King James and the Wild Ox

Just a Little Disclaimer Before We Start

Due to the nature of some of the email I receive regarding this particular page, I include this disclaimer. To the 99.998% of people who would never, ever think of sending obnoxious emails to a random person on the net, trying to convert them, chastising them, or cursing them, I apologise. This disclaimer isn't for you.

This page represents an offbeat interest and hobby, that is, discovering why a particular translation of the Bible (namely, the Authorised Version, commonly known as the King James) contains unicorns (which is, most assuredly, a mistranslation of the actual Hebrew word, re'em). For many years, I've just been collecting tidbits of information and sharing them in something like a coherent form, that is, this page. Readers should not assign more weight to this hobby than it deserves. In other words, this is not a scholarly treatise or a thesis or anything other than a web page which evolved from a quirky interest in a particular topic.

Also note that this page has been on the web since 1994. There's a great deal more available on this topic now than there was when I started my quest. I'm leaving the page online (updating when it seems appropriate) for the sake of interest and curiosity and because it suits this website.

The Authorised Version of the Bible in English, known far and wide as the King James Version, mentions unicorns. In fact, the word which is translated nine times as "unicorn" or "unicorns" is the Hebrew re'em. This Hebrew word is translated as "ox" or "wild ox" in every (almost) every other English version of the Bible. That's what re'em means: ox (although at least one source I came upon listed the modern meaning as being an oryx, which is a type of antelope).

The Hebrew word for unicorn (I am informed by a speaker/reader of Hebrew) is actually Had-Keren. My Hebrew isn't that good, but according to the Hebrew dictionary I have handy, keren (or qeren) means "horn" and had (or 'echad) is "one". The usual name for a unicorn in almost any language is "one-horn" (see: A Unicorn by Any Other Name).

I am aware that there are those who insist that the King James Bible is perfect (apparently having fallen from heaven gift-wrapped and landing on the steps of Canterbury Cathedral in 1611), but I've done enough historical and Biblical research to know that the KJV, although a lovely work of poetic usage and expressive forms, is not The Official Word of God™ in English, any more than any other translation can claim to be. It's got errors, and this happens to be one of them.

I therefore set out on a quest to find out how this particular translation had come about, and although I've been at it for years now, I still haven't got any truly authoritative answer. This is a pretty obscure question, it would seem. After some time and research, this is what I have come up with so far, as shared with me by a couple of different sources who are better versed in Latin and/or Greek than I am:

Apparently, the translators simply didn't know what a re'em was meant to be. Other examples of this occur in the KJV (such as the behemouth and leviathan, which are simply transliterated rather than translated), so this isn't too great of a leap of logic. In consulting the Latin Vulgate, it was seen that this word, re'em, was given as monoceras. Ah-hah! Unicorn!

However, it's far more likely that the reason the Vulgate gives that word as monoceras is from the ancient Mediterranean custom of depicting a bull (or ox) in profile, with only one horn visible.

That's one thing I was told, and from my own education in art history I know that it's true about the bull in profile, but that's as far as I can verify.

Here's another possible explanation (I have to admit that as I do not read Latin, I am almost wholly unfamiliar with the Latin Vulgate). This was shared with me via email (and appears on this page by permission of the correspondant, Bruno Faidutti, a professor of history who knows a great deal more about the Latin Vulgate and the Greek Septuagint than I do):

A little funny note about psalm 92. You quote it in English from the KJV, but did you notice that the Vulgate version writes libera me ab ore leonis et a cornibus unicornium humilitatem meam, which means "save me from the wrath of the lion and the horns of the unicorn" (yes, plural, the horns of the unicorn!).

BTW, you made a little mistake in your page about the translation of re'em. The Vulgate uses unicornis and not monoceros. It was translated from the greek Septuagesint, and not directly from the Hebrew. The Septuagesint writes monoceros where the Hebrew wrote re'em. The Vulgate writes unicornis, and one or two times rhinoceros, where the Septuagesint wrote re'em.

However, there is an authentic unicorn in the Bible, in Daniel 8:5.

Just for interest, Daniel 8:5 (this is from the New Revised Standard Version) reads:

As I was watching, a male goat appeared from the west, coming across the face of the whole earth without touching the ground. The goat had a horn between its eyes.

From one Brian Tegart, a gentleman who has made a hobby of studying the King James Bible (versus other translations) I got this information:

Interesting note about the Vulgate's rendition of Psa 22:21, where the "unicorn" was singular but the "horns" were plural. A similar thing is happening in the Hebrew of Deuteronomy 33:17. In the Hebrew, "horns" is plural and "unicorn" is singular, but the KJV has "unicorns" plural. Compare to the other Bibles, (NIV, NASB, etc) they have "wild ox" (singular) instead of "wild oxen" (plural). Even the NKJV is singluar. The Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the OT) has "monoceros" in the "unicorn" verses, as your page indicates. Translated literally "mono" means "one", and "ceros" means "horn", ie. "one horn". Interesting that there IS good reason to translate the word as "unicorn" in the KJV, but it still seems wrong, if you know what I mean.

An email I got from a gentleman named Michael also provided an extremely valuable and interesting bit of information regarding the Biblical unicorn. It seems that the Geneva Bible (which dates back to 1560) has the same mistranslation of the Hebrew word re'em as is found in the King James. Since the KJV did, indeed, reference previous translations (note: not "translated from", but only checked for reference, style, etc.), I'm wondering now if perhaps the KJV got the notion of the re'em-unicorn (presented in the Geneva Bible as "vnicorne") there? Or did it continue to rely on the Latin Vulgate? (Do note that the so-called "New Geneva Bible" apparently uses the text of the King James, and isn't actually a modern version of the original Geneva Bible).

Further research shows that the Coverdale version of the Bible, published in 1535 and the oldest surviving full translation of the Bible into English, has this passage from Job: "Wyll the vnicorne be so tame as to do ye seruyce, or to abyde still by thy cribbe?" We know for certain that the Coverdale translation was definitely one of the references used by the King James translators; Coverdale is where the phrase "the valley of the shadow of death" comes from. (Mind you, Myles Coverdale was burned at the stake as a heretic, so that's what he got for his trouble.)

And even earlier than Coverdale, we have Wycliffe's translation, from 1395, which gives Job 39:9 as: "Whether an vnycorn schal wilne serue thee, ethir schal dwelle at thi cratche?" Wycliffe's translation is the earliest surviving translation of Job into English, and was almost certainly an influence on Coverdale and, by extension, on the translators of the KJV who referenced Coverdale's work. (Also note that John Wycliffe was also burned at the stake as a heretic. Translating Bibles can be dangerous business.)

It seems quite possible that the translation into English of re'em as unicorn (or vynicorn or vnicorne, if you prefer) may well come down to one translation by one man in Medieval England, whose work influenced later generations of translators in direct and indirect ways. His translation, of course, was taken from the Latin Vulgate, which (as mentioned above) uses the words unicornis and unicornium.

What, precisely, the Romans meant by "unicornis" I can't say, but it seems to be an error of translation between the original Hebrew into the Greek Septaugint into the Latin Vulgate, possibly influenced by the "one horned" bull depictions mentioned and referenced at the beginning of this article. So, basically, the word went from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English. It's not surprising that at least a few things might lose something in translation.

So, there you go. If you have another theory or explanation, please do share it with me, but please don't bother emailing me if all you're going to tell me that the King James is perfect and everyone else in the entire world is just mistaken about the character of a re'em. (I've heard that one before. See the disclaimer at the start of this page.)

It's also interesting to note that the unicorn was very often used as a symbol of Christ in Medieval and Renaissance allegorical works, as demonstrated by the Medieval Folksong (Volksleid) I have on this very site.

And as God asked rhetorically of Job (39:9-10 (KJV)):

Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?

Obviously, Job's answer was a humbled, "No." No man can bind the unicorn into service. That's something only God can properly manage.

Just for good measure, I'll share my favourite Psalm, number 92, as presented in the King James.

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