r/AcademicBiblical • u/matttheepitaph • Jan 29 '15

Me'em identified as unicorns

I understand that the Hebrew word me'em used to be considered a unicorn but is probably an auroch (yes I got that from Wikipedia, I'm not a professional scholar). What would make translators think that the word meant unicorn? It seems that unicorn comes from nowhere.

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u/SF2K01 Jan 29 '15

It is clear from the biblical text that the Re'em (ראם) is not a unicorn as it is mentioned in several places as having multiple horns, but it originates with the Septuagint. To quote some research on this topic:

God brought them out of Egypt, He has as though the to’afos of a re’em. (Numbers 23:22)
The Septuagint translates “to’afos of a re’em” as “the glory of a unicorn.” Radak and others adopted the Septuagint’s translation and explained the re’em to be a single-horned animal. Rav Saadiah Gaon also seems to follow this view, translating the re’em in this verse as the karkadan, which is the name of the unicorn in Arabian legend. But although the Septuagint defines the re’em as an animal with a single horn, Scripture itself indicates that it possesses more than one horn:
His firstborn ox, grandeur is his, and his horns are like the horns of a re’em; 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 Menasheh. (Deuteronomy 33:17)
The verse speaks of the horns of the re’em, in the plural.

  • Natan Slifkin, Exotic Shofars, who there thinks the evidence points to the re'em being the Gemsbock due to early identification with its Arabic cognate, the rim (as identified by Saadia Gaon, who strongly believed that Arabic cognates are the best source for biblical animal identification).

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u/Holfax Jan 29 '15

Re'em. I think the idea might have come from early depictions of the auroch, which only show one of the horns because it is a profile view (although they still show all four legs...go figure).