Unicorns are real, right? Doesn't the Bible say they are?

Question

"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." (Isaiah 34:7 King James Version)

Answer 1

is it possible the author saw a rhinsoreas and wrote the hewbrew word and it was translated as unicorn
and some monks in the middle ages read the word unicorn and drew the beast we see and think of as unicorn

sorry about my spelling, but you see my point and wont attack me for being an ignorant atheist

Answer 2

Unicorn
the rendering of the Authorized Version of the Hebrew reem, a word which occurs seven times in the Old Testament as the name of some large wild animal. The reem of the Hebrew Bible, however, has nothing at all to do with the one-horned animal of the Greek and Roman writers, as is evident from De 33:17 where in the blessing of Joseph it is said; "his glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of a unicorn;" not, as the text of the Authorized Version renders it, "the horns of unicorns." The two horns of the ram are "the ten thousands of Ephraim and the thousands of Manasseh." This text puts a one-horned animal entirely out of the question. Considering that the reem is spoken of as a two-horned animal of great strength and ferocity, that it was evidently well known and often seen by the Jews, that it is mentioned as an animal fit for sacrificial purposes, and that it is frequently associated with bulls and oxen we think there can be no doubt that, some species of wild ox is intended. The allusion in Ps 92:10 "But thou shalt lift up, as a reeym, my horn," seems to point to the mode in which the Bovidae use their horns, lowering the head and then tossing it up. But it is impossible to determine what particular species of wild ox is signified probably some gigantic urus is intended. (It is probable that it was the gigantic Bos primigeniua, or aurochs, now extinct, but of which Caesar says, "These uri are scarcely less than elephants in size, but in their nature, color and form are bulls. Great is their strength and great their speed; they spare neither man nor beast when once; they have caught sight of them" --Bell. Gall. vi. 20.-ED.)

Answer 3

In Genesis a million:4, God reported that gentle changed into sturdy. yet, in Gen 9:13, evidently that God all of sudden realized gentle wasn't sturdy sufficient. because it did not refract by ability of water droplets, into the spectrum often established because the rainbow. So He replaced the actual houses of light, from what they were, interior the centuries between GEN a million and GEN 9, to what, if He were doing his pastime actual, they could were interior the first position, it truly is what they're actually. With all due appreciate, except reducing Him some slack because GEN a million changed into His first day on the pastime, how do Bible Believers mushy over the jarring conflict between what gentle changed into, and what gentle now might want to be?

Answer 4

YES, THERE WAS AN ANIMAL WITH A HORN IN THE CENTER OF IT'S HEAD CALLED A UNICORN BACK IN THE OLD TESTIMENT. HOWEVER, THERE ARE NO MORE, AS THE DINASAUS IS NO MORE.
WHAT YOU BELIEVE TO BE TRUE IS TRUE FOR YOU.
THE SAME FOR OTHERS.

Answer 5

Perhaps they were a real animal at some point, but have become extinct.

Answer 6

I hate when stuff is made fat with fatness.

Answer 7

no they are know also as wild oxen.....

Answer 8

The unicorn is a legendary creature usually depicted with the body of a horse, but with a single – usually spiral – horn growing out of its forehead (hence its name – cornus being Latin for 'horn').

Though the popular image of the unicorn is that of a white horse differing only in the horn, the traditional unicorn has a billy-goat beard, a lion's tail, and cloven hooves, which distinguish him from a horse.[1] Marianna Mayer has observed (The Unicorn and the Lake), "The unicorn is the only fabulous beast that does not seem to have been conceived out of human fears. In even the earliest references he is fierce yet good, selfless yet solitary, but always mysteriously beautiful. The Unicorn is the uncatchable creature, and his single horn was said to neutralize poison."

In medieval lore, the alicorn, the spiraled horn of the unicorn, is said to be able to heal and neutralize poisons. This virtue is derived from Ctesias's reports on the unicorn in India, that it was used by the rulers of that place to make drinking cups that would de-toxify poisons.

Though the qilin (麒麟, Chinese), a creature in Chinese mythology, is sometimes called "the Chinese unicorn", it is a hybrid animal that is less unicorn than chimera, with the body of a deer, the head of a lion, green scales and a long forwardly-curved horn. The Japanese "Kirin", though based on the Chinese animal, is usually portrayed as more closely resembling the Western unicorn than the Chinese qilin.

A prehistoric cave painting in Lascaux, France depicts an animal with two straight horns emerging from its forehead. The simplified profile perspective of the painting makes these two horns appear to be a single straight horn; since the species of the figure is otherwise unknown, it has received the moniker "the Unicorn". Richard Leakey suggests that it, like the Sorcerer found at Trois-Frères, is a therianthrope, a blend of animal and human; its head, in his interpretation, is that of a bearded man. [1]

There have been unconfirmed reports of aboriginal paintings of unicorns at Namaqualand in southern Africa. [2]. A passage of Bruce Chatwin's travel journal In Patagonia (1977) relates Chatwin's meeting a South American scientist who believed that unicorns were among South America's extinct megafauna of the Late Pleistocene, and that they were hunted out of existence by man in the fifth or sixth millennium BC. He told Chatwin, who later sought them out, about two aboriginal cave paintings of "unicorns" at Lago Posadas (Cerro de los Indios).

According to an interpretation of seals carved with an animal which resembles a bull (and which may in fact be a simplistic way of depicting bulls in profile), it has been claimed that the unicorn was a common symbol during the Indus Valley civilization, appearing on many seals. It may have symbolized a powerful social group.

An animal called the re'em is mentioned in several places in the Bible, often as a metaphor representing strength. "The allusions to the re'em as a wild, untamable animal of great strength and agility, with mighty horns (Job xxxix. 9-12; Ps. xxii. 21, xxix. 6; Num. xxiii. 22, xxiv. 8; Deut. xxxiii. 17; comp. Ps. xcii. 11), best fit the aurochs (Bos primigenius). This view is supported by the Assyrian rimu, which is often used as a metaphor of strength, and is depicted as a powerful, fierce, wild, or mountain bull with large horns."[2] This animal was often depicted in ancient Mesopotamian art in profile with only one horn visible.

The translators of the King James Version of the Bible (1611) employed unicorn to translate re'em— in Book of Job 39:9–12 and elsewhere—, providing a recognizable animal that was proverbial for its untamable nature for the unanswerable rhetorical questions:

"Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him? Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?"


Statue of unicornThe unicorn does not appear in early Greek mythology, but instead in Greek natural history, for Greek writers on natural history were convinced of the reality of the unicorn, which they located in India, a distant and fabulous realm for them. The Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) collects classical references to unicorns: the earliest description is from Ctesias, who described in Indica white wild asses, fleet of foot, having on the forehead a horn a cubit and a half in length, colored white, red and black; from the horn were made drinking cups which were a preventive of poisoning. Aristotle must be following Ctesias when he mentions two one-horned animals, the oryx, a kind of antelope, and the so-called "Indian ***" (in Historia animalis ii. I and De partibus animalium iii. 2). In Roman times Pliny's Natural History (viii: 30 and xl: 106) mentions the oryx and an Indian ox (the rhinoceros, perhaps) as one-horned beasts, as well as the Indian ***, "a very ferocious beast, similar in the rest of its body to a horse, with the head of a deer, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar, a deep, bellowing voice, and a single black horn, two cubits in length, standing out in the middle of its forehead." Pliny adds that "it cannot be taken alive." Aelian (De natura animalium iii. 41; iv. 52), quoting Ctesias, adds that India produces also a one-horned horse, and says (xvi. 20) that the monoceros was sometimes called carcazonon, which may be a form of the Arabic carcadn, meaning "rhinoceros". Strabo (book xv) says that in India there were one-horned horses with stag-like heads.

Medieval knowledge of the fabulous beast stemmed from biblical and ancient sources, and the creature was variously represented as a kind of wild ***, goat, or horse. By A.D. 200, Tertullian had called the unicorn a small fierce kidlike animal, and a symbol of Christ. Ambrose, Jerome and Basil agreed.

The predecessor of the medieval bestiary, compiled in Late Antiquity and known as Physiologus, popularized an elaborate allegory in which a unicorn, trapped by a maiden (representing the Virgin Mary) stood for the Incarnation. As soon as the unicorn sees her it lays its head on her lap and falls asleep. This became a basic emblematic tag that underlies medieval notions of the unicorn, justifying its appearance in every form of religious art.

The unicorn also figured in courtly terms: for some thirteenth-century French authors such as Thibaut of Champagne and Richard of Fournival, the lover is attracted to his lady as the unicorn is to the virgin. This courtly version of salvation provided an alternative to God's love and was assailed as heretical [citation needed]. With the rise of humanism, the unicorn also acquired more orthodox secular meanings, emblemmatic of chaste love and faithful marriage. It plays this role in Petrarch's Triumph of Chastity.

The royal throne of Denmark was made of "unicorn horns". The same material was used for ceremonial cups because the unicorn's horn continued to be believed to neutralize poison, following classical authors.

The unicorn, tamable only by a virgin woman, was well established in medieval lore by the time Marco Polo described them as:

"scarcely smaller than elephants. They have the hair of a buffalo and feet like an elephant's. They have a single large black horn in the middle of the forehead... They have a head like a wild boar's… They spend their time by preference wallowing in mud and slime. They are very ugly brutes to look at. They are not at all such as we describe them when we relate that they let themselves be captured by virgins, but clean contrary to our notions."

It is clear that Marco Polo was describing a rhinoceros. In German, since the sixteenth century, Einhorn ("one-horn") has become a descriptor of the various species of rhinoceros.

In popular belief, examined wittily and at length in the seventeenth century by Sir Thomas Browne in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, unicorn horns could neutralize poisons (book III, ch. xxiii). Therefore, people who feared poisoning sometimes drank from goblets made of "unicorn horn". Alleged aphrodisiac qualities and other purported medicinal virtues also drove up the cost of "unicorn" products such as milk, hide, and offal. Unicorns were also said to be able to determine whether or not a woman was a virgin; in some tales, they could only be mounted by virgins.

One traditional method of hunting unicorns involved entrapment by a virgin.

The famous late Gothic series of seven tapestry hangings, The Hunt of the Unicorn is a high point in European tapestry manufacture, combining both secular and religious themes. In the series, richly dressed noblemen, accompanied by huntsmen and hounds, pursue a unicorn against millefleurs backgrounds or settings of buildings and gardens. They bring the animal to bay with the help of a maiden who traps it with her charms, appear to kill it, and bring it back to a castle; in the last and most famous panel, “The Unicorn in Captivity,” the unicorn is shown alive again and happy, chained to a pomegranate tree surrounded by a fence, in a field of flowers. Scholars conjecture that the red stains on its flanks are not blood but rather the juice from pomegranates, which were a symbol of fertility. However, the true meaning of the mysterious resurrected Unicorn in the last panel is unclear. The series was woven about 1500 in the Low Countries, probably Brussels or Liège, for an unknown patron. A set of six called the Dame á la licorne (Lady with the unicorn) at the Musée de Cluny, Paris, woven in the Southern Netherlands about the same time, pictures the five senses, the gateways to temptation, and finally Love ("A mon seul desir" the legend reads), with unicorns in each hanging.

In heraldry, a unicorn is depicted as a horse with a goat's cloven hooves and beard, a lion's tail, and a slender, spiral horn on its forehead. Whether because it was an emblem of the Incarnation or of the fearsome animal passions of raw nature, the unicorn was not widely used in early heraldry, but became popular from the fifteenth century. Though sometimes shown collared, which may perhaps be taken in some cases as an indication that it has been tamed or tempered, it is more usually shown collared with a broken chain attached, showing that it has broken free from its bondage and cannot be taken again.


Arms of ScotlandIt is probably best known from the royal arms of Scotland and the United Kingdom: two unicorns support the Scottish arms; a lion and a unicorn support the UK arms. The arms of the Society of Apothecaries in London has two golden unicorn supporters.

A unicorn skeleton was supposedly found at Einhornhöhle ("Unicorn Cave") in Germany's Harz Mountains in 1663. Claims that the so-called unicorn had only two legs (and was constructed from fossil bones of mammoths and other animals) are contradicted or explained by accounts that souvenir-seekers plundered the skeleton; these accounts further claim that, perhaps remarkably, the souvenir-hunters left the skull, with horn. The skeleton was examined by Leibniz, who had previously doubted the existence of the unicorn, but was convinced thereby.

Baron Georges Cuvier maintained that as the unicorn was cloven-hoofed it must therefore have a cloven skull (making impossible the growth of a single horn); to disprove this, Dr. W. Franklin Dove, a University of Maine professor, artificially fused the horn buds of a calf together, creating a one-horned bull. [3]

P.T. Barnum once exhibited a unicorn skeleton, which was exposed as a hoax.


Since the rhinoceros is the only land animal to possess a single horn, it has often been supposed that the unicorn legend originated from encounters between Europeans and rhinoceroses. The Woolly Rhinoceros would have been quite familiar to Ice-Age people, or the legend may have been based on the surviving rhinoceroses of Africa. Europeans and West Asians have visited Sub-Saharan Africa for as long as we have records.

The Roman Empire also imported rhinoceroses for their arena 'games', along with hippopotamuses and other exotic creatures. Roman crowds could distinguish between the African and Indian rhinoceroses, both of which were slaughtered in front of huge crowds.

Chinese from the time of the Han Dynasty had also visited East Africa, which may account for their odd legends of 'one-horned ogres'. The Ming-dynasty voyages of Zheng He brought back giraffes, which were identified by the Chinese with another creature from their own legends.