Horn blowing

So, I'm weed-whacking through some blogs, and somewhere I don't remember, I read something that knocked me off my high horse and led me down a cobbled path.

The Bible mentions unicorns.

There. Said it. Unicorns.

Horsey looking animals with one horn out their noggin.

Uni (one)
corns (I have no idea).

Now before you begin coming up with explanation after explanation, let me tell you what I've found.

Before your, uh, clothes get in a wad, most Biblical scholars will tell you right now, for more than a quarter down, that this animal, the horsey with the horn, is totally fictitious. None of these are alive today and no scientist has ever found a fossil of one. Nada. No horse with a hole where the horn was removed. No Trigger with a pointy trigger out his skull.

However, unicorns are mentioned in the King James version of the Bible 9 times, in 5 different books, by at least 5 different authors: by Balaam, Moses, David, Isaiah, and even God himself in the book of Job. NINE times. In five different eras of scripture. In five different scenes.

These are the verses that mention unicorns:

• Numbers 23:22 “God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn.”

• Numbers 24:8 “God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn: he shall eat up the nations his enemies, and shall break their bones, and pierce them through with his arrows.”

• Job 39:9 “Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?”

• Job 39:10 “Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?”

• Psalms 29:6 “He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.”

• Psalms 92:10 “But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn: I shall be anointed with fresh oil.”

• Deuteronomy 33:17 “His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth: and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh.”

• Psalms 22:21 “Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.”

• Isaiah 34:7 “And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.”

I have read through the entire Bible four times at last count, along with hundreds of scripture searches along the way in sermon preparation or devotional time. Somehow, someway, ol' uni had never so much as struck my fancy, tickled my ivories, made even the slightest of appearances.

How could this be, since on sighting earlier this week in an otherwise meaningless and less than well written blog?

First things first. Unicorns are not mentioned in any of the modern translations. Only in the King James version are they mentioned. Most of the modern translations say “wild ox.” Some translations even say “buffalo.”

When I read that, it struck me that I've never read all of the KING JAMES version of scripture. So, in my NIV, NRSV, NLT, Message reading there is no UNICORN. None.

However, it is important to understand that the definition of the word “unicorn” has changed over time. If you get an old 1828 Noah Webster’s Dictionary, which is the very first edition dictionary that Webster came out with about 200 years ago, and look up the word “unicorn” it says:
Unicorn – An animal with one horn; the monoceros. this name is often applied to the rhinoceros.

We have options:
Wild Ox
Buffalo
Rhinoceros.

Now, how could this happen? Rhinoceros is far from a horsey in appearance, nears as I can tell, and the Ox and the Buffalo and even the Rhinos have more than one horn. Or do they?

According to Noah Webster, back in the early 1800’s it was understood that there were two species of the rhinoceros. The one-horned species was called “unicorn,” and the two-horned species was called “bicornis.”

Today it is understood that there are five species of the rhinoceros, three of which have two horns, and two of which have one horn.

So basically, if you get a 200-year-old Noah Webster’s dictionary and look up the word “unicorn” it says “rhinoceros,” and if you look up the word “rhinoceros” it says “unicorn.” That was just 200 years ago. The King James was translated 400 years ago in 1611. One does not have to be good at math to figure this out.

Today’s definition of the word “unicorn” says absolutely nothing about a rhinoceros, and today’s definition of “rhinoceros” says absolutely nothing about a unicorn. The definitions have changed over time.

So, if the definition of “unicorn” has changed in just the past 200 years from rhinoceros to horse, then it doesn’t make much sense to take a modern definition of the word “unicorn” and apply it to a 400-year-old translation of the Bible. That’s illogical.

As a matter of fact, even today the scientific name of the Asian One-Horned Rhinoceros is Rhinoceros unicornis. And Diceros bicornis is the scientific name of a two-horned rhinoceros called the Black Rhinoceros. Where do you think those scientific names came from?

Well, they came from the Latin. Unicornis and bicornis are Latin words. That’s interesting, because If you look up Psalm 92:10 in the Latin Bible, the Latin word that is being used here is the word “unicornis.”

So, before we all get in a lather about how unicorns might show how mythical and fanciful scripture might be, we need to do our research.

Lest one get gored by some horn somewhere sometime.