The Metaphorical Patterning Of The Sin Concept In Biblical Hebrew

This dissertation probes one of the central religious ideas in the Hebrew Bible – the concept of sin – through the most pervasive metaphors used to express the notion in Biblical Hebrew. The approach adopted in this study emerged out of a consideration of perspectives coming out of recent theoretical investigations of metaphor in linguistics and the philosophy of language. Two aspects of the phenomenon are of particular importance. The first has to do with the systematicity of metaphor, or the tendency in a given language for metaphorical expressions to occur in thematically and inductively related patterns (or "schemata"). The second is the observation that "metaphoricity" is not an intrinsic quality of a linguistic expression, but rather is the result of an act of construal on the part of the reader or hearer. With these and other theoretical considerations in mind, the study proceeds with an overview of the primary metaphorical patterns dealing with sin (focusing on expressions containing the nouns ‘āwōn , h&dotbelow;ēt&dotbelow;’, h&dotbelow;at&dotbelow;t&dotbelow;a’t&barbelow;, or peša‘), organized into four broad categories: those that envision sin as an 'object', including as a 'burden' that is borne by the sinner; those that view sin as an 'account', whether written or mental; various metaphors of sin as a 'path' or 'direction'; and metaphors of sin as 'stain' or 'impurity'. After a careful philological analysis of the relevant expressions, in the course of which hypotheses are offered regarding the potential diachronic relationships between certain (groups of) metaphors as well as other interpretative issues, some concluding thoughts are given on the distinctive ways in which the respective metaphorical patterns contribute to the biblical conception of sin. In particular, the majority of sin-metaphors in the Hebrew Bible place the sinner in a posture of passivity, incapable of remedying the situation on his or her own; in turn, the general biblical pattern of forgiveness, at least as viewed through the lens of metaphor, entails a direct appeal to divine mercy.