Sensing World Sensing Wisdom

<p>The Bible is full of metaphors. On the surface these metaphors seem like simple literary flourishes that have been added to the text for artistic effect. This book however argues that biblical metaphors reflect more basic prelinguistic cognitive structures. These conceptual metaphors developed out of common concrete experiences and only gradually developed into the complex metaphors that one finds within biblical texts. This book explores how common sensory activities like seeing hearing touching eating breathing and walking developed into the abstract metaphors for wisdom that one finds in Proverbs Job and Qohelet. Because it traces the cognitive development of a set of related metaphors across several congruent texts it provides a model by which scholars can trace the cognitive development of biblical metaphors more generally in the Hebrew Bible and other early Jewish and Christian texts.</p>