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King James and the Wild Ox

Just a Little Word of Explanation Before We Start

This page represents the story of an offbeat interest and curious 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.

This page is arranged in a kind of roundabout way, and is a bit disorderly and stitched together. That is deliberate and intentional. The information is presented in something like chronological order of when/how it came to me, and I have left it this way, because I think it adds to the charm and feel of this being a winding search and a rambling journey, toward something close enough to being a conclusion but not enough of a conclusion to prevent further wandering, if it seems appropriate..

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 oh-so-many years ago. I'm leaving the page online (updating when it seems appropriate) for the sake of interest and curiosity and because it suits this website, not because I intend this page to be considered in any way authoritative.

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 (almost) every other English version of the Bible, and certainly as "wild ox" or "ox" in every English version of the Bible still in common use. 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; some words do change meaning over time, so while the modern re'em might well be an antelope, it seems reasonably clear that the ancient one was some sort of bovine).

The modern 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). So, not the same thing as a re'em (which may be an oryx or an ox, but isn't a unicorn as we'd think of it).

I am aware that there are those who insist that the King James Bible is linguistically 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, though I've got a pretty reasonable idea of how it happened now.

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.

So 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, and I know from study of ancient history that there was (is?) a Jewish tradition of annointing and polishing the horn of a bull/ox for ritual purposes (referenced in Psalm 92, if you're interested). The one-horned bull in profile was very common in ancient Middle-Eastern art, and was very well understood in the culture of the day.

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 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.

So, how did unicorns end up in the Latin Vulgate? When St Jerome (or at least, it is he who is credited with this) translated into Latin the Greek texts of the Septaugint (the the oldest of several ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible into Greek), it appears that he didn't have access to any actual Hebrew texts, nor did he read Hebrew, anyway. He simply transliterated (i.e., directly translated, rather than interpreting) and the Greek monoceras became unicornis and unicornium. And so the unicorn found its way into the Bible primarily through the Latin Vulgate, and into English versions of the Bible most likely through Wycliffe and then Coverdale, who took their translations from the Latin Vulgate.

As for why the legendary Alexandrian Jews who constructed the Greek Septaugint used the word monoceras, that's still a mystery. I make an educated guess that it does, indeed, reference the one-horned ox or bull image that was so common in ancient Middle-Eastern representation, and that there simply were no appropriate Greek equivalents to re'em. Since they probably expected that anyone reading the texts would know about the one-horned bull, calling it monoceras worked. And thus it comes full circle!

Basically, as far as the Authorised Version of the Bible in English, the fact is that the King James Bible comes from texts that went from Hebrew to Greek to Latin and then into English, with direct influences from older English translations (which came from the Latin Vulgate, as well). It's not surprising that at least a few things might lose something in translation somewhere along the line!

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 just going to tell me that the King James is perfect and everyone else in the entire world is just mistaken about the character and nature of a re'em. (I've heard that one before, anyway.)

It's also interesting to note, somewhat tangentally, 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 (which is my favourite version of this psalm).

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