Scholars have debated whether the ancient Israelites believed in the evil eye. Biblical passages that mention a “bad eye” (Prov. 23:6; 28:22) or “to do bad with the eye” (Deut. 15:9; 28:54, 56) seem to suggest that such a belief existed in ancient Israel; however, some scholars have argued that such passages are simply idioms for greed or stinginess. This paper reexamines this issue. Drawing upon recent insights from cognitive linguistics, I argue that perception was commonly understood in ancient Israel as a means of positively and negatively affecting the environment and that it was this affective dimension of Israelite thought that prompted biblical writers to describe the character of an individual by his or her physical qualities.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
J. Elliot, “The Evil Eye and the Sermon on the Mount: Contours of a Pervasive Belief in Social Scientific Perspective,” BibInt 2 (1994), pp. 51–84 (51); idem., “The Evil Eye in the First Testament,” p. 148. See also J. Roberts, “Belief in the Evil Eye in World Perspective,” in C. Maloney (ed.), The Evil Eye (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), pp. 223–78; M. Malul, Knowledge, Control, and Sex: Studies in Biblical Thought, Culture, and Worldview (Tel Aviv: Archaeological Center Publications, 2002), pp. 209, 286–87, 351; N. Wazana, “A Case of the Evil Eye: Qohelet 4:4–8,” JBL 126 (2007), pp. 685–702; Z. Kotzé, “קרץ עין as Conceptual Metaphor for the Evil Eye in Ps 35, 19,” in P. Van Hecke and A. Labahn (eds.), Metaphors in the Psalms (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters, 2010), pp. 135–39; and F. Viljoen, “A Contextualised Reading of Matthew 6:22–23: ‘Your Eye is the Lamp of Your Body,’” HTS Teologiese Studies 65 (2009), Art. #152; available online at http://www.hts.org.za.
M.-L. Thomsen, “The Evil Eye in Mesopotamia,” JNES 51 (1992), pp. 19–32 (28); Y. Avrahami, The Senses of Scripture: Sensory Perception in the Hebrew Bible (New York: T & T Clark International, 2011), pp. 152–53. See also R. Ulmer, The Evil Eye in the Bible and Rabbinic Literature (Hoboken, N.J.: KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 1994), pp. 1–4, and the many modern English editions of Deuteronomy and Proverbs that translate these phrases with terms that reflect the inner character of the individual. The NRSV, for instance, translates רעע עין as “view with hostility” (Deut. 15:9) or “begrudge food” (Deut. 28:54, 56) and רע עין as “stingy” (Prov. 23:6) or “miser” (Prov. 28:22).
Elliot, “The Evil Eye and the Sermon on the Mount,” p. 54; D. Allison, “The Eye is the Lamp of the Body (Matthew 6:22–23 = Luke 11.34–36),” NTS 33 (1987), pp. 61–83.
I. Ibarretxe-Antuñano, “Vision Metaphors for the Intellect: Are They Really Cross-Linguistic?” Atlantis: Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies 30 (2008), pp. 15–33 (20).
Ibarretxe-Antuñano, “Vision Metaphors for the Intellect,” pp. 26–30.
Ibarretxe-Antuñano, “Vision Metaphors for the Intellect,” p. 20.
H. Jonas, “The Nobility of Sight: A Study in the Phenomenology of the Senses,” in The Phe-nomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 146.
E. Sweetser, From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Se-mantic Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 44.
Kotzé, “קרץ עין as Conceptual Metaphor for the Evil Eye,” p. 137.
M. Fox, Proverbs 10–31: A New Introduction and Commentary (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 517.
Avrahami, The Senses of Scripture, p. 125. As Avrahami argues, the use of רֵיחַ here plays upon the dual connotation of the noun (“breath” and “scent”) and suggests a “correlation not just between breathing and smelling, but between exhalation and spreading a smell.”
J. Grady, “Primary Metaphors as Inputs to Conceptual Integration,” Journal of Pragmatics 37 (2005), pp. 1595–1614 (1600).
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 256 | 55 | 10 |
Full Text Views | 42 | 5 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 58 | 7 | 1 |
Scholars have debated whether the ancient Israelites believed in the evil eye. Biblical passages that mention a “bad eye” (Prov. 23:6; 28:22) or “to do bad with the eye” (Deut. 15:9; 28:54, 56) seem to suggest that such a belief existed in ancient Israel; however, some scholars have argued that such passages are simply idioms for greed or stinginess. This paper reexamines this issue. Drawing upon recent insights from cognitive linguistics, I argue that perception was commonly understood in ancient Israel as a means of positively and negatively affecting the environment and that it was this affective dimension of Israelite thought that prompted biblical writers to describe the character of an individual by his or her physical qualities.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 256 | 55 | 10 |
Full Text Views | 42 | 5 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 58 | 7 | 1 |