Mythical Creature Exposed

Reading:   Numbers 23:14-30

You never know what you are going to get when reading my blog...it all depends on what piques my interest, fuels my mind, and makes me yearn to discover and share.  Well, today, despite the splendid council of Balaam to Balak, I was sidetracked be the reference to a "unicorn."

NUMBERS 23:22

22 God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn. 

The footnote for the word states that the creature is a wild ox, not a single horned horse, so I did some further investigation and, true enough, discovered that "unicorn" does indeed refer to a wild ox - sorry all you Charlie fans.  Anyway, I'll let the scholars explain it.  Here is some excerpts from an article, Unicorns, Satyrs, and the Bible, written by Bert Thompson, Ph.D.

On occasion, Bible writers used phrases, terms, and references that were in common use at the time they penned the books of the Bible. For example, both the writer of Job (9:9; 38:31) and the prophet Amos (5:8) referred to heavenly constellations such as Orion and the Pleiades. And, in order to make an important point to the people to whom he was speaking on one occasion, the apostle Paul even quoted from their own poets (Acts 17:28).

However, the Bible never “panders to pagan mythology” by incorrectly referring to non-existent, mythological animals as if they were real, living creatures. It is true that the word “unicorn” appears in the King James Version (nine times: Numbers 23:22; 24:8; Deuteronomy 33:17; Job 39:9,10; Psalms 22:21; 29:6; 92:10; and Isaiah 34:7). What, exactly, was this unicorn? And why is it found in certain versions of the Bible? The editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica answered the...question when they wrote that the unicorn was...

...a mythological animal resembling a horse or a kid with a single horn on its forehead. The unicorn appeared in early Mesopotamian artworks, and it also was referred to in the ancient myths of India and China. The earliest description in Greek literature of a single-horned (Greek: monokeros; Latin: unicornis) animal was by the historian Ctesias (400 B.C.), who related that the Indian wild ass was the size of a horse, with a white body, purple head, and blue eyes; on its forehead was a cubit-long horn coloured red at the pointed tip, black in the middle, and white at the base. Those who drank from its horn were thought to be protected from stomach trouble, epilepsy, and poison. It was very fleet of foot and difficult to capture. The actual animal behind Ctesias’ description was probably the Indian rhinoceros.

Certain poetical passages of the biblical Old Testament refer to a strong and splendid horned animal called re’em. This word was translated “unicorn” or “rhinoceros” in many versions of the Bible, but many modern translations prefer “wild ox” (aurochs), which is the correct meaning of the Hebrew re’em (Encyclopaedia Britannica (1997), s.v. “Unicorn," 12:129).

The word re’em does refer to the wild ox, and is translated as such in almost all later versions of the Bible. The translators of the Septuagint rendered re’em by the Greek monokeros (one horn) on the basis of the relief representations of the “wild ox” in strict profile that they found in Babylonian and Egyptian art (cf. Pfeiffer, et al., 1975, p. 83). The charge that the Bible “panders to pagan mythology” cannot be sustained, once all the relevant facts are known. 

Did we solve that riddle?  I think so.  Now to the question of "fiery flying serpents," no, we shall save dragons for another day but I warn you, Mr. Bert Thompson, Ph.D., you better prepare yourself for an argument because Mr. Tolkien and myself are coming at you - guns blazin!

~Kipling