Mixing Metaphors
God as Mother and Father in Deutero-Isaiah
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Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN: 9780826471567
Number of Pages: 216
Published: 01/07/2004
Width: 15.6 cm
Height: 23.4 cm
While most treatments of biblical metaphor examine individual metaphors in isolation, Sarah J. Dille presents a model for interpretation based on their interaction with one another. Using Lakoff and Johnson's category of "metaphoric coherence", she argues that when nonconsistent or contradictory metaphors appear together in a literary unit, the areas of overlap (coherence) are highlighted in each. Using the images of father and mother in Deutero-Isaiah as a starting point, she explores how these images interact with others: for example, the divine warrior, the redeeming kinsman, the artisan of clay, or the husband. The juxtaposition of diverse metaphors (common in Hebrew prophetic literature) highlights common "entailments", enabling the reader to see aspects of the image which would be overlooked or invisible if read in isolation. Dille argues that any metaphor for God can only be understood if it is read or heard in interaction with others within a particular cultural context.
1: Understanding Metaphor; Chapter 2: Kinship And Birth In Deutero-Isaiah And Ancient Israel; Chapter 3: Like A Woman In Labor (Isaiah 42:8-17); Chapter 4: Yhwh's Sons And Daughters (Isaiah 43:1-7); Chapter 5: The Divine Artisan (Isaiah 45.9-13); Chapter 6: Can A Mother Forget? (Isaiah 49:13-23); Chapter 7: Divine Husband And Father (Isaiah 50:1-3); Chapter 8: Conclusions
"Even though the overall contribution of this monograph is very valuable, a detailed examination reveals many areas that need strengthening. Dille's bibliography is rather thin, and she does not interact with some of the most important secondary resources that touch on topics that she discusses. For instance, Dille devotes an entire section to childbirth and parenting in the ancient Near East and Israel (pp. 24-29) but she does not cite perhaps the most relevant resource on this subject: M. Stol, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible (Styx, 2000)...In spite of these weaknesses..." -Charles Halton, Bulletin for Biblical Research 18.2, 2008--Sanford Lakoff