Abstract

LAMPRECHT, Adriaan. The journey of Jephthah's daughter: On spatial cognition, body and language in Judges 11:37. Herv. teol. stud. [online]. 2021, vol.77, n.1, pp.1-9. ISSN 2072-8050.  https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v77i1.6888.

The traditional literal interpretation of the text in Judges 11:37 shows exceptional variation in topographic depiction. The literal interpretation of Driver, published in Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, is an example. From a linguistic perspective, no attention was paid whatsoever to the relation of interiority between an objective body and an objective space. This article proposes a cognitive semantic perspective and argues that the motion-path verb •—• (yrd) in Judges 11:37 carries a metaphorical meaning, and the linguistic processing, that is, the metaphorical mapping of the image schematic structure of CHANGE (up-down) as the source domain onto that of BEHAVIOUR as the target domain, involving activation of cultural spatial and bodily systems. With this background in mind, Judges 11:37 represents a new understanding for similar UP-DOWN image schemas applied in the Hebrew Bible.CONTRIBUTION: This article contributes to the understanding of the apparent 'inexact' sense of the use of •—• (yrd) in Judges 11:37

Keywords : Judges 11:37; Jephthah's daughter; conceptual metaphor; spatial cognition; Biblical Hebrew; •—• (yrd).

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