Literatuur

• - - , Biblical-studies@yahoogroups.com, 9 Jul 2006, Yitzhak Sapir: Unicorns and the Dating of Deuteronomy
  Anyone visiting the Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem will notice a very significant omission. It might be understandable as these are rare creatures whose capture and breeding in captivity is very tricky. But still, one does not go to the biblical zoo in order to see the common fly. Nevertheless, while there are no unicorns in the confines of the zoo, the zoo did devote a monthly focus webpage to the unicorn:
  http://www.jerusalemzoo.org.il/english/upload/month/unicorn.html
  The Septuagint translates the word "r'em" as "monokerwtos" in
  Num 23:22 (see: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/gopher/text/religion/biblical/parallel/04.Num.par ).
  Another verse in the Bible that may suggest the "r'em" is a unicorn is Psalm 92:11, which says "wattarem kir'em qarni" -- "and you shall exalt my horn like a r'em's [horn]". Interestingly, this verse spells the word r'em as "r)ym", using a -y- for a vowel letter, which is consistent with late orthography. It may thus provide additional and indirect support for the reading of "r)m" = "unicorn" in post-exilic or Greek times, the primary evidence being the translation of the Septuagint.
  However, it is also possible to read this as "wattarem kir'em qarnay" -- "and you shall exalt my couple of horns like a r'em's [horns]" if one pays no attention to the Massoretic vocalization. This verse just goes to show that the Biblical Zoo webpage is not kidding when it writes: "Any efforts to approach them have usually ended in disaster, for the animal or for the researcher."
  It probably goes without saying, that a unicorn has one single horn. It would be silly to claim that two-horned beast is a unicorn.
  In the Hebrew of the Massoretic Bible, horns, like other body parts that normally come in pairs, are read as a dual: qarnayim. It is well known, that Ugaritic has a much more extensive system for duals, which affects not just "normally paired words" but even common everyday words. Telling apart words that are duals in Ugaritic is no simple matter. Sometimes, we just don't know, or we guess. Daniel Sivan, in "On the Dual in the Ugaritic Nouns", Leshonenu 46/1: 65-71 (Hebrew), writes:
  "At times, forms that have the -m ending will be considered dual since their plurals have the ending -t: so thlxnm 'two tables' and in plural 'thlxnt', l$nm 'two tongues' and compare the plural l$onot in Hebrew, li$a:na:tu in Akkadian, (nm 'two eyes' alongside the plural (nt 'fountains'. At times, the forms themselves are dual from their very nature (for example, dual body parts, etc). So ydm 'two hands'; (nm 'two eyes', mtnm 'two hips', qrnm 'two horns'." On the last one, he provides a footnote: "KTU 1.12, I,30, and compare the plural qrnt KTU 1.17 VI,22."
  It is not usually realized that these comments are useful for Hebrew as well as Ugaritic. The words ydm and qrnm in Ugaritic are in parallel to the Hebrew yadayim and qarnayim, and both have -t ending plurals in Hebrew, yadot and qarnot. For example, "qarnot hammizbeax", "horns of the altar". This can be compared to the "qrnt" of the Ugaritic plural mentioned in Sivan's footnote. The dual in the Hebrew of the Bible is very "flexible" as to what a "dual" means. In Jer 38:4, we find "ydey )n$ey hammilxamah" in the sense that each man has two hands, even though there are more than two hands in the total count (more than one person * 2 hands each = at least four hands, and likely many more). In contrast, where the subject does not have a pair of "hands", the word "yadot" is used. For example, in the case of 1 Kings 7:32, it says "wydot ha)opannim bammkonah".
  Another good example is Deut 33:17: "bkwr $wrw hdr lw, wqrny r)m qrnyw". The JPS translates this as "His firstling bullock, majesty is his; and his horns are the horns of the wild-ox." What this translation does not make clear is that the Hebrew uses the dual of the word qeren, thus making it obvious that the subject -- the r'em -- is not a unicorn, no matter what the Septuagint says. It might be argued that the r'em is used in the collective, and that the words 'qrny' and 'qrnyw' are intended in the plural, whereby the masculine is known to displace the feminine plural in many places in Hebrew, but this appears to me to be really a forced and unlikely interpretation. Besides, as the Biblical Zoo webpage says, "once one has observed a true unicorn, one will never again make an identification error!"
  It is more reasonable to argue that the verse does not speak of a unicorn, and it is only under Greek influence that the r'em was identified as a unicorn. While one verse is by no means evidence, it appears that the usage of "r'em" in Deut 33:17 predates both the Greek period and the Septuagint translation.
• - - , B-Hebrew, , re'em and unicorn and wild ox
  Deut 33:17 - the horns of unicorns
• - - , Algemeen, , [0], Algemeen,
  • W.P. Gerritsen, "De eenhoorn, de Bijbel en de Physiologus. De metamorfose van een Oud-Indische mythe" in Queeste. Tijdschrift over middeleeuwse letterkunde in de Nederlanden, jaargang. 14, 2007.
  • W.P. Gerritsen, "Een eenhoorn in ‘de Dikzak’ (Leiden, ub, bpl 2473, f. 236r-237r)" in Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde, Jaargang 128, p. 126-134.
  • W. Schaurte, "Darstellung eines Elasmotherium in der Felsmalerei von Rouffignac" in Natur und Museum 94 (1964).

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