Big thunder lizard no kill man. Big lizard killed by falling rock, many moons ago.

Man read big Bible book. Man happy, give Bible book to next man.

Next man read Bible book, afraid. He elect leader to protect him, who thinks big lizards killed men.

Leader who thinks big lizards killed men reads Bible book, confused. He kill first man for his own good.

Next man blame first man for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Big Bible book gets passed to next man's children. To be continued...

Sid, your post is very informative and interesting, and you are right about this one word, but the larger argument is that the entire huge text is open to that kind of inquiry and dissection. Over the centuries, those books have passed through several languages, and untold original authors, hands, countries, ecumenical committees, scholars, translators and who knows what else, even before they were wrangled by Tisdale and all the others for the English KJV (not to mention the scores of translations that followed). That's a big wild imprecise process, solidified in print.

Yet there are apparently a lot of people who take these words very literally, and are convinced this is the end of knowledge. No logic, observations or reasoning will sway them. They want it taught in schools. We live in a marketplace of competing ideas, and that type of reactionary thinking has to be opposed.

Respectfully submitted by a Christian (and daily reader of KJV) who believes God wants us to use the brains He gave us. -- Jack

And exactly what was I blaspheming about? I only said that KJV may have a couple minor translation errors. Among Protestant Bibles, it still has the best, most beautiful language and beats the more modern (often dumbed down) tranlations hands down. Whether one is a believer or not, KJV has a strong presence in our Anglo-American culture and (IMO) should be read on at least that basis. Plus, it's in the public domain

Sid, thanks for taking the time to research and write that...I found it fascinating.

And the thought that all intelligent, educated, thinking people believe it to be false is also simply untrue.

In addition, the "proof" you refer to is dependent on philosophical (not to mention scientific) assumptions (read: beliefs) we're all [hopefully] taught in philosophy 101. So which beliefs are ok and which aren't? Apparently yours are the only ones that are allowed.

@Munky: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, and "Freedom of Stupidity" go hand in hand. You can't really have one without all. Anyway, you're right that some cults believe some loony-toons things, but Christianity is not a cult... and no, most of us don't believe in unicorns. See above explanation by Sid (thanks btw).

Some people believe the Earth is 6000 years old... That's fine with me if you can explain the ton of evidence that contradicts that. If you think you can, go for it! That's what science is. Discussion, argument and skepticism. If you don't allow all three (in ANY discussion), then you're not doing science; you're doing politics.

What's with the bellyaching, anyway? It just seems petty. Let them have their silly museum. Believing in pseudo-science may be dumb, but it's better than teaching your kids to strap on bombs and blow themselves up for religion.

If one was going to rag on Christians, though, there are probably better ways to do it than pick a mistranslated word from one of the many Bible translations in use by Christians. It just makes the billboarders look stupid and petty, IMHO.

The King James translators worked from the Latin Bible (itself a translation) which was the common use (that's what Vulgate means!) bible of the day. In Latin, the word for the rhinocerous is "unicornis" (literally "one horn"). When St. Jerome (from Africa, late 4th century) created the Vulgate, by translating ancient Hebrew texts into Latin, he used "unicornis" as a good translation for the Hebrew word for rhinocerous. The translation into Latin was accurate and everyone was happy.

Fastforward 1200 years... The KJV translators in Britain weren't too familiar with creatures such as rhinos and translated "unicornis" a little too directly, coming up with the false cognate "unicorn" (which also has 1 horn). An understandable error, and not a big deal, really. If you read the texts, you'll see they are not refering to white winged horses with horns in their heads.

I checked an e-text copy of Douay-Rheims (the English language Catholic Bible that actually predates KJV) and most of the "unicornis" references were translated as "rhinocerous" instead. There are a couple places in the Psalms that use "unicorn", though. It may be because the Psalms are very poetic and the translators weren't sure that a mythical unicorn wasn't intended. Douai-Rheims was also translated over time, with a number of people working on it. Some may have gone one way and some went the other. I dunno.

To be sure, there are folks out there that consider the KJV the "end-all" of bible translations, completely accurate and free of translation error. Among Christians, this is a pretty small sliver, though. So why rag on this single mistranslasted word in an enormous work to attack them or Christians as a whole?

Straight talk from Sid.

http://www.dtl.org/versions/article/unicorns.htm