The Skeptic Annotated Bible Getting Hung Up with KJV use of “Unicorns” in the Bible

 

The Skeptic Annotated Bible website under the “Science and history” criticism of the book of Psalms notes that the King James Version talk about unicorns.

 

The specific passages from the Psalms are the following:

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

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

Other versions say something else besides unicorn.  New American Standard Bible for instance says “ox.”

The Hebrew word translated by the King James Version as unicorn is actually רְאֵם (pronounced as reem).

It seems רְאֵם is not necessarily a one horn creature.  The first three use of רְאֵם in the Hebrew Bible it literally indicates the creature has plural horns:

כְּתֹועֲפֹ֥ת רְאֵ֖ם “like horns of a רְאֵם” (Numbers 23:22)

כְּתֹועֲפֹ֥ת רְאֵ֖ם “like horns of a רְאֵם” (Numbers 24:8)

וְקַרְנֵ֤י רְאֵם֙ “and horns of a רְאֵם” (Deuteronomy 33:17)

Note the singular noun רְאֵם with the three verses.  Yet they have horns in the plural form.  While Numbers 23:22 and Numbers 24:8 uses a term for horn that sometimes have the ideas of ray, its literally is horn and I think that’s a better sense of the use of the term unless we want to say these are animals that are radiating/beaming light.  Deuteronomy 33:17 uses a term that is very literal for horn and note how the term for horn is in plural in form, belonging to that of a singular רְאֵם.  So these are not unicorns nor is it even a rhino since this creature has multiple horns.

How did the King James Bible start using the word unicorn?  To answer that I think its important to ask what is a unicorn, and what is the origin of the word unicorn?  Unicorn comes from the root of the word it comes from the word meaning “one” (uni) and an old latin word meaning “horn” (cornus).   Concerning the etymology of the term entering Christian vocabulary unicornus as a Latin word is used to translate the Old Testament Greek monoceros, used to render the Hebrew רְאֵם.  I think to read into the King James version use of unicorn to refer to actual one horn magical creature is not right as that’s not even suggested in the Hebrew and the King James doesn’t seem to focus on trying to argue for the existence of magical one horn creatures; rather the King James seem to be using a word that is already there used by the Vulgate as a fill-in term.  Sometimes terms can have a certain history that is opposite than its later use and also terms can have a specialized meaning in a smaller group of people than the mass.  For example the term “Person” comes from a word that originally means masks but when we say there’s three Persons of the Trinity we don’t mean Masks in a modalists sense; later Christians are very nuanced and clarify what they mean (and also what they don’t mean).  The term Villain originate from an old French term meaning someone who is a serf and works that land.  So when we talk about villains today in stories that doesn’t mean we are talking about farmers at all.  Something like that is going on here.  Personally for me I would translate the term as “ram” to reduce confusion.

I also don’t want to leave this discussion without considering the bigger picture of one’s operating worldview when discussing etemology, linguistic and languages. For the Skeptic Annotated Bible they have a problematic worldview that wouldn’t even allow for the discussion of linguistic, language and etemology, etc.  There’s issue with the atheistic worldview of the Skeptic Annotated Bible is that it undermines a philosophy of language that allows for the precondition for communication and languages in the first place.  See In the Beginning Was the Word Language—A God-Centered Approach by Vern Poythress and James Anderson’s The Lord of Non-Contradiction: An Argument for God from Logic

 

 

 

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