Analysis Of Metaphors In The Bible From Cultural And Cognitive Perspective

In the past decades, the study of metaphor has changed dramatically. The publication of Metaphors We Live By written by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) marks the real beginning of cognitive linguistics, in which conceptual metaphor was put forward. And the importance of metaphor in human cognition began to be recognized.Metaphor is not merely a matter of language, but a method of thinking and an effective cognitive tool for human beings to understand abstract and untouchable concepts in terms of concrete and well-known ones. Many Chinese scholars show great interest in the study of metaphor influenced by "metaphor mania" in west countries. One of these focuses is to study metaphor in a particular culture. The purpose is to try to make the relationship between culture and metaphor clearer.Considering the fact that the Bible can provide abundant examples of metaphorical expressions, this paper attempts to explain metaphors in the Bible on the basis of western culture. In this paper the basic theories about metaphor are introduced, including the mapping metaphor, the conceptual metaphor and the image schema, the work mechanism of metaphor and its functions. The theory framework also involves the knowledge of culture, so that readers can have a clear understanding about the foundation of this thesis.There are five chapters in this paper. The first chapter is the general introduction, including research background, the purpose of this thesis and the organization of it. Metaphor has been only as a matter of language and as a set of figurative tool in the ancient Greek. Scholars began to study metaphor from the perspective of cognitive linguistics since the publication of the book Metaphors We Live By, which takes metaphor study into a new phase. The Bible is really an encyclopedia and crystallization of the western culture, especially the language of it not only reflects but also impacts the western culture. So it is worth our study. This paper is based on metaphors in the Bible to show and make it clearly that the important role metaphors play in the thinking mode of the western people. It also illustrates how people's thinking mode influences the formation of metaphors.The second chapter is about theories needed in this paper and literature review. There are three theories in this thesis. They are mapping theory, conceptual metaphor and the image schema, in which the mapping theory is key and central point to the nature of metaphor and the other two are only extended by mapping theory. These three theories are not separated, but interact with each other. They work tightly to form the nature of metaphor. Simply to say, the working mechanism of metaphor is like this:Two domains are involved in a metaphor. One is familiar to people called source domain, while the other is new called target domain. In the daily language, we often use the source domain to narrate and express the target domain to make the target domain understood and grabbed easily. Metaphor has three functions:an important means of understanding the world; an essential way of conceptualizing experience; a cognitive tool in creating new meanings. Culture consists of all the shared products of human society. The culture, the mode of thinking and the language are inseparable with each other. Metaphor stands as a linguistic bridge between culture and the embodied mind.The third chapter is the main part of the whole paper, analyzing the main three kinds of metaphors in the Bible according to theories of metaphor and culture. The first kind is the Pastoral Metaphor which exists in the whole book. The second kind is the metaphors concerning about Solomon's wisdom and the last kind is the expressions having the metaphorical image. We use examples to analyze Pastoral metaphors by theories of metaphor. It also contains two sub-metaphors of Pastoral metaphor—Sheep and Goat metaphor. Jew is famous for his wisdom in the world. The wisdom in the Bible embodies in the Proverbs, in which King Solomon is the incarnation of wisdom. Metaphors concerning about wisdom are mainly coming from metaphors those are used by Solomon to educate his people. The paper lists five examples of expressions having metaphorical image to illustrate the relationship between culture and metaphor. They are Number Seven metaphor, the metaphor of Garden of Eden, the metaphor of Forbidden Fruit, the metaphor of Serpent and the metaphor of Living Water.In the fourth part, the article goes on exploring the relationship between culture and metaphor from the perspective of cognitive linguistics to make the relationship much clearer and more obvious. When we use and make metaphors, culture stored in our human's memory must be represented in metaphors. Then metaphors with the influence of culture permeate onto the culture in turn, which makes the relationship more complicated. The paper also narrates reasons to use so many metaphors in the Bible:cognitive reason, the linguistic reason, the psychological reason and the idiosyncrasy.The last part is the conclusive part, in which the paper gives a brief conclusion of the whole paper.