unicorns really existed!!

by Witchs Son 22 Replies latest jw friends

  • Caedes
    Caedes

    Shakes head.

  • hamsterbait
    hamsterbait

    Which type of whale has a long horn? Is it the Right Whale?

    Anyway - I read once that these horns were found on beaches, and gave rise to the unicorn stories.

    There is even a story by HG Wells that has unicorns as the chief characters.

    HB

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    Sorry, the Hebrew term r'm that was rendered "unicorn" in the KJV (on the basis of the Vulgate and LXX renderings, which mistakenly idenitified the animal as a rhinoceros) did not refer to any mythical beast -- neither did it refer to an animal alive today. It referred to one of the latest surviving Pleistocene megafauna, the bos primigenius, or giant wild ox, i.e. the aurochs, which became extinct in 1627. You may recognize it in the Lascaux cave paintings, depicting the beast being hunted by the Cro-Magnons responsible for the illustrations. The same word in Akkadian, i.e. rimu, was used to depict the animal in Assyrian reliefs and bones of the animal have also been found in Assyrian sites. In biblical passages like Deuteronomy 33:17 and Job 39:9-12, the aurochs was a symbol of majesty and power; in the former passage it is contrasted with the shwr (cf. Latin taurus, the domesticated bull), an animal held captive by man that is slaughtered and sacrificed. It also probably appears in the Animal Apocalypse (cf. 1 Enoch 90:37-38) as a symbol of the Messiah who transforms himself from a domesticated bovine into a powerful aurochs (the Ethiopic has the bizarre nagar "word" which is a mistranslation of the Greek rhéma, which in turn was likely a transliteration of r'm' from the Aramaic original), an image that may anticipate later Christian ideas about the resurrection and glorification of Christ.

  • Mariusuk.
    Mariusuk.

    Hamster it is called a narwhale and that big "horn" is a tooth!

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    Some famous Lascaux depictions of aurochs:

  • BurnTheShips
    BurnTheShips

    Lets hope we can get some DNA and repopulate the species.

    Burn

  • hamsterbait
    hamsterbait

    Interesting about the messiah in 1 Enoch transforming from one bovine into another. The Mithra Cult portrayed the messiah as a bull.

    HB

  • avishai
  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    hamsterbait....No, not really: 1) Messianism is a Jewish concept that is foreign to the Mithra(s) cult, 2) Mithras was not depicted as being a bull but as killing a bull (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithras), and thus Mithras worship involved the sacrifice of bulls, 3) the reason why the Animal Apocalypse depicts the messiah as an animal is because the vision as a whole portrays all human characters from Israel's history as animals; the kind of animal depended on the characteristics and traits that symbolized the personalities involved.

  • AlyMC
    AlyMC

    Quote:
    "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EPsuOEH1fY"

    ...and now the song is back in my head...

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