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Abstract
This dissertation examines the role of perception in Israelite and early Jewish epistemology through cognitive linguistics and conceptual metaphor theory. In particular, I argue that the regular and repeated experience of the environment through the senses provided the basic cognitive patterns for ancient Israelite and early Jewish scribes to understand the abstract experience of cognition, define the proper means of acquiring knowledge, and prescribe appropriate behaviors for their community members to follow.
Chapters 1 and 2 lay the theoretical and cultural foundations for the study. Chapters 3–5 examine the biological and cultural understanding of perception in the Hebrew Bible and the metaphors derived from them. I begin my analysis in Chapter 3 by establishing a set of “prototypical properties” associated with each of the senses in ancient Israel. Such properties, I argue, were mapped to varying degrees onto the abstract domain of cognition, creating distinctive sets of “primary” metaphors (KNOWING IS SEEING, UNDERSTANDING IS GRASPING, IDEAS ARE FOOD, etc.), which were then extended, blended, and clustered together to create complex, imaginative metaphors about wisdom (WISDOM IS A GARMENT, WISDOM IS A PATH OF LIGHT, WISDOM IS A TEACHER, etc.). Chapter 3 examines these primary metaphors as they appear in three biblical texts (Proverbs, Job, Qohelet), while Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the various complex, imaginative metaphors in the book of Proverbs. Chapter 6 concludes this study by examining how these imaginative perceptual metaphors became conventional modes of expression in early Jewish literature.
My study of the embodied nature of wisdom metaphors, then, is a study of the cognitive hermeneutics of ancient Israel and early Judaism. Because it postulates that both universal and cultural factors influenced the formation, expansion, and interpretation of epistemological metaphors, my study offers a fresh perspective by which to study biblical traditions and their early interpretations. Most importantly, my dissertation suggests that our study of the Hebrew Bible and its reception would benefit from taking into account not only the cultural milieu of the cultures that produced and interpreted these texts but also the common corporeal experiences that shaped their literary ventures.
