Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell (I’m writing to the university who gave her a doctorate...) writes:

1. Some people claim the Bible is a book of fairy tales because it mentions unicorns. However, the biblical unicorn was a real animal, not an imaginary creature. The Bible refers to the unicorn in the context of familiar animals, such as peacocks, lambs, lions, bullocks, goats, donkeys, horses, dogs, eagles, and calves
   

Further

1. The absence of a unicorn in the modern world should not cause us to doubt its past existence.
   

If she had spoken of possible translations of the Hebrew nouns רְאֵם, רְאיֵם, רְים and רֵם that would have been a legitimate philological controversy. Gerome, in fact, had already

understood the difficulties in translating that Hebrew verse. He spoke of rinocerotis. I’d rather think of a two-horn animal considering Deuteronomy 33:17

בְּכוֹר שׁוֹרוֹ הָדָר לוֹ, וְקַרְנֵי רְאֵם קַרְנָיו

Anyway, Mitchell’s goal is not a linguistic analysis. She’s very clear:

1. To think of the biblical unicorn as a fantasy animal is to demean God’s Word, which is true in every detail.
   

Amen.

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L’unicorno biblico sarebbe un animale reale, stando a quanto afferma questa studiosa. L’obiettivo non è tanto l’analisi linguistica dei sostantivi usati nel testo ebraico per designare l’animale - רְאֵם, רְאיֵם, רְים e רֵם - ma piuttosto provare il letteralismo biblico.

La parola di Dio è vera in ogni dettaglio, scrive.

In realtà la questione è molto complicata. E, da un punto di vista filologico, aveva già fatto impazzire Gerolamo, che aveva reso quei sostantivi ebraici con rinocerotis. Uno, due o dieci corna: cosa importa? Come si fanno a considerare storiche le saghe bibliche?