Ask a Traditional Catholic

[Razzle]

Then why were unicorns, not rhinoceruses, depicted in Christian art? The Latin was clearly mistranslated into the English of the time.

Why does the pope wear a Star-Trek hat.... *shrugs* who knows... To be honest I didn't realize unicorns were depicted in christian art. I would venture to guess that a medieval artist had no idea what a rhinoceros looked like.

That's right, they probably didn't know what a rhinoceros looked like. Even if they had done, they'd also have been wrong to translate it as "rhinoceros". My point is that due to ignorance, they interpreted the Latin "unicorn", translated from a Greek word meaning "one horn", to mean the mythological animal from India described by the Roman and Greek writers they were aware of. That's what the word "unicorn" meant in their minds. I would call that a mistranslation. There are many examples like this in the Bible, of a particular word being mistranslated from Latin or Greek into English for many years, and in turn being mistranslated for the non-English speaking people that were taught Christianity by English speakers. Most of these don't affect the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, and therefore most Christians (not all) are happy to accept that in those cases, the older translations and traditional interpretations were wrong. The bias comes in where those same Christians react highly dismissively to evidence that the doctrine of Mary's virginity also came about due to mistranslation.