Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/1773

 and therefore there is sufficient ground for seeking the origin of the tradition of the unicorn in an antelope, - perhaps rather like a horse, - with one horn rising out of the two points of ossification over the frontal suture. The proper buffalo, Bos bubalus, cannot therefore be intended, because it only came from India to Western Asia and Europe at a more recent date, but also not any other species whatever of this animal (Carey and others), which is recognisable by its flat horns, which are also near together, and its forbidding, staring, bloodshot eyes; for it is tameable, and is (even in modern Syria) used as a domestic animal. On the other hand there are antelopes which somewhat resemble the horse, others the ox (whence βούβαλος, βούβαλις, is a name for the antelope), others the deer and the ass. Schultens erroneously considers ראם to be the buffalo, being misled by a passage in the Divan of the Hudheilites, which gives the ri'm the by-name of dhu chadam, i.e., oxen-like white-footed, which exactly applies to the A. oryx or even the A. leucoryx; for the former has white feet and legs striped lengthwise with black stripes, the latter white feet and legs. Just as little reason is there for imagining the rhinoceros after Aquila (and in part Jerome); ῥινοκέρως is nothing but an unhappy rendering of the μονοκέρως of the lxx. The question in Job 39:10, as already observed, requires an animal that inhabits the mountains. On אבה, to be willing = to take up, receive.