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(ENDED) Help Misty meet more unicorns and get a badge! šŸ¦„

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  • wykoon
    wykoon Posts: 12,717

    Thanks @MountainMom for creating this discussion and that's a lovely badge by @Lola_Pop šŸ„°

    Also thanks @Diamond Lim for the tag šŸ˜…

    Here you go 10 fun facts about winged unicorns


  • Unicorns are free and they never like being bound, so they only let special people with pure souls ride on their backs. This immense honor should not be taken for granted.


  • Great contest @MountainMom and such a lovely badge @Lola_Pop

    And here comes my cutie little Unicorn!!!!!!!!!!

    The unicorn symbolism is linked toĀ purity, freedom, gentleness, virginity, innocence, divinity, and magic. Christians believe that the unicorn symbol is that of Christ and Mother Mary themselves. Seeing unicorns in dreams is inevitably a sign of good luck, happiness, and a positive omen

  • Glenn1972
    Glenn1972 Posts: 16,650

    Help Misty meet more unicornsĀ šŸ¦„

    Fun fact:

    Where did the wordĀ unicornĀ come from?

    Speaking of ā€œone-horned,ā€ thatā€™s whatĀ unicornĀ literally means. Borrowed into English by the early 1200s from French,Ā unicornĀ comes from the LatinĀ unicornis, ā€œhaving one horn.ā€ This root joinsĀ uni-, meaning ā€œone,ā€ andĀ cornu, ā€œhorn.ā€ (The Latin is a loan translation of the GreekĀ monokeros, its equivalent of ā€œone hornā€ and passing into English asĀ monoceros.)Ā SourceĀ 


  • DGenevieve
    DGenevieve Posts: 1,749
    edited December 2021

    @MountainMom šŸ˜ I like this one.

    Why is everyone so quick? I barely got the tag.šŸ˜†

    • Fun fact: A group of unicorns is called a blessing.
    • Because the ancient Greeks believed unicorns were real, the creatures are not included in Greek mythology but rather Greek natural history. The Greeks believed that unicorns lived inĀ India, which they thought was a realm of mystery.


  • Origins7_Dale
    Origins7_Dale Posts: 3,551
    edited December 2021


    Hi @MountainMom @Diamond Lim @Yosca @Nix66 @Pitty_Kitty thx on tag & badge,


    byĀ Dr. Elizabeth MitchellĀ onĀ August 18, 2008; last featuredĀ February 6, 2015

    Featured inĀ The New Answers Book 3

    Also available inĀ EspaƱol

    Free PDF Download




    • Courtesy: Domenichino, Virgin and Unicorn, [working under Annibale Carracci], Fresco, 1604ā€“1605, Farnese Palace, Rome) [Image by Never covered, viaĀ Wikimedia Commons.]


    To think of the biblical unicorn as a fantasy animal is to demean Godā€™s Word, which is true in every detail.

    Some people claim the Bible is a book of fairy tales because it mentions unicorns. However, the unicorns in the bible were real animals, not imaginary creatures. The Bible refers to the unicorn in the context of familiar animals, such as peacocks, lambs, lions, bullocks, goats, donkeys, horses, dogs, eagles, and calves (Job 39:9ā€“12).1Ā InĀ Job 38ā€“41, God reminded Job of the characteristics of a variety of impressive animals He had created, showing Job that God was far above man in power and strength.2

    Job had to be familiar with the animals on Godā€™s list for the illustration to be effective. God points out inĀ Job 39:9ā€“12Ā that the unicorn, ā€œwhose strength is great,ā€ is useless for agricultural work, refusing to serve man or ā€œharrow (plow) the valley.ā€ This visual aid gave Job a glimpse ofĀ Godā€™s greatness. An imaginary fantasy animal would have defeated the purpose ofĀ Godā€™s illustration.

    Modern readers have trouble with the unicorns in the Bible because we forget that a single-horned feature is not uncommon on Godā€™s menu for animal design. (Consider the rhinoceros and narwhal.) The Bible describes unicorns skipping like calves (Psalm 29:6), traveling like bullocks, and bleeding when they die (Isaiah 34:7). The presence of a very strong horn on this powerful, independent-minded creature is intended to make readers think of strength.

    The absence of a unicorn in the modern world should not cause us to doubt its past existence. (Think of the dodo bird. It does not exist today, but we do not doubt that it existed in the past.) Eighteenth century reports from southern Africa described rock drawings and eyewitness accounts of fierce, single-horned, equine-like animals. One such report describes ā€œa single horn, directly in front, about as long as oneā€™s arm, and at the base about as thick.Ā .Ā .Ā . [It] had a sharp point; it was not attached to the bone of the forehead, but fixed only in the skin.ā€3

    TheĀ elasmotherium, an extinct giant rhinoceros, provides another possibility for the unicornā€™s identity. TheĀ elasmotheriumā€™sĀ 33-inch-long skull has a huge bony protuberance on the frontal bone consistent with the support structure for a massive horn.4Ā In fact, archaeologist Austen Henry Layard, in his 1849 bookĀ Nineveh and Its Remains, sketched a single-horned creature from an obelisk in company with two-horned bovine animals; he identified the single-horned animal as an Indian rhinoceros.5Ā The unicorns in the Bible could have been theĀ elasmotherium.6

    Assyrian archaeology provides one other possible solution to the unicorn identity crisis. The biblical unicorn could have been an aurochs (a kind of wild ox known to the Assyrians as rimu).7Ā The aurochsā€™s horns were symmetrical and often appeared as one in profile, as can be seen on Ashurnasirpal IIā€™s palace relief and Esarhaddonā€™s stone prism.8Ā Fighting rimu was a popular sport for Assyrian kings. On a broken obelisk, for instance, Tiglath-Pileser I boasted of slaying them in the Lebanese mountains.9

    Extinct since about 1627, aurochs,Ā Bos primigenius, were huge bovine creatures.10Ā Julius Caesar described them in hisĀ Gallic WarsĀ as,

    • .Ā .Ā . a little below the elephant in size, and of the appearance, color, and shape of a bull. Their strength and speed are extraordinary; they spare neither man nor wild beast which they have espied.Ā .Ā .Ā . Not even when taken very young can they be rendered familiar to men and tamed. The size, shape, and appearance of their horns differ much from the horns of our oxen. These they anxiously seek after, and bind at the tips with silver, and use as cups at their most sumptuous entertainments.11


    The aurochsā€™s highly prized horns would have been a symbol of great strength to the ancientĀ BibleĀ reader.

    One scholarly urge to identify the unicorns in the Bible with the Assyrian aurochs springs from a similarity between the Assyrian wordĀ rimuĀ and the Hebrew wordĀ reā€™em. We must be very careful when dealing with anglicized transliterated words from languages that do not share the English alphabet and phonetic structure.12Ā However, similar words in Ugaritic and Akkadian (other languages of the ancient Middle East) as well as Aramaic mean ā€œwild bullā€ or ā€œbuffalo,ā€ and an Arabic cognate means ā€œwhite antelope.ā€

    However, the linguistics of the text cannot conclusively prove how many horns the biblical unicorn had. While modern translations typically translateĀ reā€™emĀ as ā€œwild ox,ā€ the King James Version (1611), Lutherā€™s German Bible (1534), the Septuagint, and the Latin Vulgate translated this Hebrew word with words meaning ā€œone-horned animal.ā€13

    The importance of the unicorns in theĀ BibleĀ is not so much their specific identityā€”much as we would like to knowā€”but their reality. TheĀ BibleĀ is clearly describing a real animal. The unicorn mentioned in theĀ BibleĀ was a powerful animal possessing one or two strong hornsā€”not the fantasy animal that has been popularized in movies and books. Whatever it was, it is now likely extinct like many other animals. To think of the biblical unicorn as a fantasy animal is to demeanĀ Godā€™s Word, which is true in every detail.

    Editorā€™s note: Originally published inĀ Answers in DepthĀ 2 (2007),Ā https://answersingenesis.org/answers/in-depth/v2/.


    Footnotes

    1. In addition toĀ Job 39:9ā€“10, the unicorn is mentioned inĀ Numbers 23:22,Ā 24:8;Ā Deuteronomy 33:17;Ā Psalm 22:21,Ā 29:6,Ā 92:10;Ā Isaiah 34:7.
    2. In Job, Godā€™s list of impressive real animals goes on to discuss peacocks, ostriches, horses, hawks, and eagles. God builds up to a crescendo, commanding Job to look at the behemoth, which He had created on the same day He created man (Job 40:15). The behemothā€™s description matches that of a sauropod dinosaur. Following the behemoth, the list concludes with the leviathan, a powerful, fiery sea creature. See ā€œCould Behemoth Have Been a Dinosaur?ā€
    3. Edward Robinson, ed.,Ā Calmetā€™s Dictionary of the Holy BibleĀ revised edition (Boston, MA: Crocker and Brewster, 1832), 907ā€“908.
    4. The report inĀ NatureĀ described a 33-inch-long skull with a bony frontal protuberance more than three feet in circumference. This bony protuberance with its associated structures is thought to have supported a horn over a yard long. Norman Lockyer, ā€œThe Elasmotherium,ā€Ā Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science, August 8, 1878, 388.
    5. Austen Henry Layard,Ā Nineveh and Its RemainsĀ (London: John Murray, 1849), 435.
    6. A margin note onĀ Isaiah 34:7Ā placed in the King James Version in 1769 mentions this possible identity, and the Latin Vulgate translates the same Hebrew word as ā€œunicornā€ in some contexts and ā€œrhinocerosā€ in others.
    7. AurochsĀ is both singular and plural, likeĀ sheep.
    8. Viewable at www.britishmuseum.org.
    9. Algernon Heber-Percy,Ā A Visit to Bashan and ArgobĀ (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1895), 150.
    10. Brittanica Concise Encyclopedia, 2007, s.v. ā€œAurochs.ā€
    11. Julius Caesar,Ā Gallic Wars, Book 6, chapter 28, www.classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.6.6.html.
    12. Elizabeth Mitchell, ā€œDoesnā€™t Egyptian Chronology Prove That the Bible Is Unreliable?ā€ inĀ The New Answer Book 2, Ken Ham, ed. (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2008), 245ā€“264.
    13. Some writers who hold to the two-horned identity think that the KJV translators substituted the pluralĀ unicornsĀ for the singularĀ an unicornĀ inĀ Deuteronomy 33:17Ā because they were uncomfortable with the idea of a two-horned unicorn. However, the KJV translators themselves noted the literal translationĀ an unicornĀ in their own margin note. They likely chose the plural rendering to fit the context of the verse.Ā Deuteronomy 33:17Ā states, ā€œHis [Josephā€™s] glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth: and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manassehā€ (KJV). The verse compares the tribal descendants of Josephā€™s ā€œhorns,ā€ meaning descendants of his two sons Ephraim and Manasseh, with the strong horns of unicorns. ā€œHornsā€ is plural because there are two sons in view, and ā€œunicornā€ is referenced because the unicornā€™s horn is so incredibly strong.


    Nice badge.



    Thx Origins7 Dale, šŸ˜€

    12/14/2021

  • bearwithme
    bearwithme Posts: 16,586

    I love Harry Potter and there were Unicorns in the dark forest.

    The blood of a Unicorn will keep you alive even if you are an inch from death, but it will be a cursed life the moment the blood touches your lips.

    šŸ˜ŠšŸØšŸ’•

  • Thanks @Diamond Lim for the tag, hello @MountainMom

    Here is my special unicorn


  • rare
    rare Posts: 579

    Fact :

    Unicorns are afraid ofĀ labradors and have been known to attack them, although they become docile aroundĀ pheasants.

  • A baby unicorn is called a "sparkle" or a "shimmer." šŸ’œ

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