Numbers 23:22, He hath as it were the strength of a unicorn.
The King James Bible mentions unicorns in six verses. It doesn't give much detail about the creature except to say that it noted for having great strength. To the western mind, unicorns are mythical creatures that now only exist in fantasy novels and Dungeons & Dragons but the Bible talks about them as though they are real creatures. Many people pounce on this fact as an opportunity to label the Bible as a work of fiction. Even liberal Christians use the mention of unicorns as an excuse to say the Bible shouldn't be taken literally.
In response to such criticisms, we must first acknowledge them for what they are – straw man criticisms that don't accurately represent what the Bible says. Many critics aren't intentionally making a straw man. Instead, they are committing the exegetical fallacy of reverse etymology. That is, they are forcing the modern meaning of a word onto its original meaning. When the Bible was written in Hebrew, the Medieval concepts of unicorns did not even exist. The writers of the Bible certainly did not have the western image of unicorns in mind when the original text was penned.
My understanding of Hebrew is next to nothing but, according to Brown-Driver-Brigg's Hebrew Definitions the word translated as “unicorn” in Numbers 23:22 above is the Hebrew word “rêm” (ראם). BDB defines it as “wild bulls which are now extinct.” There's nothing about that definition that suggests the Hebrew writers specifically understood this beast to have a single horn. It could be a description of an animal using terminology similar to our name for the modern breed of cattle, the “long horn.”
Since I'm more comfortable reading Greek, I looked up the verse in the Septuagint where I found it is rendered as monokerōtos (μονοκέρωτος) which literally means “only horn” or “one horn.” So, even long before the KJV translation, it seems the idea of a one-horned animal was already understood. What we have then, is the Bible mentions a one-horned animal renowned for having great strength. Do such animals exist? Of course they do! Even today, there is a species of one-horned rhino. Interestingly, the latin name of this critter is Rhinoceros unicornis so it is literally called a unicorn! Rhinos also possess great strength so a one-horned rhino would definitely fit the bill of the biblical unicorn.
I'm sure there are still other candidates that would fit the description of the biblical unicorns. For example, there is a group of horned dinosaurs called, ceratopsians. One member of this group is Monoclonius which also has one horn. But the point of this post really isn't to discuss the unicorn references of the Bible. Rather, I wanted to explore the idea of what gave rise to the myth of a one-horned horse. I did a cursory search on Google and found there are many opinions. Interestingly, all of the various theories had one thing in common – they all involved elaboration on real animals. Even if we never know which animal it might have been, the mere fact that everyone thinks it was based on a real animal intrigued me. Is that how myths are born? What other legendary animals might have been born out of encounters with real animals. Many creation apologists have long speculated that dragon legends were depictions of man's encounters with dinosaurs. I've thought about writing on that in the past but there's been so much said on the subject that I decided not to unless I come up with some original angle. However, there are many other creatures of legend. Could they too be elaborated upon depictions of real animals? Let's look at a few.
COCKATRICE
In the movie, Jurassic Park, velociraptors were very dinosaur-looking. Since then, a few new fossil finds and much artistic license have made more recent renderings much more bird-like. I've always said that dino-to-bird evolution has been occurring in the minds of scientists. Anyway, if a Renaissance-era person were to describe a modern depiction of a velociraptor, he might say it looks like a cross between a bird and a reptile. Are there any bird-reptile creatures of myth? Certainly there are. According to Wikipedia, "A cockatrice is a mythical beast, essentially a two-legged dragon wyvern or serpent-like creature with a rooster's head." If the modern renderings of velociraptors are accurate, I would say it very much looks like a cockatrice. So perhaps the velociraptor gave birth to the cockatrice legend.
Cockatrices are also mentioned four times in the KJV translation. In Isaiah 11, for example, the prophet tells us about the restored creation where there is no more death and the wolf shall dwell with the lamb. Isaiah 11:8 goes on to say, “And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den.” In Isaiah 59:5, cockatrices are also said to have eggs. Just as with the wolf and the lamb, Isaiah uses the cockatrice to paint a word picture of the new creation where even a dangerous, reptilian, egg-laying beast is no longer a threat to even a small child.
LINDWORM
That's interesting, if we substituted the word “dinosaur” for “dragon” in that description, the lindworm sounds a lot like a bipedal dinosaur. The lindworm depicted here was used on the coat of arms of a small Bavarian town. I found a rendering of a T-rex in a similar pose. I'm not saying the lindworm was a T-rex but, be honest with yourself, when you look at these pictures side by side, doesn't the lindworm strongly resemble a bipedal dino?
WYVERN
The wyvern is basically a winged reptile with two legs and a barbed-tail. Wikipedia explains the etymology of the word, wyvern, this way: “the word is a development of Middle English wyver (attested fourteenth century), from Anglo-French wivre (cf. French guivre and vouivre), which originate from Latin vīpera, meaning "viper", "adder", or "asp". The concluding "–n" had been added by the beginning of the 17th century, when John Guillim in 1610 describes the "wiverne" as a creature that "partake[s] of a Fowle in the Wings and Legs ... and doth resemble a Serpent in the Taile". John Gibbon in 1682 emphasises that it "hath but two Legs"”
So the creature is definitely reptilian, has a long tail, flies, and has two legs. That sounds eerily like a known pterasaurs called, Rhamphorhynchus. Here, again, I've placed a picture of a wyvern taken from British heraldry and placed it next to a artistic rendering of Rhamphorhynchus. Isn't the resemblance uncanny?
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If modern scholars look to real animals as the inspiration for mythical animals (as they have done with the unicorn), then we would have to admit that these “prehistoric” creatures could serve as candidates for these various creatures of myth – assuming they were contemporaries of men. Now, I can't claim with absolute certainty that these are the very animals that gave rise to legends. However, I do know with certainty that men lived together with dinosaurs. It wouldn't surprise me, then, to find depictions and descriptions of various types of dinosaurs. If some dinosaurs were feathered, what better animal would serve as a candidate for the legend of the cockatrice? If a lindworm is a bipedal “dragon,” wouldn't a bipedal dinosaur be the most likely source of that legend
In this post you've seen the legendary creatures side by side with real creatures. No one can credibly deny there are similarities. The only reason they would not be considered by some as the inspiration of legends is because evolutionists believe dinosaurs to be separated from man by millions of years. If that is the case, then they aren't going where the evidence leads but they are using their theory to shape the evidence. I say the fantastic depictions of dinosaur-looking animals are evidence of man's eye witness to these animals.
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