Transbodied metaphors in Hosea

Biblical Interpretation, 2010

2008

Her previous work includes a commentary on Nahum and a commentary on Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. In Challenging Prophetic Metaphor: eology and Ideology in the Prophets, O'Brien aims to combine ideological critique of the prophetic books of the Old Testament with Christian theological reflection. is book focuses on some of the disturbing or challenging prophetic metaphors in an effort to develop a new interpretive approach to prophetic literature. is approach would acknowledge the violence and misogyny in some prophetic texts while still treating them as valuable and important for Christian theological engagement. is volume begins with a brief introduction in which O'Brien explains her interest in prophetic texts. Chapter 1 includes a brief history of interpretation of prophetic literature. O'Brien provides a selective chronological survey of interpretations from the early church fathers through contemporary scholars such as Brevard Childs and Walter Brueggemann. She highlights the changes in the ways in which interpreters read the prophets while noting their consistent efforts to link prophetic texts to Christian belief and practice. In Chapter 2, O'Brien describes some of the challenges to traditional interpretations of the prophets offered by feminist criticism. She focuses on the marriage metaphor in Hosea 1-2 and contrasts what she characterizes as the "love it or hate it" positions in contemporary scholarship. us, she highlights the polar positions of scholars who find these texts too violent and misogynistic to be useful for contemporary Christians and those who find significant value in them while minimizing feminist critiques. O'Brien sets herself between these "love it or hate it" approaches in Chapter 3. She characterizes herself as a committed feminist; while appreciative of the substantive critiques of feminist criticism, she seeks an alternative to the simple rejection of these troubling texts. In an effort to combine ideological and theological reading, O'Brien proposes that Christians read the Bible as literature. For O'Brien, this approach does not involve reading the Bible as "only" literature but reading the Bible "for all that it is worth" by "engaging it as fully as we do other powerfully told stories" (52). e remaining five chapters discuss particular metaphors: God as (Abusing) Husband; God as (Authoritarian) Father; God as (Angry) Warrior; Jerusalem as (Defenseless) Daughter; and Edom as (Selfish) Brother. Each chapter highlights key issues related to use of the particular metaphor, discusses ideological critiques, and points out some of the Christian theological implications. e book has a brief conclusion and includes a bibliography, a scripture index, and an index of subjects and names. O'Brien has written an engaging volume with lots of personality. She writes openly regarding her own struggles with these texts as a woman, a wife, and a mother. For example, she discusses challenges in parenting her daughter in conjunction with her Copyright of Biblical Interpretation is the property of Brill Academic Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

AJS Review, 2003

This is an interesting, well-written and important study, relevant to anyone interested in better understanding metaphor in the Bible, figurative language, or idolatry. David Aaron, Professor of Bible at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, was trained in rabbinics and linguistics at Brandeis University; this training offers him a certain sensitivity to how language, especially what many would consider figurative language, functions. Thus, the book really deals with the importance of understanding semantics for interpretation. The core claim of the book is that most statements that biblical scholars consider to be metaphorical are not metaphorical. Aaron depicts this first by critiquing a common "binary" view of language, which views all utterances as either literal or metaphorical, and assumes that words' meanings are determined by "ontological identity," that is, necessary and sufficient features that adhere to the word itself. Instead, following the Brandeis University linguist Ray Jackendorff, Aaron speaks of "typicality conditions" (p. 77), noting that indeterminacy and fuzziness are part of human language (p. 76). Though certain words may be clearly defined, e.g. scientific words by the scientific community, most words from the general perspective are like "dog"-"We know a 'dog' when we see one" (p. 74). Not all linguists agree with this notion of semantics. However, as Aaron correctly notes, this notion has an important implication: it suggests that there is not a binary opposition between literal and metaphorical language, but, rather, a gradient. Thus, most scholars incorrectly overextend the concept of metaphor, ignoring natural semantic fields of words (p. 110). Biblical images like "God is king" belong in this gradient, and should not be considered metaphorical, because they do not require what James Fernandez suggests metaphors require: "a stretch of the imagination" (p. 61). According to Aaron, "'metaphor' should be saved for a more distinctive rhetorical strategy, one that involves a process or decoding and mapping" (p. 111). He also develops a criterion for suggesting when we have a true metaphor (pp. 101-123), and makes it quite clear that scholars have exaggerated the extent of metaphorical God-talk in the Bible for several reasons, including misunderstanding the nature of metaphor, having anachronistic biases about the biblical text; and treating the Bible too much as a unity. The latter points are certainly correct; the former will depend on whether the linguistic perspective of Jackendorff is compelling. The concluding chapters deal predominantly with idolatry, aniconism, and the ark as an icon. He correctly observes that too many scholars accept Deutero-Isaiah's depiction of idolatry as normative for the entire Bible. He suggests that the ark originally had an iconic status in early Israel, and that groups in Israel treated (an)iconism in particular ways not for theological reasons, as most scholars suggest, but for a combination of social and political reasons, mostly related to the as-She solves it-hesitantly, though-by pointing to evidence of the existence of such influential noblewomen, for example, an inscription from Aphrodisias that recounts the influence of Livia's advocacy on behalf of the Samians. In the end, Josephus's apologetic strategy may be more than wishful thinking. Even more typical and for Matthews' purpose more important is the case of Plotina, Trajan's wife, who-at least according to the Acts of the Pagan Martyrs-supported the Jews (Plotina is discussed in Chapter 3). Chapter 3, "'More than a few Greek Women of High Standing': 'God-Fearing' Noblewomen in Acts," discusses the role of prominent Gentile women, whom Paul encounters at several instances in his missionary journeys (Acts 13:50; 17:4; 17:12). Matthews includes here an unnecessarily lengthy discussion of the term "God-fearer," only to conclude (rightly so) that the term is not a fiction of Luke (as Kraabel had argued), but actually existed in history. Matthews shows that Luke's presentation of prominent women follows the same pattern as in Josephus. Luke underscores the role of upper-class Gentile women, while limiting the sphere of action of women in other contexts. As in the case of Josephus, Matthews wonders about the efficacy of such apologetics. Given the resentment of the Greco-Roman literati toward politically active women, why would an apologetic author depict Gentile women who patronize, and sometimes affiliate with his community? As in the preceding chapter, Matthews suggests that a partial explanation might lie in the fact that the phenomenon of elite women's benefaction was not just a fancy. Who then would endorse religiously active women as they are presented in Josephus and Luke? The fourth and last chapter of this short book, "First Converts: Acts 16 and the Legitimating Function of High-Standing Women in Missionary Propaganda," provides an answer to this question. Screening a wide range of texts (from Euripides' Bacchae to Philo's Therapeutae), Matthews identifies a line of argument in Greco-Roman texts concerning the special function of women in missionary religions. In fact, women's religious function in the Greco-Roman world was often viewed as proper and virtuous. The potential audience of Josephus and Luke, one might add, was therefore as divided with regard to the religious role of women as these two authors were themselves. This relates to a further question, often raised in recent years in Josephus studies: is "apologetics" really the right term for Josephus and Luke?

Copyright Cambridge University Press; posted with permission.

Emanuel Pfoh (ed.), Patronage in Ancient Palestine and in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix), 384-422., 2022

Currents in Biblical Research, 2021

This article provides an overview of metaphor theories and research on their own terms, as well as their use in Hebrew Bible (HB) studies. Though metaphor studies in the HB have become increasingly popular, they often draw upon a limited or dated subset of metaphor scholarship. The first half of this article surveys a wide variety of metaphor scholarship from the humanities (philosophical, poetic, rhetorical) and the sciences (e.g., conceptual metaphor theory), beginning with Aristotle but focusing on more recent developments. The second half overviews studies of metaphor in the HB since 1980, surveying works focused on theory and method; works focused on specific biblical books or metaphor domains; and finally noting current trends and suggesting areas for future research.

Throughout the twentieth century, critical scholarship on the book of Hosea has focused overwhelmingly on the marriage metaphor in Hosea 1-3. Scholars often saw these chapters as establishing the primary interpretive issues for the message of the prophet and the book as a whole, although there remains a lack of consensus concerning even the most basic exegetical issues, and newer studies have rightly pushed beyond this isolation of Hosea 1-3. This article surveys the major trends of the modern interpretation of these chapters, with particular attention to the second half of the twentieth century. From the early 1900s to the 1980s, critical works focused primarily on the biographical reconstruction of the prophet and his family life, as well as related historical and form-critical concerns. From the 1930s forward, such study was particularly concerned to read Hosea 1-3 against the background of a purported sexualized Baal cult in eighth-century Israel. Beginning in the 1980s, feminist-critical readings of Hosea 1-3 came to occupy a prominent position. In subsequent years, these concerns have been complemented by an emerging emphasis on metaphor theory, as well as newer kinds of literary, book-oriented, and socio-historical analyses.

Currents in Biblical Research, 2010

twentieth-century scholarship on Hosea has addressed a wide range of interpretive questions that often reflect the common approaches to the prophetic literature in general, yet an inordinate amount of attention has been paid to the marriage and family imagery in Hosea 1-3. In recent years, scholars have corrected this tendency, exploring ways that texts throughout Hosea 4-14 offer insights into long-standing critical issues. rather than exhibiting a movement in which newer methodological perspectives have replaced older traditional approaches, all of the established, modern scholarly pursuits remain prominent in the current study of Hosea 4-14. scholars are now reformulating the traditional questions, however, from new angles largely generated by interdisciplinary influences. these influences have also given rise to previously unexplored lines of inquiry, such as synchronic, literary, and theological readings, Book of the twelve studies, and metaphor theory. studies using metaphor theory with an eye toward religious, political, socio-economic, and gender considerations seem likely to occupy the central place in Hosea scholarship in the immediate future.

The literature of the Hebrew Bible favours male characters, metaphors and language, predominantly due to the ancient, patriarchal era in which it was written. Today, this preference still plays a role in reading, interpretation and folk-theology. While feminist theology has played a role in broadening biblical studies with more gender inclusive frameworks, it is easy to overlook the few positive encounters with females and feminine metaphors due to the significant number of instances that contrast these. One such encounter is found in Deutero-Isaiah in the paralleled geographical metaphor of Jerusalem/Zion, both of which are characterized as feminine. Jerusalem/Zion is an invitational, positive encounter with the feminine within this biblical text. This dual metaphor is utilised within this section of biblical literature to define a hopeful future for the whole " people of God " , a rare paradigm shift which depicts this community as female. In an ungendered language such as English, these readings of the feminine are undervalued within patriarchical Christian traditions, and present new possibilities for the presentation of gender in contemporary Christian rhetoric.