A few years back I saw a curious program on a Christian television network
where a teacher attempted to show that dinosaurs are mentioned in
scripture.

The teacher cited the "behemoth" mentioned in Job 40; "leviathan" of Job 41:1, Psalm 104:26, and Isa 27:1; and some of the assorted "dragons," "unicorns," and "cockatrices" in other verses.

Now the theory goes that the KJV introduced mythological names for these creatures that the translators had never seen. Modern translators then only muddied the waters, by substituting the names of modern animals. Take the Hebrew word rahem, that the KJV rendered "unicorn." Modern translators speculated that the rahem was an ancient bovine creature, and so you find "wild ox" used instead in the NIV, ASV, NKJV, etc.

One scripture passage is very suggestive of how poor this modern translation is. In Job 39:9,10 we read Will the [rahem] be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?


The context of the scripture--God challenging Job to recognize his relative impotence--seems to require that the challenge He makes be impossible for a man to accomplish. But if we call the creature an ox--even a "wild bull"--why would that animal be one that a man could not capture and train to "harrow" (plow)? That is precisely what happened to bovine--men caught wild ones, tamed them, and used them to plow the ground. Rahem had to be some kind of indomitable animal, which makes the KJV choice of "unicorn" a more logical one than the modern translations' choice of "ox." But since a horned dinosaur, like triceratops, couldn't have ever been domesticated, it would also be a logical candidate for the actual rahem.

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