Unicorns In The Bible. That Makes Them Real?

reply to post by HomerinNC


You know, I kind of skipped that and started answering other stuff. Good catch.

Sorry sir, but you are incorrect
www.kingjamesbibleonline.org...

9 Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?

10 Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?

11 Wilt thou trust him, because his strength [is] great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him?

12 Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather [it into] thy barn?

reply to post by sonofliberty1776


Sharks and crocodiles are pretty much perfectly adapted to their environment. Evolution is not a conscious decision, it is a mutation that sometimes gives the offspring an advantage, sometimes a disadvantage. It it gives the offspring a disadvantage it will die and its genes will not be carried on. If it gives it an advantage the offspring will go onto reproduce and ensures its DNA survives. After some time the animal with advantageous DNA will out-breed the original animal because of this certain characteristic: strength, mobility, etc.

Evolution hasn't stopped, the time scale it takes place over is just too long for us to directly observe. Chimpanzees are quite a lot like us (or that is what we were like thousands of years ago), they use tools; have their own language; form tribes which have a hierarchy. Some type of monkeys even trade sex for grooming privileges

Missing link between man and ape

29+ Evidences for macroevolution

Evidence of common descent

Originally posted by sonofliberty1776

Originally posted by Maslo
What about fossils? Ancient people probably found some fossils of dinosaurs. Could this be one of the sources of these tales about strange animals?

Ever dug up a fossil? I have. You know those big monstrosities you see in the museum? They are not found that way. The pieces are dog up over a fairly large site and then painstakingly assembled. Now, I can't say for sure, but I seriously doubt that very many whole animal assembled fossils have ever been found just sitting there.

Thats all right, even scattered big bones could be enough to fuel the imagination of ancient people, and maybe some of them tried to assemble them into skeleton?

Wiki:

Dinosaur fossils have been known for millennia, although their true nature was not recognized. The Chinese, whose modern word for dinosaur is konglong (恐龍, or "terrible dragon"), considered them to be dragon bones and documented them as such. For example, Hua Yang Guo Zhi, a book written by Zhang Qu during the Western Jin Dynasty, reported the discovery of dragon bones at Wucheng in Sichuan Province.[134] Villagers in central China have long unearthed fossilized "dragon bones" for use in traditional medicines, a practice that continues today.[135] In Europe, dinosaur fossils were generally believed to be the remains of giants and other creatures killed by the Great Flood.

Scholarly descriptions of what would now be recognized as dinosaur bones first appeared in the late 17th century in England. Part of a bone, now known to have been the femur of a Megalosaurus,[136] was recovered from a limestone quarry at Cornwell near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, England, in 1676. The fragment was sent to Robert Plot, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and first curator of the Ashmolean Museum, who published a description in his Natural History of Oxfordshire in 1677. He correctly identified the bone as the lower extremity of the femur of a large animal, and recognized that it was too large to belong to any known species. He therefore concluded it to be the thigh bone of a giant human similar to those mentioned in the Bible. In 1699,

Edward Lhuyd, a friend of Sir Isaac Newton, was responsible for the first published scientific treatment of what would now be recognized as a dinosaur when he described and named a sauropod tooth, "Rutellum implicatum",[137][138] that had been found in Caswell, near Witney, Oxfordshire.[139]

en.wikipedia.org...

The first attempts to understand dinosaurs may have started thousands of years before they were officially named. Humans have long found fossils and incorporated them into their myths. For example, the griffin of mythology may be based on dinosaur skeletons found in the Gobi Desert. As noted by Adrienne Mayor, a classical folklorist, griffins were said to inhabit the Scythian steppes that reached from the modern Ukraine to central Asia. Mayor draws a connection to Protoceratops, a frilled dinosaur that is commonly found in the Gobi.[1] This dinosaur has many features associated with griffins; they share sharp beaks, four legs, claws, similar size, and large eyes (or eye sockets in the case of the fossils), and the neck frill of Protoceratops, with large open holes, is consistent with descriptions of large ears or wings. Additionally, its bones, which appear white, are easy to see in reddish Gobi rocks.[2]

en.wikipedia.org...:_Early_depictions

Wow ,. from a unicorn to bibles,. to dinos,.
this must be an open thread

To Summarize: 1) Unicorns are mentioned several times in the Bible, 2) though probably a King James-ian mistranslation of "wild ox", and 3) some churches say the earth is only 3000 or 6000 years old.
To Comment: 1) As a vacation Bible graduate at 11 years old, I was surprised that unicorns were mentioned in the Bible. 2) It probably is a translation thing.
3) I've heard Christians declare the earthly age figure as 5000 years old--which probably stems from calculations by 17th century Archbishop of Ireland James Ussher that concluded the earth was created on October 23, 4004 BC.
All fascinating stuff. But in no way whatsoever do unicorns exist just because they are mentioned in the Bible.
They exist because my galactic space pony and I say they do.
Besides, who else can Bedazzle our lunchboxes of life with glitter and hope?

sorry if this was mentioned before, but the bible is based on sumerian 'myths'

so back then, the aliens were expirimenting with mixing genes and species. so there very well could have been a unicorn in sumerian times.

I too believe unicorns, griffins, dragons and other so called mythical creatures could have existed. The only so called proof we have is the ancient mentions. At any rate, it is fun thinking about it and discussing it.

I'm sorry couldn't help myself,




mmmmmmm...

Good post HBT! S & F.

I believe that they were probably based upon some creature of unknown origins, maybe a Unicorn itself, but as in many of historys great tales (bible included) much was derived from human's need to feel guided by a higher power in times of crisis and great suffering. The Unicorn may have served that very purpose along with many other creatures and gods of the day. I feel pretty sure that much of our ancient history is not being divulged at all with much of it suppressed.

reply to post by mikelee


Thank you!

I too agree, that there is much suppression of our history, especially the further back we go. In HS I hated history so much I took a correspondence course, and used one of my friends answers from the previous year. Now I wish I had paid more attention back when my brains were young and working properly.

Unicorns are rhinoceroses.
The behemoth is an elephant.
Leviathan? Whale, of course.

Rhinoceroses and elephants used to live in the Near East. By the time Europeans started translating these texts though, the critters had long since been extirpated from the locale, and it's doubtful the translators had any common term for something like "trunk" and so simply used whatever word seemed most fitting.

Originally posted by works4dhs
Thus back to "adaptation", not evolution. In darwins tour of the Galapagos, he never showed one species changing into something else, only birds into different types of the same bird etc...

Except they're separate species; they don't interbreed. Of course they evolved into a different kind of similar bird. Do you expect a finch to lay an egg that hatches into a buffalo or something?

my biggest issue is the lack of transitional fossils; theoretically, almost all fossils should be 'transitional'.

There is also that, I can't believe I forgot to mention that.

...All fossils ARE transitional. Good golly, the irony.

Originally posted by BrokenCar

Anybody got any good recipes????

Originally posted by JaxonRoberts
reply to post by sonofliberty1776

 

You find me some evidence that isn't from a site that starts with www.bible.anything or that is found from a reputable museum (the Creation Museum FFS???) and I will consider it. I want data, not spin... And I HIGHLY doubt the authenticity of those supposed tracks...

Why is the Bible "spin?" Maybe evolution is "spin." If you really want to believe in evolution then consider that forces existing at the time of the dinosaurs would have been much different. For example: "the day/night rotation was 63,000 seconds shorter than the present 86,400 seconds it is today. This would put the Earth's rotation at about 6.5 hours per day/night cycle, when it was created, 4.5 billion years ago." This info is from novan.com... By the time dinosaurs got here, it was still a shorter day.

Another problem is that the moon and earth had to have been much closer, since the earth and moon distance is gradually increasing over time. That mean that land animals would not have much land as huge "tidal plains" engulfed much, if not all of the land area during a normal day a few billion years ago. Even later, tidal pull would have had a much greater effect on animals that it does today. www.talkorigins.org...

As for the Catholic church claiming infallibility, it's the KJB that mentions unicorns 9 times. Job is a pre-flood book. After the flood, atmospheric conditions changed greatly. LIfe spans shortened and many animals became extinct. Dinosaurs had trouble surviving in the new enviourment. Perhaps unicorns did too. Fundamental Baptists are more likely to support Biblical preservation in translation than other Christians groups.

As for fossils, how often are fossilized horns found? Most of the time identifying what animal produced the horn is difficult. Most of the web sites I found talked about the difficulty of identification.

Originally posted by zachi
Why is the Bible "spin?" Maybe evolution is "spin."

Because the entire point of the bible is to proselytize the hybrid Nilotic / Indo-European religion adhered to by a single tribe of steppes-dwellers roughly three thousand years ago. In it, you find things like traveling pillars of fire that only hurt people of certain nationalities, four rivers that meet together with no drainage, a dude's wife turning to salt, a hairy Buddhist who feeds forty people by running his replicator, and the ability of early church leaders to strike tax cheats dead with a look. Even without the bad science, it's pretty obviously a handbook for the tribal priests to keep a rein on the larger part of the herd - thus the shepherd references.

"Maybe evolution is spin?" Well, I won't argue that it can't be spun; the whole "missing link" hubbub that pops up every time a paleontologist finds a new primate is a prime example. However, this is very shallow spin, especially since technically every species is a "missing link" between its own ancestors and its own descendants. However, unlike the Bible - or most other religions handbooks - evolution can be tested. It can be shown through a number of scientific disciplines, and is backed up by a number of other scientific disciplines.

When's the last time religions agreed on so much?

If you really want to believe in evolution then consider that forces existing at the time of the dinosaurs would have been much different. For example: "the day/night rotation was 63,000 seconds shorter than the present 86,400 seconds it is today. This would put the Earth's rotation at about 6.5 hours per day/night cycle, when it was created, 4.5 billion years ago." This info is from novan.com... By the time dinosaurs got here, it was still a shorter day.

Here's something you may not know. The first dinosaurs started hopping around in the mid-late Triassic, about two hundred million years ago. Know how old the earth was then?

4.3 billion years old.

In other words, the days were shorter... but not in any really meaningful way. We're looking at a measure of minutes. maybe an hour. The earth had pretty much slowed to its current crawl by the time the first archosaurs came about.

Another problem is that the moon and earth had to have been much closer, since the earth and moon distance is gradually increasing over time. That mean that land animals would not have much land as huge "tidal plains" engulfed much, if not all of the land area during a normal day a few billion years ago. Even later, tidal pull would have had a much greater effect on animals that it does today. www.talkorigins.org...

A few billion years ago, there were no land animals. Your time scale is totally messed up. By the time dinosaurs - to use the common benchmark - showed up, yeah, tides were more powerful than they are today. But again, on the geological scale such things are measured in, the difference between dinosaurs and today would be insignificant.

Notice how your sources offer no numbers and all their sources are self-referential?

As for the Catholic church claiming infallibility, it's the KJB that mentions unicorns 9 times. Job is a pre-flood book. After the flood, atmospheric conditions changed greatly. LIfe spans shortened and many animals became extinct. Dinosaurs had trouble surviving in the new enviourment. Perhaps unicorns did too. Fundamental Baptists are more likely to support Biblical preservation in translation than other Christians groups.

I'd enjoy seeing proof of your claims. Prove with evidence. Including the parts about the Baptists. Especially those parts.

As for fossils, how often are fossilized horns found? Most of the time identifying what animal produced the horn is difficult. Most of the web sites I found talked about the difficulty of identification.

Depends on what you're calling a "horn"

Horn itself is just protein, keratin, same as your hair and fingernails. it rots. However, most horn-bearing animals have an underlying bone core on the skull. Even the exceptions such as rhinoceroses have underlying bone structure that says "there was a horn here." Since these bones are almost always part of a skull - and since most horns are actually very distinctive between species - identification is rather easy.

If you mean the famous case of early paleontologists putting the iguanadon's thumb on top of its nose? That wasn't a misidentification, it was bad anatomy. Horns just don't work that way.

Even so, "random chunk" fossils can be vexingly hard to properly identify. Putting them in the proper clade is usually easy enough (this gets tricky with fish and early amphibians, and distinguishing birds and dinosaurs) and sometimes the order can be simple enough. Genus and species can be a real pain. Thank goodness evolution would be just as provable without fossils, huh? Oh, molecular biology. What can't you do?

Funny enough, there are elephant mounds along the mississippi....
along with all the other animal mounds of critters that were natural to the mound builders...
Many exotic animals went extinct around 12,000 years ago
saber toothed tigers, mastodons...
then further back we had stegosaurouses..

though Rhino prolly wins the day....

how do we get Pegasus?

The Bible is a collaboratively written historical fantasy novel. Nothing of import in it is true.

reply to post by thunderlady

You say "nothing" in the Bible is true? Obviously, you have not read it.

The Bible covers strange creations at the time of Noah. The fallen angels were messing with genetic engineering in humans, animals and plants.

Originally posted by DISRAELI
reply to post by hotbakedtater

 

Of course unicorns exist.The unicorn is a European artist's impression of a traveller's description of a one-horned animal which he saw charging at great speed across the plains of Africa-
known to modern science as a rhinoceros

edit on 5-12-2010 by DISRAELI because: (no reason given)

This "unicorn" is known as the "re'em" (ראם rĕ'em) a large and mean creature that lived in Europe ect untill Roman times. More like an ox, maybe an aurochs very wild and couldnt be tamed if you took one out of its mothers womb, I think J Cesar said that. It was killed off. Very aggresive and was said to attack humans. I have not read but have heard that Cesar put out a kill all order on this creature.

reply to post by JaxonRoberts

AHEMMMM.........
........Archeological Evidence Human & Dinosaur Cohabitation . and yet a small list of more Evidence . Unicorns may have existed before the great flood and the actual Horn was in fact similar to our own Cartilage in the Nose for instance, which is quite hard but not like bone and therefore would not survive in any fossil record, unless the archeologist got extremely lucky for Instance.
I believe myself that they were real......... but alas like the DODO they are now extinct. Permanently?.........maybe, maybe not look at the Sabertooth Cat this didn't go extinct, big cats simply got a bit smaller and stopped growing the teeth, maybe this is also true for the Unicorn.

reply to post by DreamerOracle


www.bible.ca & www.creationwiki.org DO NOT count as unbiased evidence that the Flintstones is based on reality... Get back to me when Harvard or Princeton agree with that unscientific tripe...

Evidence FAIL...