I’m currently preparing a review of this book:
Mixing Metaphors
God as Father and Mother in Deutero-Isaiah
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series- JSOTS 398
by Sarah J. Dille
Sheffield Academic Press, 2004
xiii + 200 pages, English
Cloth
ISBN: 0826471560
List Price: $120.00
Your Price: $83.88
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~DILMIXING
Dille has a very interesting statement:
There is no use of the phrase bene-yisra’el (‘children of Israel’), which is so conventional elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible that it is essentially a dead metaphor. As a dead metaphor the phrase bene-yisra’el fails to evoke a parent-child relationship (just as names such as ‘Johnson’ are no longer evocative of the son relationship).
The problem is that I can’t figure out how to test this observation and she doesn’t provide any support–anyone have an idea? Do you think bene-yisrael is a dead phrase and if so, why?
Charles, I would agree. This seems unprovable to me. An interesting assertion, but ultimately impossible to prove.
Thanks Chris, I’m glad I’m not alone in thinking this.
I guess I’m missing something: How would bene yisrael feed into the god as father/mother metaphor? How is it relevant?
Is bene Yisrael really a METAPHOR? I’m just thinking out loud here, but…
(1) Bene-X can simply mean “those who fall into the category of X.”
(2) Tribal relations in the ancient Near East are often couched in familial language and genealogies. I suppose you could say this is a metaphor, but, if it is, it’s a wide-ranging and culturally rooted metaphor. This doesn’t strike me as the same thing as, say, casting the relationship between Yahweh and Israel as husband/wife as in Hosea 2.
Again, I’m thinking off the cuff here. But maybe it’ll spark some thoughts and help you answer your question.
Andrea Weiss’s Figurative Language in Biblical Prose Narrative (2006) provides a good recent discussion of dead metaphors.
Her main criticism, relying on many theorists, is that the dead-live dichotomy is too static a categorisation. For the most dead metaphors can be ‘revivified’ by an individual author (and also by an individual reader) in a particular passage. Particularly in literary works, which of course accounts for most of the Bible, the most dead idioms can be resurrected by the remetaphorization of the author. So, the particular context may tell us more about the metaphorical or literal use of the word than a generalisation from the lexicon. All this is discussed in Ch 6 of Weiss.
This view of metaphor probably implies a criticism of the apparent generalisation by Dille, but I don’t know the (all-important) context of her sentences.
Weiss also mentions two attempts to establish general criteria for understanding how biblical metaphors were understood. But for the reason given above, and because of the sparse biblical data, Weiss doesn’t think much of the attempts (193, #48). But here they are, anyway:
Gary Alan Long, JAAR 62 (1994):509-537
Bernhard Oestreich, Metaphor and Similes for Yahweh in Hosea 14.2-9 (1998): 39.
Hope that helps.
Alan, she talks about bene yisrael within the context of “kinship and birthing in Deutero-Isaiah.” She takes a view similar to Tim Bulkeley ( http://www.bigbible.org/blog/2008/01/testing-metaphors-for-signs-of-life.htm ) that since the phrase bene yisrael isn’t used with “the language of offspring” then it must be a “dead metaphor.” This doesn’t really doesn’t convince me.
Angie, you have a good point to wonder whether this is a metaphor. There are many bene X titles and in many cases they seem to signify a member of a class or group.
Deane, your comments and references are very helpful–thanks a bunch! I will be very interested to look up the works you cited.
Angela captured the ideas behind my question very well. Your explanation, Charles, helps me see where the author is going, but I’m still thinking it’s a blind alley . . . metaphorically speaking, of course.
To add to Angie and Alan, don’t forget about the mar shipri “envoys” prevalent in the Amarna texts, and all the other maru constructs in the Akkadian lit. I’d have to agree that it is not metaphorical at all. It’s a language convention.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I wonder if she’s trying to make a different point. I’d like to think that she’s aware of ubiquity of the “son(s)” of X convention in Syria, Palestine, and beyond. I just couldn’t imagine that she’s not aware of how common the phrase is.
Perhaps her point centers on “Israel”–a sort of non-entity. If Israel (proper) no longer exists then it is a metaphor vis-a-vis bene Judah.
I am very late to this thread, but I would draw attention to recent work on this idiom by David Stein, to which I link in a recent review of the Contemporary Torah on my blog.
As far as testing a hypothesis about a phrase being a live metaphor, it seems to me that the burden of proof is on the one who assumes it is live. Allowance must also me be made for the fact that a normally dead metaphor may be enlivened by a poet for a special effect. The same holds true for examples of word play, intertextuality across discrete pieces of literature, and so on.
A very late comment. Two points.
First, Dille’s assertion is superficially scientific in that it is testable and refutable. All one has to do is find one instance where a parent-child relationship is invoked and the assertion is disproved. In fact this does occur at Genesis 45:21 where Jacob’s literal sons are referred to. Of course, that’s not what Dille means but this reveals that Dille is arguing in a circle. Either the uses of bene Y’Ishrael are references to specific people or they are “dead metaphor”.
Even setting aside this, what suggests that Dille’s assetion is wrong is the use of ben (in the singular). For example, take the controversial phrase “son of man” – ben Adam – which sounds formulaic. (And interesting that in Hebraic thinking Adam can be taken to mean Israel in particular rather than humanity in general.) Mostly it does indeed appear to be used in a formulaic sense. Yet in Hebraic thinking there has been Messianic speculation around the title, seeing it as – on occasion – denoting a particularly close and meaningful – family – relationship with both God and man. This is based particularly on its use in Daniel 7:13 and, in the Apocrypha, 1 Enoch and 4 Esdras. The Talmud takes it as a Messianic title as does Rashi whilst the Targums translate the term as Messiah in some of its occurrences. (Talmud, Sanhedrin 98a. The Targums in Psalms 8:4, 80:18, and 144:3).
It is perhaps liek the situation today when the term “brother” (or “bro”) could be used of a blood brother, a close friend, or as a formulaic address. Hebrew commentators do not see ben as restricted to the last. The “son(s) of” phrase varies in its application and should not be treated as formulaic.