What was a scapegoat in the Bible?
A real goat!
Read Leviticus 16 for the instructions that the high priest was to follow on the Day of Atonement. The Hebrew word was translated in the Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate as the goat that departs, and in Tyndale’s English Bible as the (e)scape goat. This later became scapegoat in the 1611 King James Bible.