Starting with the metaphor as a contextual phenomenon, this contribution will focus on the paradigmatic context of a metaphor, the so-called Bildfeld (metaphorical field; image field) located in the “langue.”1 Difficulties in determining and analysing a Bildfeld, as well as both the limits and the potential of this approach, will be discussed on the basis of examples from the biblical field. Finally, the potentialities of a comparison of actualized Bildfelder will be shown by comparing three metaphors that are used by both the gospel parable tradition and the apostle Paul.
1 Theory
1.1 The Paradigmatic Context
It was the Romance philologist Harald Weinrich very successfully introduced the concept of Bildfeld into the investigation of metaphors, which was oriented to literary studies. Weinrich was following Paul Claudel’s “champ de figures” here.2 His methodological starting point is Ferdinand de Saussure’s fundamental distinction between langue and parole, that is to say, the distinction between the supra-individual, virtual “objectively structured language possessed by a community” (langue)3 and the individual speech act (parole). He elaborates his Bildfeld theory on the analogy of Jost Trier’s theory of the Wortfeld (lexical field).4 The lexical field belongs under the langue, that is to say, the supra-individual linguistic community. Here, a word and “its closer or more distantly neighbouring” “conceptual relatives” form a “structured whole, a framework, that one can call … a lexical field”5 and that can be understood as a synchronous paradigm. If a word from the lexical field is realized syntagmatically on the level of the parole, “it contributes the content of meaning that belongs to it in the paradigm because of its relationship to other elements in the field.”6 The Bildfeld should be envisaged on analogy to this, with the difference that “the coupling of two linguistic ranges of meaning [Sinnbezirke]” takes place “in the metaphor … in question”:7 “In the metaphor Wortmünze [lit. “word coin”: a word that is in common currency], the reality of ‘word’ is linked with the reality of ‘coin,’ and each term brings its neighbours with it. The ‘word’ brings the language’s range of meaning, and the ‘coin’ brings the financial system’s range of meaning.”8 Just as a change in the meaning of a word in the Bedeutungsfeld (semantic field) has immediate consequences for the meanings of the other words in the lexical/semantic field,9 the same applies to the change of a metaphor in the Bildfeld.10 According to Weinrich, not every metaphor exists in a Bildfeld, but the isolated metaphor is rare and has “usually no success in the linguistic community.”11 On the other hand, a “metaphor that is integrated into a Bildfeld” has “the best chances of being accepted by the linguistic community.”12
According to Weinrich, on the analogy of the metaphor (in which two components, the image donor and the image recipient, are linked), there is a similar link in the Bildfeld between two linguistic ranges of meaning: a field that is the “image donor,” and a field that is the “image recipient.”13
One can identify Bildfelder in an empirical-inductive manner by collecting the individual metaphors of a linguistic and cultural community that are realized in specific circumstances and have a literary attestation, thereby endeavouring to determine the virtual possibilities in the langue14 and making a descriptive-systematic presentation of them. It is also possible to rely on one’s own metaphorical competence;15 but this is not unproblematic with regard to our interest in the ancient world, in view of the historical distance and the fact that we are not “native speakers.”16 In practice, the search can begin with either the semasiological or the onomasiological aspect,17 but it must always look for the pendant on the other side, since a Bildfeld is constituted only by the coupling of two ranges of meaning, the image donor and the image recipient.18
It is, at any rate, clear that despite all our endeavours, one can never regard the identification of a Bildfeld as completed once and for all. And in the case of classical antiquity, the scarcity of the source material only makes this more obvious.
1.2 Difficulties and Criticism of the Bildfeld Theory
This already brings us to the difficulties and limitations of the Bildfeld theory, and to the criticism of this theory. In addition to the difficulty of reconstructing a Bildfeld from the langue in a truly comprehensive manner, we have the problem of the delimitability of Bildfelder. Various Bildfelder can overlap,19 and we must assume that many individual metaphors can belong not only unambiguously to a single Bildfeld, but to several Bildfelder.20 And, of course, Bildfelder are clearly more complex than lexical or semantic fields.21 Dieter Peil points out that Weinrich’s example (with reference to Jost Trier) of the field of colours, in which the individual colours change their significance in accordance with the number of colours of which each field consists,22 is made up of very uniform elements―as are Trier’s lexical fields in general: “Trier’s lexical fields are each restricted to one kind of word.”23 But in Bildfelder, there are diverse kinds of words and references. For example, in the Bildfeld “Wortmünze,” we not only find concepts like Falschmünzerei (“counterfeiting”) for a manner of speaking that engages in ideological falsification or the “bounced check” for an empty promise,24 but a word is also “coined” and there is such a thing as “golden words.”25 Moreover, Peil emphasizes that a metaphor is formed in the syntagm—on the level of the parole—rather than in the paradigm.26 This means that the syntagmatic relationships also condition the structure of the Bildfeld. It is indeed possible for paradigmatic relationships to occur in the Bildfeld as well,27 but these are not sufficient “to comprehend” a Bildfeld “adequately.”28
Hoberg and Wessel have objected to Weinrich’s analogy between the lexical or semantic field and the Bildfeld by arguing that the Bildstelle (image area, understood as a unity of two concrete halves of an image) has a greater paradigmatic independence than a word in its lexical field, since the fact that the image area itself always presents a brief textual context means that it already bears “an inherent … meaning of its own.”29 This means that the addition of an image area to, or its removal from, the Bildfeld does not have the same drastic consequences as the addition or removal of a word to or from the lexical field: “the meaning of an individual word” is “always determined from the outside, from its importance in the structure of the lexical field.”30 This means that we have touched here on one of the strengths of the image area over against the word in a Wortfeld, precisely with regard to traditional stocks of metaphors.
1.3 Strengths and Opportunities of the Bildfeld Theory, and Further Development(s)
The Bildfeld theory appears particularly appropriate for the understanding of traditionally existing stocks of metaphors.31 This is especially important for exegesis, because traditional metaphors play a significant role precisely in the biblical realm: “in the language of the Bible, we encounter primarily solid metaphors that bear the imprint of a long religious tradition.”32 Where we have a “canalized tradition of metaphors” of this kind, this relativizes the objection that a Bildfeld is insufficiently delimitable, since the Bildfeld is in this case frequently “more clearly delimitable than the lexical fields.”33
It is easier to understand metaphors when they are “borne up by a Bildfeld that already exists in the linguistic and literary tradition.”34 This is important for the denotation and acceptance of a metaphor.
The fact that an individual metaphor from the Bildfeld, which is realized in the syntagm, still refers to its paradigmatic field is relevant from another perspective as well: this fact is the basis for a simple creation of new metaphors, which in their turn can easily be received because of the Bildfeld. This creation of new metaphors can be grasped by an example taken from Francis E. Sparshott: the metaphor “ship of the desert” for a camel evokes “the desert as an unharvested ocean, whose wave are dunes, whose islands are oases, where camels travel in convoy caravans so as not to be torpedoed by Tuaregs—and then it may occur to us how the ribs of a wrecked camel begin to show through the rotten planking.”35 The actualized metaphor “ship of the desert” for a camel generates in the human linguistic consciousness the fields neighbouring each individual paradigmatic field: “ship” (“ocean,” “waves,” etc.) and “desert” (“dunes,” “oases,” etc.). That is why you can easily expand the Bildfeld in combining further elements of the respective word fields (here: of “ship,” “desert”) by creating new metaphors that are sustained by the already existing word field and are thus easily understood and accepted.36 What is involved here is in fact an “increase” in metaphors, rather than an “original creation” of metaphors.37 If a metaphor is “shifted in parallel in the Bildfeld,” so to speak, “empty spaces” in the Bildfeld are often detected and then filled.38 Peil develops Weinrich’s theory of Bildfeld further, and assumes that elements of image can certainly exist in the image donor,39 elements that themselves do not (as yet) have any pendant in the image recipient. We could sketch this in greatly simplified terms, following Peil, by means of the following diagram:
Relation between Bildfeld (langue) and parole: Overflowing element “C” in the image donor without pendant in the image recipient
When one spins out a metaphor40 within a Bildfeld—to take up again the example of the camel as the “ship of the desert”—by speaking of a journey through the desert in terms of a voyage by ship, one very easily evokes “rudimentary narrative structures.”41 This is interesting with regard to the understanding of a parable as a metaphor that is given a narrative elaboration:42 the metaphor contributes by means of association with the Bildfeld that is linked to it.
If we look at the use of metaphors in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and inter- and post-testamental writings in the light of the cultural community that sustains the Bildfelder, we can get a more precise awareness of the virtual possibilities that were available to the authors or redactors, and whose possibilities they ultimately realized in the metaphor in question. And this also implies that we see which of the virtual metaphors they clearly decided not to use.43 Here, we gain some clarity about the intention of the author or redactor,44 and perhaps also about the situation. This brings us to the extra-lingual, pragmatic context in which both the langue (and thus also the Bildfeld) and the syntagmatic realizations from the Bildfeld on the level of the parole are embedded.45
1.4 The Embedding of the Paradigmatic (and Syntagmatic) Contexts in the Pragmatic Context
The linguistic theory of metaphor did not initially envisage the pragmatic context explicitly.46 This context was, however, implicitly present in the idea of the linguistic community that sustains the Bildfeld,47 as well as in the central category of the expectation of determination in the linguistic consciousness of the recipient(s), which is included in the definition of a metaphor as “a word in a counter-determining context [ein Wort in einem konterdeterminierenden Kontext]”.48
Both Bildfelder and their specific actualizations as metaphors on the level of the parole are embedded in an extra-lingual pragmatic context. They are both the expression of an existential context and the expression of the interpretation of this context, but they also have an effect on this existential context and on its interpretation, either altering or stabilising them.49 This means that we have to look both at the reality to which the images in the Bildfeld refer (e.g., “naturalia” or historical-sociological circumstances) and at the specific interpretation(s) of reality. We also have to pay attention to both the intended and the real effect(s) of a realized metaphor.50
With regard to the community that sustains a Bildfeld, we must assume that the participation in a Bildfeld differs according to the (sub)groups and social classes to which a person belongs, to that person’s erudition, and so on. Indeed, metaphors can be decoded differently (or not decoded at all) in terms of the group to which one belongs. In this way, the metaphorical code can have an exclusive function, or—for the “in-group”—an inclusive function that stabilizes the group (see Mark 4:11–12).
The Bildfelder in the sphere of religious (biblical) language are relatively constant,51 but we can nonetheless observe a change in Bildfelder, which is, for this reason, particularly noteworthy. This can be discerned only from actualizations in the parole. This change is connected to the change of the situation and/or the interpretation of the community.52 We shall look at examples of this in the second part of this article (2) and then speak briefly (3) about the comparison of Bildfelder.
2 Bildfelder and the Analysis of Biblical Texts
2.1 The Change of Focus53
In the First Testament, the image of the tree, and especially the vine stock, the most important fruit tree in Palestine, dominates as a metaphor for the collective.54 The tree occurs frequently as a metaphor for the community of the people of Israel.55
In pre-exilic, especially prophetic literature, image elements from this Bildfeld are frequently actualized. These proclaim to Israel, often with reference to bad fruit or a lack of fruit,56 judgement through the actualization and destruction of expressive image elements: the shoots of the vine stock Israel are to be torn out;57 the branches of the olive tree will be beaten and its fruit will fall to the ground;58 branches and even the undergrowth of the wood will be cut down;59 a fire is kindled around the olive tree, and its branches suffer;60 the vineyard that only bears bad grapes loses its protective fence and protective wall, it is no longer pruned and hoed, so that thistles and thorns spread, and rain no longer falls on it;61 it is devastated and trampled down by shepherds.62
In the post-exilic period, on the other hand, the focus is on positive image elements in connection with the metaphor of the tree for the people of Israel. This is done above all: a) in a contrast looking back on historical images: YHWH waters the vineyard, protects it by day and night, he fights against thorns and thistles and burns them;63 b) in a positive further development of images of judgement: a holy seed will be a “stump” (which remains when the tree has been felled);64 c) by reviving the images of the salutary beginning.65 Here, the change of situation displays its impact in the use of images and in various focusses within the possibilities of the Bildfeld.
2.2 Expansions of the Bildfeld or an Expanded Actualization from the Bildfeld
2.2.1 A Semasiologically Oriented Approach
The image of the tree was employed in the First Testament not only for the people, but together with the image of a king, a royal dynasty, or a kingdom (which often interferes with the former image).66 Ezekiel 31, Dan 4, and Ezek 17 present the image of the great tree (behind which lies the ancient oriental mythologem of the world-tree),67 in whose branches birds nest and in whose shadow the animals are at rest; peoples too take shelter there.68 Ezekiel 31 employs this world-tree to describe the greatness and the fall of (the kingdom of) Pharaoh; Dan 4 to describe the greatness and the fall of (the kingdom of) Nebuchadnezzar; and Ezek 17 to describe the judgement on Zedekiah, which is reversed in the later addition in Ezek 17:22–24: a tender shoot from the top of the cedar is to be planted on the lofty mountains of Israel, “in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar. Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shadow of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind. All the trees of the field [peoples] shall know that I am the LORD. I bring low the high tree, I make high the low tree [Israel]” (Ezek 17:22–24).69 There can be no doubt that this stock of imagery is taken up in Mark 4:30–32//Matt 13:31–32//Luke 13:18–19 in the parable of the Mustard Seed, with reference to the
We can identify not only agreements in motifs and themes, but also literal agreements with the above-mentioned passages.72 It is striking—and here we definitely have an expansion of a Bildfeld—that the image of the great plant or the great tree is realized in Mark 4:30–32//Matt 13:31–32//Luke 13:18–19, together with the image of a mustard seed, which does not correspond to either the reality73 or the metaphorical tradition: mustard is not attested in the First Testament or the subsequent early Jewish writings.74 This is presumably why it was not anchored in the linguistic consciousness of those to whom the parable was addressed.75 The use of this common annual plant for the
2.2.2 An Onomasiologically Oriented Approach
As we have seen, the tree as collective metaphor for Israel dominates in the First Testament. It is also found (with a tendency to “narrow it down” to the pious in Israel) in the intertestamental literature,79 and is taken up in the New Testament in the image of the olive tree in Rom 11 and of the vine stock in John 15, where the image is centred on Christ.80 This is widely supported by the Bildfeld tradition, but in the Synoptic Gospels we encounter a surprising expansion of the Bildfeld for a community, something that has scarcely any points of reference in the tradition:81 in Mark 4 and Matt 13, images from the seed image donor realm are suddenly (also) applied with reference to a community and its problems.82 While it is true that the metaphors of the seed in the parable of the Fourfold Field in Mark 4:3–8//Matt 13:3b–8//Luke 8:5–8a remain oscillating, since they can refer both to human beings and to the word,83 the difference among the various types of hearers in the allegorical interpretation of this parable (Mark 4:14–20) has a very clear reference to the (early Christian) community.84 The parable of the Weeds (ryegrass) among the Wheat (Matt 13) makes it clear that while the community’s existence is due to the sowing of good seed,85 it must now also take note of the growth of harmful ryegrass. This leads to the question of how they are to tackle this problem. In this parable too, the metaphors of seed are related in a differentiated manner to the community. It is probably not by chance that an allegorical-explanatory interpretation was given precisely these two parables (and only these two parables!), the parable of the Fourfold Field and the parable of the Weeds among the Wheat, with their innovative use of metaphor for which the Bildfeld provides scarcely any support: “seed” as a metaphor for a community does not already exist in the conventional Bildfeld. That is why images of the seed are more difficult to decode for the addressees—they require further explanation. There are new possibilities of accentuation: whereas the seed grows and is harvested over a relatively brief period of time, a tree grows over long periods of time and is longer-lived. The image of the seed is better able than the image of the tree (which can also develop from a tree stump) to emphasize the absolutely new beginning and brevity of the time until the harvest (the end), whereas the image of the tree is better suited to continuity and lengthier periods of time. It is striking that the more conventional metaphor of the tree is taken up in the New Testament for the community and modified, in view of Israel or the Jewish Christians (Rom 11), as well as in the latest of the canonical gospels, the Gospel of John (John 15). Finally, it is once again the image of the tree for a collective that dominates in the apostolic fathers—the seed as an image for a community now disappears completely.86 It is natural to correlate this change within the Bildfeld “vegetation” first of all with the history of the community of the Bildfeld: with the passage of time, the initial consciousness recedes, as does the image of a speedy harvest implied in the image of the seed, which make sense above all when there is a lively expectation of the end.87 Secondly, it is precisely the parable of the Mustard Seed that suggests a clear change in the intended affirmation: the
2.3 Narrowing Down the Bildfeld, or a Narrowing Actualization from the Bildfeld
In the ancient oriental and Greek tradition of fables, we often encounter personified animals and even plants,89 which speak and quarrel. These are only very rarely met in the First Testament,90 and they are completely lacking in the Jesus tradition. We do indeed find plants and animals in New Testament parables, but they do not speak.91 This is striking, because Luke 13:6–9 is very close to a parable of Ahiqar that was most likely current in several versions at the time of Jesus.92 Here, a fruit tree that bears no fruit directly addresses its owner, who wants to uproot it, and promises him that it will bear even better fruit (than its own fruit), if the owner grants it one more year.93 In Luke 13:6–9, on the other hand, it is the owner of the fig tree and the keeper of the vineyard who speak about the tree that bears no fruit, and discuss what is to be done with it.
The avoidance of the personification of animals and plants in the Jesus tradition is striking, given that animal and plant metaphors are certainly found in this tradition (as in the First Testament).94 It is possible that the narrowing down of the Bildfeld that we observe in the Jesus tradition is rooted in the rejection of the static-contrasting depiction of human beings characteristic of fables. The Jesus tradition is based on the idea that the human being is capable of changing, and it aims precisely at this change of the human being.95
3 Comparison of Actualized Bildfelder
By way of conclusion, I will briefly show how the comparison of Bildfelder can prove heuristically meaningful. In Rom 6–8, three images thematize the fundamental transformation of the human person that one goes through, from the death of the old person (Rom 6:6) to the birth of the new person. This transformation is ritually condensed in baptism (Rom 6). All three images are drawn from the ancient
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While Paul speaks of the slave’s transition to a new master,97 Jesus never speaks of a new master;
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While Paul speaks of a new marriage,98 Jesus tells only of the marriage feast;
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While Paul speaks of adoption as son,99 Jesus never thematizes adopted sons. He speaks consistently of “natural” sons.100
These differences can certainly be explained by the circumstance that Jesus is speaking to Jews who from the outset live in the covenant with God, while Paul is seeking to win over gentiles, for whom conversion to Christ is accompanied by a fundamental, radical transformation of their existence. The comparison of the different uses of Bildfelder thus allows us to see various contextual conditionings, and thereby also elements of the proclamation that have a different focus.
My conclusion, therefore, is that Bildfelder help to open up collective systems of interpretation of life and the world.101 This is especially true of religious communities’ systems of interpretation of life and the world, because religious language, not by chance, displays a particularly close affinity with metaphors. Religious metaphors open up and interpret reality, and they have a point of reference that cannot be expressed exactly in immanent categories. Besides this, they address the mind, the emotions, and the will of the human being, and function to guide conduct. Since some metaphors seem to be specific for the profile of individual religions or religious communities, a study of these “root metaphors”102 and of the way in which they are developed in Bildfelder sheds light on the understanding of the religion in question. Changes in the Bildfelder also point to the pragmatic context: they can indicate a change in the situative and sociocultural context and its interpretation.103 Accordingly, for a deeper understanding of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the post-biblical writings, and of the communities that were the bearers of these texts, the task that awaits us is the reconstruction of the “Bildfeld-field”104 in each case.
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Wessel, Franziska. Probleme der Metaphorik und die Minnemetaphorik in Gottfrieds von Straßburg „Tristan und Isolde.” MMS 54. Munich: Fink, 1984.
The author wishes to express her gratitude to Dr Brian McNeil for his translation of the text and the original German citations, and to Dr Albert Gootjes for his attentive reading of the text. Biblical quotations are taken from the NRSV.
Paul Claudel, Introduction au Livre de Ruth: Texte intégral de l’abbé Tardif de Moidrey (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), 44 (first published in 1938); on the reception, see Harald Weinrich, Sprache in Texten (Stuttgart: Klett, 1976), 283. In 1933, Gerhard Fricke was the first to speak of the Bildfeld; see Dietmar Peil, “Bildfelder in historischer Perspektive,” in Lexikologie 1: Ein internationales Handbuch zur Natur und Struktur von Wörtern und Wortschätzen/Lexicology: An International Handbook on the Nature and Structure of Words and Vocabularies. ed. David A. Cruse, HSK 21.1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2002), 764–771, at 764.
Weinrich, Sprache, 277.
Peil, “Bildfelder in historischer Perspektive,” 764; Weinrich, Sprache, esp. 283–284, 325–326. However, Weinrich does not commit himself to one precise understanding of “field”; see Franziska Wessel, Probleme der Metaphorik und die Minnemetaphorik in Gottfrieds von Strassburg „Tristian und Isolde,‟ MMS 54 (Munich: Fink, 1984), 67.
All quotations are from Jost Trier, “Über Wort- und Begriffsfelder,” in Wortfeldforschung: Zur Geschichte und Theorie des sprachlichen Feldes, ed. Lothar Schmidt, WF 250 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973), 1–38, at 1.
Hans-Josef Klauck, Allegorie und Allegorese in synoptischen Gleichnistexten, 2nd ed., NTAbh 13 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1978), 141; see Weinrich, Sprache, 325.
Weinrich, Sprache, 283 (my italics). For Weinrich, the only thing that matters is that “two linguistic ranges of meaning are coupled by a speech act and are posited as analogous to each other.”
Weinrich, Sprache, 283, see also 326.
Weinrich, Sprache, 325, understands “semantic field” and “lexical field” as synonyms.
On the genesis of a metaphor in the Bildfeld and its slow fading through recurrent use until it becomes an ex-metaphor, and on the Bildfeld which then has a free space that can be occupied anew, see Weinrich, Sprache, 282.
Weinrich, Sprache, 286; Peil, “Bildfelder in historischer Perspektive,” 765.
Weinrich, Sprache, 286.
Weinrich, Sprache, 284. When he uses the terms “image donor” and “image recipient,” Weinrich explicitly refers to Jost Trier’s expression “image donors” (see Jost Trier, “Deutsche Bedeutungsforschung,” in Aufsätze und Vorträge zur Wortfeldtheorie, ed. Anthony van der Lee and Oskar Reichmann, JLSM 174 [The Hague: Mouton, 1973], 110–144, here: 141).
Klauck, Allegorie, 143; Catherine Hezser, Lohnmetaphorik und Arbeitswelt in Mt 20,1–16: Das Gleichnis von den Arbeitern im Weinberg im Rahmen rabbinischer Lohngleichnisse, NTOA 15 (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990), 224.
Dietmar Peil, “Bildtheoretische Probleme in der ‘Goldenen Schmiede’ Konrads von Würzburg,” JOWG 5 (1988–1989): 169–180, at 172.
See Klaus Berger, Exegese des Neuen Testaments: Neue Wege vom Text zur Auslegung, UTB 658 (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1977), 138, 157.
There are now dictionaries that register the Bildfelder from either the semasiological or onomasiological aspect; see Wolf-Andreas Liebert, “Bildfelder in synchroner Perspektive,” in Lexikologie. ed. David A. Cruse, 771–783, at 779.
Weinrich, Sprache, 284; Dietmar Peil, “Zum Problem des Bildfeldbegriffs,” in Studien zur Wortfeldtheorie: Studies in Lexical Field Theory, ed. Peter Rolf Lutzeier, LA 288 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993), 185–202, at 190.
Peil, “Bildfeldtheoretische Probleme,” 172, adduces the metaphor of the storm that brings “the steersman in the Bildfeld of the ship of state … to despair” and can cause the collapse of the state in the Bildfeld of the public building.
Peil, “Bildfeldtheoretische Probleme,” 172; Klauck, Allegorie, 143.
In Harald Weinrich, “Semantik der Metapher,” FL 1 (1967): 3–17, at 13, Weinrich views the Bildfelder “as the link of two lexical fields”; later, in Weinrich, Sprache, 326, he speaks of images as “the link of two semantic fields.” We can infer from Weinrich, Sprache, 325–326, that he regards lexical and semantic fields as synonymous.
Weinrich, Sprache, 325.
Peil, “Bildfelder in historischer Perspektive,” 766. In 1931, Jost Trier investigated the “range of meaning of the understanding”; see Jost Trier, Der deutsche Wortschatz im Sinnbezirk des Verstandes: Die Geschichte eines sprachlichen Feldes, vol. 1, Von den Anfängen bis zum Beginn des 13. Jahrhunderts, 2nd ed. (Heidelberg: Winter, 1973).
Examples from Klauck, Allegorie, 141–142.
Examples from Weinrich, Sprache, 280–281.
Peil, “Bildfelder in historischer Perspektive,” 766.
Ibid. Peil gives the example of paradigmatic relationships between gold, silver, and copper coins.
Ibid.
Wessel, Probleme, 68; see Rudolf Hoberg, Die Lehre vom sprachlichen Feld: Ein Beitrag zu ihrer Geschichte, Methodik und Anwendung, SG 11 (Mannheim: Institut für Deutsche Sprache, 1970), 125. The proposal that one should therefore avoid the concept of Bildfeld and apply a new concept, such as “range of image” (Bildbezirk), for the two linked fields, has not achieved a consensus; see Wessel, Probleme, 68n290. On various kinds and understandings of the concept of field, see Horst Geckeler, Zur Wortfelddiskussion: Untersuchungen zur Gliederung des Wortfeldes ‘alt–jung–neu’ im heutigen Französisch, IBAL 7 (Munich: Fink, 1971), 167–176.
Wessel, Probleme, 68.
Klauck, Allegorie, 145.
Klauck, Allegorie, 143.
Both quotations from Weinrich, “Semantik der Metapher,” 13.
Weinrich, Sprache, 326.
Francis E. Sparshott, “‘As,’ or the Limits of Metaphor,” NLH 6 (1974): 75–94, at 82, see also 84.
Weinrich, Sprache, 326. See also Weinrich, Sprache, 280: “One can shift these metaphors [i.e., Wortmünzen and similar metaphors] in parallel. In this way, one acquires new metaphors that are either known to us from colloquial speech or encounter us at every turn in our reading, so that we often cannot truly say whether or not we have already heard them” see Harald Weinrich, “Münze und Wort. Untersuchungen an einem Bildfeld,” in Romanica: Festschrift for Gerhard Rohlfs, ed. Heinrich Lausberg (Halle: Niemeyer, 1958), 508–521, 512. See also Wessel, Probleme, 68: “established metaphors” have “the tendency … to propagate, field by field.” It is so easy to spin out a metaphor into a story; see Klauck, Allegorie, 142.
Weinrich, Sprache, 288.
See Weinrich, Sprache, 288, 326. Ultimately, these new metaphors are already potentialities within the Bildfeld.
Peil, “Zum Problem des Bildfeldbegriffs,” 193, 201, speaks of the “overflowing detail.”
This formulation follows Klauck, Allegorie, 142.
Klauck, Allegorie, 142.
Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, Der historische Jesus: Ein Lehrbuch, 3rd rev. ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), 307.
Hezser, Lohnmetaphorik, 224–225.
See Berger, Exegese, 139–140.
See Petra von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik im Neuen Testament und seiner Umwelt: Eine Bildfelduntersuchung, NTOA 18 (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 16.
See Gustav H. Blanke, Einführung in die semantische Analyse (Munich: Hueber, 1973), 139 (with reference to De Saussure).
See Weinrich, Sprache, 286; Peil, “Bildfelder in historischer Perspektive,” 765.
This is the definition by Weinrich, Sprache, 320. Wessel, Probleme, 55, refines Weinrich’s definition of metaphor as “a word in a counter-determining context”; “it would be more correct to speak of a ‘text-unit,’ or more precisely, ‘an interpretable text-unit’” (in a counter- determining context).
A creative (new) metaphor tends to have an innovative-heuristic function, whereas a conventional metaphor tends to have a stabilising-reassuring function; see von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik, 14.
This is because the intended effect and the de facto effect of a metaphor are not necessarily identical.
This has religious-cultic reasons, and is also connected to the reception of this language. See Klauck, Allegorie, 143; Berger, Exegese, 159; Lowth cf. Claude Goldsmid Montefiore, “A Tentative Catalogue of Biblical Metaphors,” JQR 3 (1891): 623–681, at 626; von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik, 12.
Von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik, 12; Günter Röhser, Metaphorik und Personifikation der Sünde: Antike Sündenvorstellungen und paulinische Hamartia, WUNT 2/25 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1987), 24. On changes in the interpretation, see Hans Blumenberg, “Licht als Metapher der Wahrheit: Im Vorfeld der philosophischen Begriffsbildung,” StG (1957): 432–447, here 433.
The importance of paying attention to the focus within the Bildfelder is emphasized by Ulrich Busse, “Metaphorik und Rhetorik im Johannesevangelium: Das Bildfeld vom König,” in Jesus im Gespräch: Zur Bildrede in den Evangelien und der Apostelgeschichte, ed. Ulrich Busse, SBAB 43 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2009), 171–212, at 209–210.
In Deut 32:32–33, in narrative literature, as a metaphor for the peoples. In Jer 49:9 = Obad 5, the vine stock stands for Edom; in Isa 16:8–10 = Jer 48:32–33 for Sibmah (probably pars pro toto for Moab).
For the vineyard/vine stock, it suffices to see Ps 80; Hos 10:1; Jer 2:21; (Jer 6:9); Isa 5:2; Ezek 15. On other metaphors, see von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik, 66–71.
Isa 5:2, 4; Jer 8:13; Mic 7:1; Jer 6:9, 2:21.
Isa 5:10.
Isa 17:6.
YHWH cuts down not only the branches (of tall trees), but even the undergrowth of the wood. Here, we note a differentiation within the people: YHWH turns against not only those in higher positions (the tall trees), but also against the lowly people (the thickets). See Isa 10:33–34.
Jer 11:16.
Isa 5:5–6.
Jer 12:10.
See the “new song of the vineyard” in Isa 27:2–6. On the post-exilic context, see Evangelia G. Dafni, “Jesaja-Apokalypse,” WiBiLex (2013), https://www.bibelwissenschaft.de/stichwort/22404/, sub point 5. One should note the contrast between Isa 5:2–7 and Isa 27:2–6.
Isa 6:13.
Amos 9:15 (redactional).
The king, as a corporative personality, represents his people, and what happens to him depicts the fate of the people; see Bernhard Lang, Kein Aufstand in Jerusalem: Die Politik des Propheten Ezechiel, SBB (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1978), 112.
See also Ezek 19:10–14 (vine stock as image of the Davidic royal dynasty); Judg 9:8–13 (olive tree, fig tree, and vine stock as potential kings) and Franz Sedlmeier, Das Buch Ezechiel: Kapitel 25–48, NSKAT 21/2 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2013), 102–104.
Ezek 31:6; Dan 4:12, 4:21; Ezek 17:23. On Qumran, see von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik, 199n114; Georg Gäbel, “Mehr Hoffnung wagen (Vom Senfkorn) Mk 4,30–32 (Q 13,18f./Mt 13,31f./Lk 13,18f./EvThom 20),” in Kompendium der Gleichnisse Jesu, ed. Ruben Zimmermann et al. (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2007), 333.
“This seems to be a clear allusion to the restoration of the Davidic monarchy” (Christopher M. Tuckett, “The Parable of The Mustard Seed and the Book of Ezekiel,” in The Book of Ezekiel and its Influence, ed. Henk Jan de Jonge and Johannes Tromp [Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007], 92).
The Q version (Matt 13:32; Luke 13:19) speaks of a “tree”; the Markan version of a “shrub.” The Markan version emphasizes the contrast (the mustard seed is the smallest seed); see Tuckett, “The Parable of The Mustard Seed,” 87.
Klauck, Allegorie, 212, assumes a “reproduction via memory of Ezek 17:23.” On the partially literal agreements with Ezek 17, Dan 4, and Ezek 31, as well as with Ps 104 (103), see Klauck, Allegorie, 212.
Birds cannot nest even in a fully grown mustard plant; and
Gäbel, “Mehr Hoffnung wagen,” 332. Mustard is, however, found in Matt 17:20//Luke 17:6 (here too with the focus on the contrast between small and large) and in rabbinic literature (see Von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik, 198n104).
In the case of ancient texts, we can attempt to reconstruct the Bildfeld, which is to be located on the level of the langue, only via the use of language on the level of the parole. The total number of ancient sources that have come to us is small, and we have no direct access to the oral language, nor to the language of all the classes of the people at that time; and this naturally implies a limitation on the “reconstruction” of the Bildfeld. It is easier for us to grasp intertextual references, since these take place on the level of the parole. They make clear the importance that a formed language had, precisely in religious communities; and this in turn influenced the langue and thereby the Bildfelder of the members of these communities.
Or the tree stump that puts forth a shoot in Isa 11:1, 10.
While Greek and Latin authors classified mustard as a garden plant, the rabbis regarded mustard as a plant of the field (Gäbel, “Mehr Hoffnung wagen,” 332).
The contrast between large and small plays no role in the Bildfeld of the tree of life for a king or a kingdom.
See LAB 12:8–9; 23:12; 30:4; 39:7, and Von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik, 94–95.
For more precise information, see Von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik, 416–417. The tradition about the Baptist and Jesus avoids such images of the tree for the community (the realization of the fig tree in Luke 13:6–9 is most likely due to its great fruitfulness; in Mark 13:28–29, it is based in the fact that the fig tree announced the summer). The metaphors of the tree and its fruit are in that tradition addressed paraenetically to individuals.
In Zech 10:9; Hos 2:(1–3).25; Jer 31:27 (= 38:27–28 LXX) (addition); possibly also in Ps 90:5 and 1 En. 62:8, the constitution of a community is depicted in the image of the sowing of human beings by YHWH; see Gerhard Lohfink, “Das Gleichnis vom Sämann [Mk 4,3–9],” BZ 30 (1986): 59–61; Petra von Gemünden, “Ausreißen oder wachsen lassen? (Vom Unkraut unter dem Weizen) Mt 13,24–30.36–43 (EvThom 47),” in Kompendium der Gleichnisse Jesu, ed. Ruben Zimmermann et al., 405–419, at 411, and it refers “to the people of God”; see Kristina Dronsch, “Vom Fruchtbringen (Sämann mit Deutung) Mk 4,3–9.(10–12).13–20 (Mt 13:1–9.18–23/Lk 8:5–8.11–15/EvThom 9/Agr 220,” in Kompendium der Gleichnisse Jesu, ed. Ruben Zimmermann et al., 297–312, at 305. The donor field of seed–growth–harvest thus displays scarcely any metaphors for a community.
Mark 4:3–8; 14–20//Matt 13:3b–8; 18–23//Luke 8:5–8a; 11–15; Matt 13:24–30; 36–43.
On this, see in the First Testament the only indirect reference to the word in Isa 55:10. Seed is more widespread as a metaphor for the word in the Greek sphere (Von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik, 220). In the interpretation in Mark 4:14, we are told explicitly: “The sower sows the word (
So also Dronsch, “Fruchtbringen,” 306.
In the background most likely lies the idea of the sowing of the community of salvation; see Von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik, 248n267.
Von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik, 416–419.
Von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik, 419.
Von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik, 419–420, cf. also 197–202.
See the Egyptian and Babylonian fables, Aesop, Callimachus, and especially Harry C. Schnur, Fabeln der Antike: Griechisch–Lateinisch–Deutsch, ed. Erich Keller, 3rd ed. (Düsseldorf: Artemis & Winkler, 1997).
The First Testament knows only two fables on plants: 1 Kgs 14:8–14 (cf. 2 Chr 25:18); Judg 9:8–15. The sheep in the parable at 2 Sam 12:1–4 does not speak.
For example, the lost sheep in Luke 15:3–7//Matt 18:12–14 does not speak. However, the branches in Paul’s metaphor of the olive tree do speak (Rom 11:17–24).
Joachim Jeremias, Die Gleichnisse Jesu, 9th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984), 170. Luke 13:6–9 can be seen only with probability as a variation on the Ahiqar fable (Max Küchler, Frühjüdische Weisheitstraditionen: Zum Fortgang weisheitlichen Denkens im Bereich des frühjüdischen Jahweglaubens, OBO 26 [Freiburg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979], 402), since the fables are lacking in the texts from Elephantine (sixth or fifth century BCE) which contain fragments of an Aramaic Ahiqar (Küchler, Weisheitstraditionen, 325–331).
Translation of the Syriac version in: The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, ed. Robert H. Charles, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), 2:775.
On the animal metaphors, see Peter Riede, “Tier,” WiBiLex (2010), https://www.bibelwissenschaft.de/stichwort/35794/; on the vegetation metaphors, see Von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik. In his metaphors and parables, Jesus employs, for example, the fox (Luke 13:32), doves (Matt 10:16), sheep (Mark 6:34//Matt 9:36; 10:6–16; 15:24; 18:12, Luke 15:4–6), lambs (Luke 10:3), and wolves (Matt 7:15; 10:16//Luke 10:3).
Von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik, 136–138.
We observe a “heaping up of image donors”: all image donors aim at the same image recipient (Wessel, Probleme, 102). This phenomenon can be assumed precisely where people want to communicate something that is important to them. They circle around it with ever new images and generate “a dynamic of varying insistence” (Wessel, Probleme, 102). In Rom 6–8, we can also observe a progression from the first image to the last image (Gerd Theissen and Petra von Gemünden, Der Römerbrief. Rechenschaft eines Reformators [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016], 203).
See Rom 6:12–23; Theissen and von Gemünden, Römerbrief, 160–175, and Petra von Gemünden, “Der Christ als von der Sklaverei der Sünde Befreiter und als Sklave der Gerechtigkeit bzw. Sklave Gottes,” in Kontroverse Freiheit: Die Impulse der Ökumene, ed. Thomas Söding and Bernd Oberdorfer, QD 284 (Freiburg: Herder, 2017), 147–169.
Rom 7:1–6; Von Gemünden, Römerbrief, 175–186.
Rom 8, cf. Von Gemünden, Römerbrief, 186–202.
Despite the image in John the Baptist that God could raise up children for himself from stones (Matt 3:9).
On this and on what follows, see Von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik, 1–2 (with bibliography).
The term “root metaphor(s)” goes back to Stephen C. Pepper, World Hypotheses: A Study in Evidence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1942).
Von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik, 11–18.
On this expression, see Wessel, Probleme, 101. As an alternative, Wessel, Probleme, 101, proposes the term “Bildfeld-Konglomerat” (Bildfeld-conglomerate).