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Bible Dictionaries
Metaphor
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or Metaphor has been defined as ‘the figure of speech in which a name or descriptive term is transferred to some object different from, but analogous to, that to which it is properly applicable’ (Oxford English Dictionary , s.v.). Again, ‘in metaphor a word in the sentence to be expressed is replaced by a word denoting an object in some respect similar; frequently it is an abstract word which is replaced by a concrete’ (L. E. Browne, The Parables of the Gospels, p. 2). Simile, on the other hand, is used simply of explicit comparison, often introduced in English by either ‘like’ or ‘as.’ A parable is an extended simile, and an allegory an extended metaphor. It is only in modern languages that the various forms of figurative speech have become sharply distinguished. Thus the Greek παραβολή in the NT means not only ‘parable’ but ‘comparison’ (Hebrews 9:9), and in Luke 4:23 the proverb or adage ‘Physician, heal thyself,’ is called παραβολή. Likewise the Heb. מָשָׁל means not only ‘parable’ but ‘by-word,’ ‘similitude’; and it is used more generally still of ethical maxims, didactic poems, or odes. But, though definitions differ slightly, the meaning of the English ‘metaphor’ is now generally standardized.
According to König, ‘Metaphor springs from the putting together of comparable instances of the material and visible and the ideal spheres’ (Stilistik, Rhetorik, Poetik in Bezug auf die biblische Litteratur komparativisch dargestellt). Thus he does not agree with W. Reichel, who in his Sprachpsychologische Studien (1897, p. 179) says: ‘There is really no essential difference between actual and metaphorical designation.’ ‘According to my view,’ says König, ‘there is still an essential difference in method of expression when the sphere of existence of both ideas that appear in the subject and predicate is the same, and when it is different.’
König divides metaphor into four classes: (1) both ideas are in the inanimate sphere, such as the association of joy with light, and sorrow with darkness; (2) an idea is taken from the inanimate sphere to the animate, e.g. the term ‘Rock’ applied to God (frequently in the Psalms and elsewhere in the OT); (3) both ideas are in the animate sphere, e.g. the comparison of a man to a lion, bear, panther, dog or swine, serpent, eagle, raven, etc.; (4) an idea is transferred from the animate sphere to the inanimate, e.g. ‘the tops of the mountains’ (Heb. ‘heads’), and the ‘face of the waters’ (Genesis 1:2). Closely connected with the last is the idea of personification: e.g. inanimate objects are bidden hearken to the word of God, as in Isaiah 1:2, ‘Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth.’
Not only are there no parables outside the Synoptists, but the use of metaphorical language is both more complicated and more extended. We still have the familiar conceptions drawn from everyday life-sowing, reaping, and harvest, animals and birds, the seasons, light and darkness, life and death-but as the scene shifts from the hillsides of Nazareth and the streets of Jerusalem to the busy cities of the Graeco-Roman world with their ceaseless and varied activity, there are many phrases and metaphors in the Acts, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse which could hardly have fallen from the lips of our Lord Himself. Many of these expressions, too, have since so become part of ordinary theological language that we do not always at first see that they are metaphors at all.
It will be convenient to divide the metaphors under discussion as follows:-
I. New Testament:
(1) Acts.
(2) Pauline Epistles.
(3) Epistle to Hebrews.
(4) Catholic Epistles.
(5) Revelation.
II. Early Christian literature to a.d. 100:
(1) Agrapha.
(2) 1 Clement.
(3) Odes of Solomon.
(4) Didache.
I. In the NT
1. Acts.-Not many metaphors are found in Acts; such as there are have mostly a Jewish flavour and are not remarkable. Acts 2:37 : ‘they were pricked in their heart’ (κατενύγησαν τὴν καρδίαν; cf. Genesis 34:7 Septuagint κατενύχθησαν οὶ ἄνδρες; Plutarch, de Tranquill. Animi, xix. [without prefix]). Acts 5:33, Acts 7:54 : ‘were cut to the heart’ (the Gr. διαπρίειν means ‘to saw through,’ used literally in Aristophanes, metaphorically particularly in late and ecclesiastical Greek). Acts 7:51 : ‘Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears’ (cf. Leviticus 26:41, Jeremiah 6:10; Jeremiah 9:26). Acts 12:1 : ‘Herod the king put forth his hands’ (this can fairly be called a metaphor; cf. Polyb. III. ii. 8, ἐπιβάλλειν χεῖρας τοῖς κατʼ Αἴγυπτον). Acts 17:27 : ‘if haply they might feel after him.’ ψηλαφᾶν, ‘to grope,’ is also found metaphorically in Polybius. This idea, like that in Acts 17:28, ‘in him we live, and move, and have our being,’ may have come from contemporary philosophy. St. Paul like Stoic teachers ‘had a profound disbelief in the power of men to find God for themselves’ (P. Gardner in Cambridge Biblical Essays, 1909, p. 400 f.). Acts 19:20 : ‘So mightily grew the word of the Lord.’ Acts 20:29 : ‘grievous wolves shall enter in’ (men represented as beasts-a striking metaphor). Acts 26:14 : ‘kick against the goad.’ κέντρον is also used metaphorically in 1 Corinthians 15:55-56 of the ‘sting’ of death.
2. St. Paul’s Epistles.-It is obvious that in no writer of the NT is metaphor more important than in St. Paul. ‘A Hebrew of the Hebrews’ who had sat at the feet of Gamaliel, a student who had absorbed much of the intellectual culture of the Greek world of his day, and a citizen of the Roman Empire, it is not surprising that all the sides of his personality have left their mark on his language. Sometimes his metaphors are plain and straightforward: sometimes he passes imperceptibly from what is metaphor to what is not, weaving ideas into and out of one another in a way possible only for one who combined in such a rare degree spiritual freshness and intellectual subtlety. ‘One of the most striking characteristics of St. Paul is a sort of telescopic manner, in which one clause is as it were drawn out of another, each new idea as it arises leading on to some further new idea’ (Sanday-Headlam, Romans 5, p. lx ff.). Hence his metaphors become changed almost in the same sentence, while the thought is being developed. Some of his simple metaphors, however, claim consideration first.
(1) The way.-1 Thessalonians 1:9 : ‘What manner of entering in (ὁποίαν εἴσοδον) we had unto you,’ εἴσοδον being used of the act (as in 1 Thessalonians 2:1), rather than of the means, of entering (Hebrews 10:19, 2 Peter 1:11). 1 Thessalonians 2:12 : ‘that ye should walk worthily of God.’ Christianity is called ἡ ὁδός, ‘the way’ (Acts 9:2, etc.), a metaphor which, as Milligan says (Epp. to Thess., ad loc.), though found in classical Greek, is Hebraistic and is characteristic of the Septuagint . The same idea appears again in κατευθύναι τὴν ὁδὸν ἡμῶν, ‘direct our way’ (1 Thessalonians 3:11; cf. Luke 1:79, 2 Thessalonians 3:5).
(2) The athletic ground.-This is obviously a metaphor which would appeal to Greeks. Philippians 1:30 : ‘having the same conflict which ye saw in me and now hear to be in me.’ 1 Timothy 6:12 : ‘Fight the good fight of faith’ (this would also come under ‘Warfare’) (cf. 1 Thessalonians 2:2, Hebrews 10:32): the words ἄθλησις, ἀθλεῖν, ‘contest,’ ‘to take part in a contest,’ are obviously borrowed from the athletic ground; likewise ἀγών, ‘conflict,’ has not our sense of ‘agony’ at all but was simply used of the games, though the word appears metaphorically in Thuc. iii. 44. 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 : ‘Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize?…’ Galatians 2:2 : ‘lest by any means I should be running or had run in vain’ (the metaphor here might almost equally well be taken from the ‘Way’). The same thought is in Philippians 2:16 : ‘that I did not run in vain, neither labour in vain’ (cf. Epictetus, Diss. iv. 4. 30: ἐλθέ ἤδη ἐπὶ τὸν ἀγῶνα, δεῖξον ἡμῖν τί ἔμαθες, πῶς ἤθλησας; ‘Come now to the conflict, show us what thou hast learned, how thou hast contested’). In 2 Thessalonians 3:1, ‘that the word of the Lord may run and be glorified’ is a curious mixed metaphor in the typically Pauline style-one thought quickly passing into another.
(3) Warfare.-The athletic games lead on naturally to warfare. 2 Corinthians 10:3-4 : ‘For, though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh (for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds).’ In Ephesians 6:11-18 the metaphor is sustained, and in the beautiful phrases ‘the helmet of salvation,’ ‘the sword of the spirit,’ ‘the shield of faith’ it is both elaborated and interpreted (cf. also 1 Corinthians 6:7, 1 Thessalonians 5:8). In Romans 13:12 : ‘let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armour of light,’ the metaphor of warfare is combined with that of light and darkness-equally beautiful and equally Pauline. This idea is found in Isaiah 11:5; Isaiah 59:17, Wisdom of Solomon 5:17-20. For further metaphors drawn from warfare, see also 1 Timothy 1:18, 2 Timothy 2:3.
(4) The family.-1 Thessalonians 2:17 : ‘But we, brethren, being bereaved of you for a short season …’ (ἀπορφανίζω, however, is used so widely that, as Milligan says, the metaphor can hardly be pressed). Another instance of this would be 1 Thessalonians 2:7, where the text is uncertain, ‘But we were babes in the midst of you, as when a nurse cherisheth her own children’ (for νήπιοι, ‘babes,’ some Manuscripts read ἤπιοι, ‘gentle’; but the former reading seems to fit in better with the context).
(5) Building is a favourite Pauline metaphor. Romans 1:11 : ‘to the end ye may be established,’ i.e. strengthened or built up. 1 Thessalonians 3:2 : ‘to establish you and to comfort you.’ 1 Timothy 6:19 : ‘laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on the life which is life indeed’ (here the metaphor is changed in the same sentence from ‘building’ to ‘grasping’). 2 Timothy 2:19 : ‘Howbeit the firm foundation of God standeth …’ Cf. too 1 Corinthians 14:4 : ‘He that speaketh in a tongue edifieth (lit. [Note: literally, literature.] ‘buildeth up’) himself.’
(6) The sea.-Perhaps St. Paul’s frequent voyages suggested to him nautical metaphors. Thus, 1 Timothy 1:19 : ‘holding faith and a good conscience; which some having thrust from them made shipwreck concerning the faith.’ The Greek ναυαγέω is used literally in 2 Corinthians 11:25 : ‘thrice I suffered shipwreck.’ The word is also used metaphorically in Plutarch, Demosthenes, and aeschines.
(7) Mirror.-1 Corinthians 13:12 : ‘For now we see in a mirror darkly.’ The significance of this would have been more apparent to an ancient than it is to a modern reader, for ancient mirrors were always of polished metal, and thus their reflexion was imperfect. According to Jewish tradition, Moses saw in a clear mirror but all the prophets in a dark one. Again, in 2 Corinthians 3:18 : ‘with unveiled face reflecting, as a mirror, the glory of the Lord.’
(8) First-fruits.-1 Corinthians 15:20 : ‘But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of them that slept.’ ‘On the morning of the 16th of Nisan, probably the very morning of the Lord’s Resurrection, the first ripe sheaf of the harvest was offered to God. It was the consecration of the whole harvest to Him. So the Resurrection of Christ was the pledge of the Resurrection of all in union with Him’ (Goudge, in loc.).
(9) Clothing.-1 Corinthians 15:53 : ‘For this corruption must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.’
(10) Horticulture.-Romans 11:24 : ‘For, if thou wast cut out of that which is by nature a wild olive tree, and wast grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which are the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?’
(11) Law.-‘It is unquestionable that various legal metaphors, such as adoption, inheritance, tutelage, slavery, manumission, were consecrated by him to the high office of conveying his doctrine and facilitating its comprehension by heathen minds, impoverished of spiritual conceptions and strangers to the novel truths he proclaimed’ (W. S. Muntz, Rome, St. Paul and the Early Church, 1913, p. 48). This point has been elucidated by Deissmann in Light from the Ancient East, Eng. translation , p. 326): ‘Among the various ways in which the manumission of a slave could take place by ancient law we find the solemn rite of fictitious purchase of the slave by some divinity. The owner comes with the slave to the temple, sells him there to the god, and receives the purchase money from the temple treasury, the slave having previously paid it in there out of his savings. The slave is now the property of the god; not, however, a slave of the temple, but a protégé of the god.’ St. Paul refers to this in Romans 6:17, Galatians 4:1-7; Galatians 5:1, 1 Corinthians 6:20; 1 Corinthians 7:23, etc. ‘St. Paul’s predilection for this whole group of images would be most beautifully accounted for if we knew him to have been previously acquainted with the Greek form of our Lord’s deeply significant saying about the ransom (Mark 10:45 = Matthew 20:28).… But when anybody heard the Greek word λύτρον, “ransom,” in the first century, it was natural for him to think of the purchase-money for manumitting slaves’ (p. 331 f.). Papyri of the 1st cent. a.d. have been discovered granting remission of debt. Cf. Philemon 1:18. In Colossians 2:14 there is some reference to an ancient custom, but exactly what is uncertain.
(12) Miscellaneous metaphors.-An interesting passage is 2 Corinthians 5:4 : ‘For indeed we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed, but that we would be clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life.’ There is here a double metaphor of house and garment. The explanation of the abrupt transition may be found ‘in the image, familiar to the Apostle, both from his occupations and his birth-place, of the tent of Cilician haircloth, which might almost equally suggest the idea of a habitation and of a vesture’ (A. P. Stanley, Corinthians2, 1858, p. 427). σκῆνος means a ‘hut, tent,’ and then the body as the tabernacle of the soul.
Thence we pass to another metaphor-that of swallowing up (the Greek καταπίνω is also used metaphorically by Aristophanes). This passage is a further instance of St. Paul’s method of developing one metaphor out of another.
1 Corinthians 7:9 : ‘it is better to marry than to burn’-the metaphor is obvious.
Titus 1:12 : ‘Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, idle gluttons’ (lit. [Note: literally, literature.] ‘bellies’)-a quotation from Epimenides. For the comparison of men to beasts see also 2 Peter 2:22. The metaphor of the sow is based on an apophthegm of Heraclitus (Wendland, quoted by Clemen in Primitive Christianity and its Non-Jewish Sources, Eng. translation , p. 50).
So far the Pauline metaphors we have been considering have been simple and of fairly obvious interpretation. We must now pass to some less clear aspects of his figurative language, and this will take us rather deeper into his theology. ‘The reader who passes from the early traditions of the life of Jesus to the letters of the apostle Paul feels himself at once in another atmosphere. A bewildering variety of ideas is suggested to him. Speculations of theology and philosophy, glimpses of Deity and hints of various modes of causation, large conceptions of Providence and Creation, strange and indistinct forms of Law and Sin and Death half persons and half powers, quasi-magical notions attached to particular material media, are all blended with the impassioned emotion with which the writer contemplates the love which prompted the Father to send forth his Son, and the love which moved the Son to forsake his high estate and give himself for men’ (J. E. Carpenter in J. Hibbert Journal , Suppl., 1909: ‘Jesus or Christ,’ p. 238 f.). This view of the Apostle’s theology, though not always expressed so well or so clearly, is at the back of the minds of many modern critics of St. Paul. But is it not safer to say that St. Paul merely drew on contemporary philosophy and speculation when searching for metaphorical expressions wherein to convey the spiritual truths he so earnestly desired to emphasize?
A crucial passage is Romans 8:38 : ‘For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us …’ ‘St. Paul held that there was a world of spirits brought into being like the rest of creation by Christ.’ ‘It is quite in the manner of St. Paul to personify abstractions’ (Sanday-Headlam, Romans 5, ad loc.). Now, if St. Paul really believed the creatures which he enumerates to have a spiritual existence in the heavenly spheres, we are brought at once into the region of mystical theology; if he is merely personifying for the sake of rhetorical effect, we are simply dealing with metaphors. St. Paul certainly believed in the existence of angels, but how did he regard sin and death? Sin is to him something more than an act or acts of transgression, more even than a state; it is a power, at least half personified in the mind of the Apostle. Thus his language in Romans 5:12, ‘as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin,’ and Romans 5:14, ‘death reigned from Adam until Moses,’ is something more than metaphor. Sin and Death even if not persons are at least powers with objective existence. (The close connexion between Sin and Death had appeared before St. Paul-first perhaps in Sirach 25:24 -and was frequent in Jewish Apocalyptic.) But St. Paul passes quickly from what is metaphorical to what is not: thus in 1 Corinthians 15:54 (quoting Isaiah 25:8): ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’; in the mind of the Apostle, Death may be half personified, but victory hardly. Frequently it has to be left open what exactly St. Paul does mean. He does not define his terms; and his theology, here as elsewhere, is generally implicit rather than explicit. ‘In ancient literature it is hard to distinguish between a person and a personification. Animistic ideas lie deep in the naïve, popular consciousness’ (H. A. A. Kennedy, St. Paul’s Conceptions of the Last Things, 1904, p. 108 n. [Note: . note.] ).
With these facts in view, we must now consider a few specially difficult and obscure passages.
1 Corinthians 10:4 : ‘And the rock was Christ.’ St. Paul has just been referring to the passing of the Israelites through the sea. He says the Israelites ‘ate the same spiritual meat’ and ‘drank the same spiritual drink.’ It is more usual to conceive of the Jewish sacraments as types of the Christian. St. Paul refers to the Rabbinic legend that the rock followed the Israelites during their march. ‘Wherever the Tabernacle was pitched, the princes came and sang to the rock, “Spring up, O well, sing ye unto it,” whereupon the waters gushed forth afresh’ (Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) , article ‘Rock,’ iv. 290). It has been remarked: ‘We must not disgrace Paul by making him say that the pre-incarnate Christ followed the march of Israel in the shape of a lump of rock!’ (quoted by Findlay in Expositor’s Greek Testament , ad loc.). But (1) it seems clear from elsewhere that St. Paul believed in the pre-existence of Christ (Romans 8:3, 2 Corinthians 8:9); (2) St. Paul seems to follow his custom of personification. Sometimes water is personified in that it is made to speak; cf. Isaiah 55:1-3, Wisdom of Solomon 11:4, Sirach 24:19-21, Revelation 22:17. Philo also (Quod deterius potiori, p. 31 [Mangey, i. 213]) calls the Divine Wisdom a rock, and makes it the same as the manna. E. A. Abbott (Son of Man, p. 649) has taken these passages in support of the conception of speaking waters. Meanwhile the other aspect of the metaphor is shown in the idea of God as a Rock (because He remains faithful and abides). ‘As in Romans 9:5 St. Paul affirms of Christ that He “is over all, God blessed for ever,” so here he identifies Him with the “Rock of Ages” (Isaiah 26:4 Revised Version margin)’ (Otton, loc. cit. infra). It seems as if St. Paul, taking the Rabbinic legend, without necessarily accepting it as literal truth, blended with it the ideas of the ‘speaking waters,’ the manna, and the everlasting rock of Isaiah. All this is again linked up with baptism and the eucharist-the only place in the NT where the two great Christian sacraments are mentioned together. Again we see St. Paul’s intellectual subtlety used as a vehicle of spiritual truth.
For further discussion of the ‘Rock’ see E. A. Abbott, The Son of Man, 1910, p. 648; Robertson-Plummer, 1 Corinthians, p. 201; Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) , article ‘Rock’; G. W. Otton, in Interpreter. x. [1914] 435-439; G. G. Findlay, in Expositor’s Greek Testament , ‘1 Cor.,’ 1900, ad loc.; H. St. J. Thackeray, Relation of St. Paul to Contemp. Jewish Thought, p. 210; K. Lake, Earlier Epp. of St. Paul, 1911, p. 213; C. Clemen, Primitive Christianity and its Non-Jewish Sources, p. 218; see also below, II. 3.
Galatians 4:3 : ‘held in bondage under the rudiments (Revised Version margin ‘elements’) of the world.’ Galatians 4:9 : ‘how turn ye back again to the weak and beggarly rudiments’ (Revised Version margin ‘elements’). Colossians 2:8 : ‘after the rudiments (Revised Version margin ‘elements’) of the world.’ The difficulty here is the exact significance of στοιχεῖα, ‘elements’: it meant in classical Greek (1) a letter or syllable (Plato): in the Bible only in Hebrews 5:12; (2) a shadow of a sundial (in Aristophanes): non-Biblical; (3) element (or ground staff)-Plato, Philo, Josephus, Wisdom of Solomon 7:17; then specially the stars and planets; then, as every element has its deity, (4) divine spirit, demon or genius. In Gal. it may be (1) rudiments of religion; (2) physical elements; (3) the attendant deities of the physical elements. It is probably (3), and only if it were (1) would it really be a metaphor.
See for στοιχεῖα, C. W. Emmet, Galatians, 1912, ad loc.; J. B. Lightfoot, Galatians5, 1876, ad loc.; C. Clemen, Primitive Christianity and its Non-Jewish Sources, pp. 106-110.
Colossians 2:18-19 : a very difficult passage, where the text too is uncertain. It is related in idea to the last. ‘Let no man rob you of your prize by a voluntary humility and worshipping of the angels, dwelling in the things which he hath seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast the Head, from whom all the body, being supplied and knit together through the joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of God.’ To the student of metaphors no passage could be more interesting-first comes the metaphor of robbing, then the reference to angel-worship, the second metaphor of dwelling in things seen (or not seen), the third metaphor of being puffed up, the fourth metaphor of holding fast the Head, blended with the fifth of Head and body.
But the crux really is ἄ ἑώρακεν ἐμβατεύων (so א* ABD* 33* 314 424** L [vt.d m] Boh. Eth. Mcion. Tert. Orig. etc.) or ἄ μἡ (οὖν) ἑώρακεν (אcCDb,etc. GH [Lvtgvg] Syr. [vg hl] Aeth. Chr. etc.
Some have proposed slightly to emend the text and, dividing the letters differently, read: ἀέρα κενεμβατεύων, ‘vainly treading the air’ (or ‘stepping on emptiness’)-a suggestive metaphor; but there is no necessity to emend. According to Moulton (Grammar of NT Greek, ‘Proleg.,’ 1908, p. 239), μή is ‘indisputably spurious,’ so we must follow the first reading. This has been elucidated by Ramsay (Teaching of St. Paul in Terms of the Present Day, 1913, p. 288): ‘Among a series of very interesting inscriptions from the Sanctuary of Apollo of Klaros was one which instantly arrested attention: it contained the verb “entered” (ἐνεβάτευσεν), describing the performance of some act or rite in the mystic ritual.’ The Colossians knew the word in the mysteries. ‘As a quoted word, it causes a certain awkwardness in the logical sequence; but when we take it as quoted and put it within inverted commas, we understand that it is like a brick imbedded in the living well of Paul’s words’ (p. 299).
3. Epistle to the Hebrews.-Hebrews 3:2 : ‘In all his [God’s] house.’ οῖκος in the Gospels is used of the Temple, here of the people of God (cf. 1 Peter 4:17, 1 Timothy 3:15). Hebrews 4:12 : The word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword (δίστομον is lit. [Note: literally, literature.] ‘double-mouthed’). That it ‘pierces even to the dividing of soul and spirit’ means that it penetrates to the very depths of a man’s being. Hebrews 5:12 : ‘such as have need of milk’ (cf. 1 Peter 2:2, 1 Corinthians 3:1-5). Young students were called ‘sucklings’ by the Rabbis. Hebrews 6:4 : ‘and tasted of the heavenly gift.’ The idea of ‘tasting’ divine things is from the OT. Hebrews 6:7-8 : ‘the land which hath drunk the rain … receiveth blessing’: cf. Plut. de Educ. Puer. iii. and Eurip. Hecuba, 590-6; the idea is ‘the free and reiterated bestowal of spiritual impulse’ (Marcus Dods in Expositor’s Greek Testament , ad loc.). Hebrews 6:19 : ‘anchor of the soul’: ἄγκυρα is used metaphorically in Soph. fr. [Note: fragment, from.] 612: μητρὶ παῖδες ἄγκυραι βίου, ‘children are anchors of life to their mother.’ Hebrews 7:22 : Jesus is the ‘surety of a better covenant’; cf. St. Paul’s legal metaphors (in his case drawn mostly from slavery). Hebrews 10:13 : ‘the footstool of his feet’ (cf. Psalms 110:1). Hebrews 10:22 : our hearts are sprinkled from an evil conscience. Hebrews 12:1 : ‘cloud of witnesses,’ ‘the race.’ Hebrews 12:15 : ‘root of bitterness.’ Hebrews 12:29 : ‘Our God is a consuming fire’ (cf. Deuteronomy 4:24; Deuteronomy 9:3). Hebrews 13:15 : ‘the sacrifice of praise’ is the ‘fruit of lips.’ Hebrews 13:20 : the familiar Johannine metaphor of the ‘shepherd of the sheep.’
4. Catholic Epistles
(a) The Epistle of James is peculiarly interesting: traditionally, and in the opinion of many modern critics, the work of James, the Lord’s brother, it shows many parallels with the Synoptic Gospels. ‘The love of nature, the sympathy in all human interests, the readiness to find “sermons in stones and good in everything” must have characterized the child Jesus and coloured all His intercourse with His fellows from His earliest years. It is interesting, therefore, to find the same fondness for figurative speech in the Epistles of His brothers, St. James and St. Jude’ (Mayor, Ep. of St. James 3, p. lxii). Thus James 1:15 : ‘The lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin: and the sin, when it is fullgrown, bringeth forth death.’ The same metaphor is found in Psalms 7:14 and in Philo (ed. Mangey, i. 40, 149, 183). 1:17: ‘The Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning’; cf. Malachi 4:2, Psalms 27:1; Psalms 36:9), Isaiah 60:1; Isaiah 60:19-20, 1 John 1:5, Wisdom of Solomon 7:26; also Test. Abr. (ed. M. R. James, p. 37) (where the archangel Michael is called ‘Father of all lights’), Philo (ed. Mangey, i. 579, 637), and Plato (Rep. vi. 505, vii. 517). Sometimes St. James, in his symbolical language, reminds us of the Synoptists. The remarkable passage James 3:5-12 contains several metaphors; most striking is James 3:6 : the tongue ‘setteth on fire the wheel of nature and is set on fire by hell.’ The wheel, catching fire from the glowing axle, is compared to the wide-spreading mischief done by the tongue. γένεσις (translation ‘nature’) means (1) birth; (2) creation; (3) the seen and temporal as opposed to the unseen and eternal; the ‘wheel’ means either the incessant change of life or (if the wheel is at rest) the circle of life. Other metaphors are James 4:14, James 5:2, etc.
(b) 1 and 2 Peter.-1 Peter 1:2 : ‘sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.’ 1 Peter 1:13 : ‘girding up the loins of your mind.’ 1 Peter 2:6-7 : ‘chief corner stone.’ 1 Peter 2:25 : ‘shepherd of your souls.’ The same metaphor appears again in 1 Peter 5:2-4 : ‘flock of God,’ ‘chief Shepherd.’ 1 Peter 5:13 : ‘Babylon’ may be either literal or metaphorical: probably the former. 2 Peter 1:8 : ‘unfruitful.’ 2 Peter 1:13-14 : ‘tabernacle’ (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:1). 2 Corinthians 1:19 : ‘and the day-star arise in your hearts.’ 2 Corinthians 2:3 : ‘make merchandise of you.’ 2 Corinthians 2:17 : ‘springs without water.’
(c) The Johannine Epistles have not many metaphors-those there are are of course conceived of as are those in the Fourth Gospel, e.g. the dwelling on light in 1 John 1. In John 4:1 : ‘prove the spirits, whether they be of God,’ πνεύματα do not seem to be personified. John 4:18 : ‘perfect love casteth out fear.’ In 1 John 2:13 and 2 John 1:7 we have mention of the Antichrist (see below under ‘Revelation’). The phrase, ‘Even now have there arisen many antichrists,’ seems to show that the word is taken generally and metaphorically for false teachers.
(d) Jude has resemblances sometimes to James, sometimes to Revelation (cf. Judges 1:9 with Revelation 12:7). In Judges 1:6 that the angels are ‘kept in everlasting bonds’ is to be taken literally, not metaphorically. In Judges 1:12-13 we have a string of metaphors: the wicked are called ‘hidden rocks,’ ‘shepherds that without fear feed themselves,’ ‘clouds without water,’ ‘autumn trees without fruit,’ ‘wild waves,’ ‘wandering stars.’ Judges 1:23 : ‘snatching them out of the fire’ (cf. Zechariah 3:2).
5. Revelation.-Metaphor in Revelation raises peculiar difficulty. Though elsewhere in the NT metaphors are frequent and not always sharply defined, here in an Apocalypse they are so much part and parcel of the whole book that, short of discussing them in detail along with allied problems of interpretation, the only possible course in a short article is to make a few brief generalizations. Ordinary metaphors shade off into theological and (occasionally) mythological conceptions, so that we cannot separate one from the other. But it is necessary to state briefly the method of interpretation of the Apocalypse without which the metaphors, as everything else in it, are obscure. This seems to be done satisfactorily only if we pursue concurrently several different lines of interpretation: (1) the contemporary-historical (reference to events of the writer’s own day); (2) the eschatological (the foretelling of the end of all things under symbolic imagery); and (3) the mythological (particularly in ch. 12); also (4) the author undoubtedly had visions wherein he saw spiritual things portrayed; and (5) it is difficult to leave out of account the existence of sources. The danger of interpretation is not so much to refuse to see metaphor, as to see it where it is really not present at all: many things which to some critics have seemed only ‘crude symbols’ of spiritual truth were probably to the writer literal truth of things he had seen-none the less real because he had seen them not with his bodily eyes but with the eye of faith in a vision. How far this was so must remain uncertain, but the point must not be overlooked entirely. ‘No scene in the great Christian Apocalypse can be successfully reproduced upon canvas; “The imagery … is symbolic and not pictorial” (Westcott)’ (Swete, Apocalypse2, p. cxxxviii). But because we cannot pictorially conceive of a thing, we have no right simply to say it is a metaphor.
As an illustration of the difficulty of interpretation in this book we may take the conception of Antichrist, mentioned only by name in the Epistles of St. John. Here an ancient Babylonian myth, which has passed through various stages and has left traces in the OT, and which is referred to in 2 Thessalonians 3, is taken over by the Apocalyptist. The beast in Revelation 13, 17 is somehow Antichrist, though he may also stand for Nero and Domitian. Can we say that the term ‘beast’ is a ‘metaphor’ standing for a Roman Emperor? The value we attach to the Apocalypse is dependent on whether we think it substantially a divine vision vouchsafed to the Seer of Patmos or a mere interesting congeries of symbols. But a question of terminology shades off indistinctly into one of theology and interpretation.
For Antichrist see W. Bousset, The Antichrist Legend, Eng. translation , 1896; H. B. Swete, ‘Antichrist in the Province of Asia,’ in Apocalypse of St. John 2, pp. lxxviii-xciii; A. E. Brooke, Johannine Epistles, pp. 69-79.
II. In early Christian literature to a.d. 100
1. Agrapha.-(a) Oxyrhynchus Logion 5 (No. 30 in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) v., article ‘Agrapha’): ἔγειρον τὸν λίθον κἀκεῖ εὑρήσεις με, σχίσον τὸ ξύλον κἀγὼ ἐκεῖ εἰμί, ‘Raise the stone and you will find me, cleave the wood and there am I.’ The metaphor means that we shall find our Lord in the ordinary occupations of daily life. (b) Saying quoted in Clem. Alex. Strom. i. 28. 177 (No. 58 in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) ): γίνεσθε δὲ δόκιμοι τραπεζῖται, τὰ μὲν ἀποδοκιμάζοντες, τὸ δὲ καλὸν κατέχοντες, ‘Show yourselves approved money-changers, rejecting some but keeping what is good’ (τραπεζίτης in the NT only in Matthew 25:27). Origen, in Johann. xix. 7, also quotes δόκιμοι τραπεζῖται γίνεσθε; and it is quoted elsewhere. Cf. the other Oxyrhynchus Logion (3) (No. 28 in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) ), ‘and I found all men drunken and none was athirst among them. And my soul is pained for the sons of men because they are blind in their heart and see not, poor and they know not their poverty.’ In another fragment we have: ‘Jesus saith, Who are they that draw us into the Kingdom, if the Kingdom be in heaven? Verify I say unto you, The birds of the heaven, and every creature that is under the earth and in the earth and the fishes of the sea, these are they that draw you’ (see Grenfell-Hunt, Sayings of Our Lord, 1897, and New Sayings of Jesus, 1904).
2. 1 Clement.-viii.: ἐὰν ὦσιν αἱ ἁμαρτίαι ὑμῶν ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς ἕως τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, καὶ ἐὰν ὦσιν πυρρότεραι κόκκου, καὶ μελανώτεραι σάκκου, ‘if your sins reach from earth to heaven and are redder than scarlet and blacker than sackcloth …’ (a reminiscence of Isaiah 1:18). xxx: ἐνδυσώμεθα τὴν ὁμόνοιαν, ‘let us clothe ourselves with concord.’ xxxiii.: ἐν ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς πάντες ἐκοσμήθησαν οἱ δίκαιοι, ‘All righteous men have been adorned with good works.’ xxxvii.: Christians are compared to soldiers; the metaphor is sustained throughout the chapter. lvii.: κάμψαντες τὰ γόνατα τῆς καρδίας ὑμῶν, ‘bending the knees of your hearts.’ ἔδονται τῆς ἑαυτῶν ὁδοῦ τοῦς καρπούς, ‘they shall eat the fruits of their way.’
3. Odes of Solomon.-These are full of beautiful and striking metaphors, of which the following are instances. i. 4: ‘Thy fruits are full grown and perfect, they are full of thy salvation.’ iv. 9: ‘distil thy dews upon us and open thy rich fountains that pour forth to us milk and honey.’ ix. 8: ‘An everlasting crown for ever is truth. Blessed are they who set it on their heads.’ xi. 5, 7: ‘And I was established upon the rock of truth … and I drank and was inebriated with the living water’ (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:4 : ‘the rock was Christ,’ above). xiii. 2: ‘Love His holiness and clothe yourself therewith.’ xvii. 13: ‘And I sowed my fruits in hearts, and transformed them into myself.’ xxii. 4, 5: ‘He who gave me authority over bonds that I might loose them; He that overthrew by my hands the dragon with seven heads’ (Titus or Pompey [?]; cf. Psalms 74:14, Ezekiel 29:3). xxv. 8: ‘And I was clothed with the covering of thy Spirit, and thou didst remove from me my raiment of skin’ (here and in xxi. 2 the reference is to Genesis 3:21). xxxi. 2: ‘error went astray and perished at His hand: and folly found no path to walk in, and was submerged by the truth of the Lord’ (here, as elsewhere in Jewish and early Christian literature, qualities are personified).
See J. H. Bernard, Odes of Solomon (Texts and Studies viii. 3 [1912]); J. Rendel Harris, Odes of Solomon2, 1911, An Early Christian Psalter (abridged translation of Odes), 1909.
4. Didache.-i. 1: ὁδοὶ δύο εἰσί, μία τῆς ζωῆς, καὶ μία τοῦ θανάτου, ‘the way of life and the way of death’ (cf. Christianity as ‘the way,’ Acts 9:2, 2 Peter 2:2). i. 6: ἱδρωτάτω ἡ ἐλεημοσύνη σου εἰς τὰς χεῖράς σου, ‘Let thine alms sweat into thine hands.’ vi. 2: εἰ μὲν γὰρ δύνασαι βαστάσαι ὅλον τὸν ζυγὸν τοῦ κυρίου, ‘if thou art able to bear the whole yoke of the Lord.’ xii. 5: χριστέμπορος, ‘making trade of Christ.’ xvi. 3: καὶ στραφήσονται τὰ πρόβατα εἰς λύκους, ‘and the sheep shall be turned into wolves.’
General results of study of metaphors.-The above lists, by no means exhaustive, of metaphors in the NT and early Christian literature, show how rich and various was the stock of ideas from which the writers of Christian antiquity drew to illustrate the gospel message with which their heart was aflame. It is obvious that to understand aright we must know something of the background of the Early Church in the pagan world, that welter of rites and cults in the Graeco-Roman and Oriental world which modern research has done so much to make vivid. Yet some are probably mistaken in attaching too much importance, or the wrong sort of importance, to all this: the phraseology in which the gospel message was first clothed had often extraneous origin; the message itself was fresh and unique. External influences may account for the form but not for the fact. It may be that in some cases a metaphor or figure, not only of word but of thought, affected the thought which it clothed, and this is the sole argument for ‘mythology’ in the NT. This leads, in conclusion, to the psychological aspect of metaphor. Psychology ‘proves the fundamental connexion between the religious and the non-religious aspects of Life and Thought’ (S. A. Cook, Foundations of Religion, 1914, p. 91). All spiritual truths are conceived through imperfect symbols, but the symbol must be examined, and what is essential separated from the outward form, before the truth within can be clear.
Literature.-For Metaphor as a whole: F. E. König, articles ‘Style of Scripture’ and ‘Symbols and Symbolical Actions’ in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) v., Stilistik, Rhetorik, Poetik, in Bezug auf die biblische Litteratur, komparativisch dargestellt, 1900; L. E. Browne, The Parables of the Gospels (Hulsean Prize Essay), 1913; W. Sanday, Christologies Ancient and Modern, 1910, ch. ix.: ‘The Guiding Principle of Symbolism.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Metaphor'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/m/metaphor.html. 1906-1918.
