Goblinmonger]

16. Or they were ignorant

and really believed there were unicorns.

And they had rhino's where the Old Testament was written?

[okasha]

17. They had rhinos and people who had seen them

in Africa. Ancient Israel and Judah did a brisk trade in both goods and information with Egypt. and neighboring states.. The other"imaginary" critters in the book-- leviathan and behemoth--have been pretty firmly identified as whales and Nile crocs respectively, though another possibility for behemoth is the hippopotamus.

Your buried assumption--that Israel and Judah existed in some kind of cultural and informational lockbox-- is belied by the archaeological and literary records.

Added: I clicked a few more times. The word the KJV translates as "unicorn" is re'em, which refers to the aurochs, a very large wild bovine that ranged Eurasia well into historical times. I'm pretty sure none of them were pink, though.

[Goblinmonger]

19. It's not my buried assumption.

I will freely admit that world history is not my forte, but I didn't think the Byzantine and other major empires of the time made it down that far into Africa. I guess there are rhinos in India which may be more likely of a trade route.

I don't find it to hard to believe that in 1400 BC people believed that there were unicorns. I'm sure they got a lot of things wrong.

I was wondering what they translated into unicorn.

[okasha]

20. Your dates are off in both directions.

Job is one of the later books of the OT, so 1400 BCE is somewhere around 1200 years off the mark. But certainly people around your early date would have accepted the existence of such creatures as whales, crocodiles, hippopotomi and aurochs (re'em) because they not only had contemporary witness but occasionally hunted and ate them.

Crocodiles and hippos were indigenous to ancient Egypt. Egypt traded with peoples below the First Cataract of the Nile for ivory, hunting cheetahs and a wide spectrum of other goods. They also traded with the other societoes of their time, both in Western Asia--including Palestine-- and in Europe.

The Byzantines who, were an empire in their own right only after the fall of Rome to the Germanic tribes in the 5th century CE, maintained some of those same trading channels through Arab/Muslim merchants, but also looked strongly to Asia for luxury goods.

[Goblinmonger]

21. I wasn't trying to indicate the Byzantines were 1400 BC

Sorry that was unclear. I was using them as a later empire that did not get down to the southern part of Africa where there were rhinos. If they didn't, I wouldn't think earlier ones had. Though that assumption could be wrong, but I haven't seen anything they had. And, yes, totally understand they knew about hippos and crocs but rhinos are a horse of a different color. None of those trade patterns you indicate get them to a place where there are rhinos.

And 1400 BCE is what I have seen as the earliest date for Job being written (which is based off "Moses" writing it and that's a whole different myth that needs discussion). I think Wikipedia puts it around 6th Century BCE as the most likely time period.

[edhopper]

14. Mystery solved