I was just browsing around over at Answersin Genesis.org and I found a wonderful article by Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell called Unicorns in the Bible?
In the article, Dr. Mitchell covers the Biblical references and descriptions of unicorns, noting how they were described as actual animals, not fantastical creatures. She then goes on to speculate how the Biblical unicorn might have been an Elasmotherium, an auroch or even an Indian rhinoceros.
I especially like how it ends:
“The Bible is clearly describing a real animal… not the fantasy animal that has been popularized in movies and books. To think of the biblical unicorn as a fantasy animal is to demean God’s Word, which is true in every detail.”
Good cryptozoological research and exposition from a Creationist viewpoint!
–Sirius Knott
As fantastical as this sounds its probably referring to a sort of wild ox that was alive back then commonly found in cave paintings and such. There are a few verses that use the same Hebrew word found in Job that seem to give this animal an appearance of having more then 1 horn(Deut.33:17). The Vulgate and the Septuagint use words for a sort of rhinoceros in their translations(unicornis). So its either referring to a rhinoceros or an extinct wild ox that existed then.
By: brooksrobinson on June 30, 2008
at 4:18 am
Vaild suggestion.
Of course, the point of the article is that the biblical unicorn is a real animal. We mustn’t let notions of the fantasy creature who uses the name more famously get in the way of identifying the actual creature mentioned. Nor may we disqualify the Bible’s accuracy because it uses an archaic term [unicorn] which now has a different meaning than it did then.
It is also possible that the biblical unicorn is synonymous with Emela-Ntouka, which [along with Mokele-Mbembe] is a good candidate for the biblical Behemoth. It should be noted that Mokele-Mbembe and Emela-Ntouka have been described in a manner where either could be consistent with the biblical Behemoth, but they each bear a distinctive feature that would disqualify both from being Behemoth. Mokele-Mbembe is a long-necked relict sauropod from all descriptions, while Emela-Ntouka is a horned animal consistent with a rhino, wild ox or relict ceratopsian. behemoth would have to be one or the other. Ironically, both Mokele-Mbembe and Emela-Ntouka hail from the Likoula swamp region of the Congo!
–Sirius Knott
By: Sirius on June 30, 2008
at 3:47 pm