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The Torah / Law Is a Journey

The Torah / Law Is a Journey

Using Cognitive and Culturally Oriented Linguistics to Interpret and Translate Metaphors in the Hebrew Bible

Procházková, Ivana

subjects: linguistics, Jewish studies, religion

paperback, 160 pp., 1. edition
published: july 2021
ISBN: 978-80-246-4842-2
recommended price: 490 czk

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summary

Metaphorical expressions not only appear in poetic texts of the Old Testament but also in legal texts. In particular, they appear in the preambles to collections of laws, in their final summaries, in more general considerations on compliance with and violation of the law, in texts concerning the meaning of the law, dealing with topics that are now dealt with in law theory or law philosophy. Metaphorical expressions usually reveal how the authors of the relevant Torah / Law texts understood their function in society, in culture. They testify to the place of the Torah / Law in the system of values, about what society preferred in the law. The following monograph is a contribution to the scholarly debate, which is methodologically anchored in cognitive and culturally oriented linguistics.
Its focus is to investigate Hebrew metaphorical expressions concerning one of the key Old Testament concept Torah / Law. The author focuses on the identification of Hebrew conceptual metaphors and on the explanation of the meaning of the respective metaphorical expressions. Another area in which the use of cognitive linguistic analyses and the interpretation of metaphorical expressions has proven to be very effective is in the area of translation. The third chapter of this book is given to look at modern translations of selected metaphorical expressions into modern Czech and English. Another possible application of cognitive linguistic analyses of metaphorical expressions in the semantic field Law is represented by the final case study. The study brings the results of cognitive semantic analyses of the didactic human rights material Compass: Manual for Human Rights Education with Young People with regard to the metaphors used to conceptualize the concept of human rights.