October 13, 2006

Further Unicorn Reflections

Now I know this is silly stuff, but I had to post this one. In the post before last I was writing about the unicorns, as a symbol, of course, of junk from the so-called New Age movement that creeps into our Catholic Christian religion.

Today I noticed evidence that Jesus himself was against the unicorns. I was, just for practice, saying my prayers in Latin when I noticed verse 22 (21 in some numberings) of psalm 22:

Save me from the mouth of the lion, my afflicted soul from the horns of the wild oxen! (RSV)

In Latin, however, the verse reads:

Salva me ex ore leonis, et a cornibus unicornium humilitatem meam.

Now the Douay Old Testament, trying to be faithful to Jerome's Latin if not artful English, renders the verse thusly:

Save me from the lion's mouth; and my lowness from the horns of the unicorns.

Both Matthew and Mark portray Jesus praying this psalm from the Cross. Therefore we can conclude that Jesus was emphatically against the unicorns.

2 comments:

Chris Dickson, F.L.A. said...

I would venture a guess that Jesus was probably not a big fan of Pegasus either, my dear Friar...

Eleanor Burne-Jones said...

Where would we be without you? :0)