Was Elasmotherium the Biblical unicorn?

CLAIM: The Biblical unicorn may have been an Elasmotherium. (Ham, 2010, p.30)

RESPONSE: In Ken Ham's New Answers Book 3, Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell floats the idea that the unicorn of the King James Bible may have been an Elasmotherium, an extinct rhino genus native to Asia. However, this interpretation has numerous theological and scientific problems.

BIBLICAL ISSUES

- Language and Depiction: Other young-Earth creationist ministries like Creation Ministries International and Got Questions point out that the Hebrew word that the KJV translates as unicorn, re'em, likely refers to a type of bovine given that it is a plausible cognate of the Assyrian rimu (wild bull/ass) and/or the Ugaritic rum (auroch, wild buffalo). (Got Questions, n.d.; Wieland, 1992; Wiktionary, 2024) The most likely candidate for the re'em was the auroch (Bos primigenius), a megafaunal bovine well known to those in the Ancient Near East as a symbol of strength and divinity that was difficult to hunt and depicted in Assyrian art as having one horn as a stylistic choice. (Ligeiro, 2023; O'Donoghue, 2021; Wieland, 1992) The direct relation of the re'em to the Assyrian descriptions and depictions of the auroch makes the latter a much more likely candidate than a rhino-like Elasmotherium.

- Culture and Geography: The biblical authors lived within the cultural and geographical framework of the Ancient Near East, where the flora and fauna were well-known, tied to their environment, and utilized in mythology. Several extinct animals such as the auroch or Asiatic lion are well-attested in the art and mythology of the time, as were numerous exotic animals from far-off lands in royal menageries. (Foster, 1998; Garran, 2023) No creatures resembling the Elasmotherium appear - even the rhinoceros, which was once floated as a possible identification of the re'em, fell out of favor given that their presence in the Ancient Near East predated significant cultural interactions or human settlement throughout the primary areas inhabited by the Biblical authors. This leaves Dr. Mitchell in the awkward position of suggesting that the Biblical authors were familiar with a creature that had no attestation anywhere else in the narrative body recovered from the Ancient Near East.

- Symbolism: As noted above, the auroch was a common and well-understood symbol of strength, majesty, and divine power for the Biblical authors, emphasizing God's power through His creation of an untamable and majestic creature. Proper theological interpretation relies on understanding how the text would have been understood by its original audience, and the way that the authors described the re'em does not match well with a rhino-like Elasmotherium. (Beierkuhnlein, 2015; Meier et al., 2017; O'Donoghue, 2021; Russell, 2022) In Job 39:9-12, the strength and wildness of the re'em are emphasized, which aligns closely with the aurochs as untamable beasts. In contrast, rhinoceroses were never associated with agricultural labor or domestication, making the imagery less relatable. Additionally, while past depictions of Elasmotherium heavily emphasize its long, keratinous frontal horn, no fossil remains of these horns have ever been found. In fact, recent research has called this interpretation into question, suggesting that the horn was much smaller, less impressive, and less prominent. (Titov et al., 2021) Compared to the auroch, rhino horns are much smaller and blunter than the majestic, glorious, and exalted horns the re'em is described as having in Deuteronomy 33:17 and Psalm 92:10.

SCIENTIFIC ISSUES

- Geographical Range: Elasmotherium had a restricted range, and was mostly native to the steppes of Central Asia, particularly regions in modern-day Russia, Kazakhstan, and Siberia. (Parnell, 2018) Its habitat and range were far removed from the Ancient Near East, and there's no paleontological or Elasmotherium ever lived in Israel, Mesopotamia, Egypt, or any other region where the Biblical authors may have encountered it or incorporated it into the Bible's cultural imagery. Dr. Mitchell would need to argue how an isolated population of Elasmotherium would have gotten into the Near East without leaving any evidence - especially since, as far as I was able to find, young-Earth baraminology models do not incorporate a model for how or when Elasmotherium was derived within the rhino kind - more on this below. (CreationWiki 2013; 2015; Dykes & Catchpoole, 2006)

- Timeline and Baraminology: Elasmotherium is estimated to have gone extinct around 39,000 years ago during the Pleistocene extinction, based on the most recent reliable fossil evidence. (Kosintsev et al., 2018) This is tens of thousands of years before the Biblical timeline began - no credible evidence has emerged to suggest that Elasmotherium survived into the historical period when the Biblical texts were written. While Dr. Mitchell would likely reject this timeline given her young-Earth convictions, all known Elasmotherium fossils occur from the Late Miocene to the Late Pleistocene (roughly 7 million to 39 thousand years ago), implying further problems that would need to be explained within the young-Earth framework for her argument to be plausible. For example, if the Flood boundary is lower in the Cenozoic as is the traditional young-Earth position, then the lack of Elasmotherium remains until long after the Flood would require a model for rapid baraminic diversification after the representatives of the rhino kind got off the ark followed by stunningly rapid extinction. If the Flood boundary is closer to the Neogene-Quaternary boundary as some recent young-Earth creationist research has suggested (Tomkins & Clarey, 2019), then Elasmotherium would have lived before, during, and after the Flood, even though there is no evidence that modern rhinos are derived from Elasmotherium and as such it would be an unlikely candidate for Noah to have taken on the Ark. Even if we assume a young-Earth outlook, Dr. Mitchell's suggestion has problems for which she has not provided a solution.

- Appearance and Behavior: As we addressed above, the re'em "unicorn" was an animal contrasted and compared with agricultural activity - rhinos have never been used for agriculture. Elasmotherium was stout, likely weighing up to 4 tons, making it a slow and stocky creature. Compare this to the re'em which was understood to be swift, lithe, and untamable, with implied power and agility. The Elasmotherium certainly wouldn't be capable of "skipping" like a young calf, as the re'em is described doing in Psalm 29:6.

CONCLUSION

From a theological perspective, interpreting re'em as Elasmotherium disregards the cultural, linguistic, and symbolic context of the Bible. The Biblical authors would not have had any knowledge of an extinct, geographically distant animal like Elasmotherium. Instead, the re'em likely reflects a known and symbolically relevant animal within the Ancient Near East, likely the aurochs. From a scientific perspective, there is no evidence that Elasmotherium survived into the historical period of or lived anyhwere near the regions associated with the Bible. Additionally, Dr. Mitchell's interpretation does not seem to line up well with young-Earth models like baraminology or post-Flood ecological diversification, making it an illogical candidate for the biblical unicorn no matter which side you approach it from, relying on an effort to create paleontological speculation that is not necessary.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Beierkuhnlein, C. (2015) Bos primigenius in Ancient Egyptian art - historical evidence for the continuity of occurrence and ecology of an extinct key species. Frontiers of Biogeography, 7(3), 107-118.

CreationWiki (2013, June 21) Baraminological Lists.

CreationWiki (2015, October 29) Rhinoceros.

Dykes, J. & Catchpoole, D. (2006) Evolution of the rhinoceros? Preposterous! Creation, 28(2), 28-32.

Garran, D. (2023, March 16) The Symbolism of Animals in Mesopotamian Art. The Collector.

Foster, K. P. (1998) Gardens of Eden: Exotic Flora and Fauna in the Ancient Near East. Yale F&ES Bulletin, 103, 320-329.

Got Questions (n.d.) Why does the KJV Bible mention the unicorn?

Kosintsev, P., Mitchell, K., Deviese, T., Van Der Plicht, J., Kuitems, M., Petrova, E., Tikhonov, A., Higham, T., Comeskey, D., Turney, C., Cooper, A., Van Kolfschoten, T., Stuart, A., Lister, A. (2018) Evolution and extinction of the giant rhinoceros Elasmotherium sibiricum sheds light on late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 3, 31-38.

Ligeiro, F. (2023, July 19) Was the biblical Re'em a unicorn? Stack Exchange, Biblical Hermeneutics.

Meier, J. S., Goring-Morris, A. N., Munro, N. D. (2017) Aurochs bone deposits at Kfar HaHoresh and the southern Levant across the agricultural transition. Antiquity, 91(360), 1469-1483.

O'Donoghue, R. (2021) Beasts of the Bible and Babylon. The Extinctions.

Parnell, B. (2018, November 28) Siberian Unicorn Roamed the Earth With Humans 40,000 Years Ago. Forbes.

Russell, N. (2022) Wild Meets Domestic in the Near Eastern Neolithic. Animals, 12(18).

Titov, V. V., Baigusheva, V. S., Uchytel, R. S. (2021) The experience in reconstructing of the head of Elasmotherium (Rhinocerotidae). Russian Journal of Theriology, 20(2), 173-182.

Wieland, C. (1992) The unicorn. Creation, 14(2), 14-15.

Wiktionary (September 2, 2024) ראם.