I love trivia and that is interesting. Does the DR version have unicorns and cockatrices in it, as does the KJV?
The KJV does have the word ‘unicorn’ in it, but first we need to point out the following (copied almost verbatim from a post made by me a long while ago):
The word unicorn (
uni+
cornus) means ‘one-horned’, and was used in the KJV to translate the Hebrew word
re’em, of obscure meaning (Jewish translations left it untranslated, or so I’ve heard) but may mean ‘wild ox’ (perhaps an auroch, a species of cattle that went extinct in the year 1627) due to the affinity of re’em to the Akkadian word
rimu (cognate to Assyrian
remu and Ugaritic
r’m). The Akkadian word may be directly derived from alim “powerful,” although the former is also thought to have Semitic roots from a word meaning “to be high” and thought to refer to the animal’s sweeping horns.
Rimu is often used to translate Sumerian
am “bull, wild bull.”
*
http://www.christiansofiraq.com/Rimu.jpg
A depiction of a bull in Assyrian Art. Note that the two horns appear as a single one, being depicted symmetrically sideways (as is the case in Egyptian and Assyrian art).
An auroch, the
re’em of the Bible?*
Perhaps the translators of the Septuagint knew the depiction of bulls in art which looks like they show them with only one horn, so they chose to translate
re’em as
monokeros (‘one-horned’).
Jerome renders the word
re’em as
rinoceros in
-Numbers 23: 22, 24:8
-Deuteronomy 33: 17
-Job 39; 9-10
-Psalm (Jerome’s translation from the Hebrew, aka the
Versio juxta Hebraicum or the Hebrew Psalter) 29 (28): 6 (7)
As
unicornus in:
-Psalm 22 (21): 21 (22)
-Psalm (Jerome’s translation from the Septuagint, aka the
Versio Gallicana or the Gallican Psalter) 29 (28): 6 (7)
-Psalm (
Versio Gallicana) 92 (91): 10 (11)
-Isaiah 34: 7
And finally as monoceros in:
-Psalm (
Versio juxta Hebraicum) 92 (91): 10 (11)
The version of the Psalms usually included in the Vulgate and the one commonly used in the Church is the Gallican Psalter, which renders all incidence of
re’em as
unicornus, a translation of the Greek word
monokeros.
Early translations of the Bible (at least in English) thus followed suit in rendering re’em as ‘unicornus’.