The Metaphorical Use of Language in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature - Conference der ISDCL

The conference focuses on metaphors in selected deuterocanonical books (Ben Sira, Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch, 1-4 Maccabees, Judith, Tobith, Septuagint-Psalter) and cognate texts (Qumran, Philo, Josephus, Psalms of Solomon, 1Enoch, early Christian and early rabbinic literature). The metaphors in these writings will be described from lingustic and motivic perspectives and will be interpreted with regard to their aesthetic-ornamental, hermeneutic-heuristic and pragmatic-rhetorical function. The conference aims at demonstrating how metaphors function within the single books, how they interact with the metaphoric in the older Israelitic-Jewish texts in the Hebrew bible and how they participate in the pagan philosophical, religious and rhetorical metaphoric. The discussions will concentrate on the relationship between anthropology, theology and metaphors in religious texts of the hellenistic world. Hereby, the conference contributes to the history of early Jewish and early Christian literature, to the research of metaphorical language in the antiquity and to the illustration of the interdependence of language and religion.