Childbirth as a Metaphor for Crisis
Subtitle: Evidence from the Ancient Near East, the Hebrew Bible, and 1QH XI, 1-18
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Berlin
Language: eng
Format: [electronic resource] :
Number of pages: 277
ISBN-13: 9783110209815
Subjects: Childbirth; Metaphor in literature; Metaphor in the Bible; Ancient Literature; Disasters
Description: Crises and catastrophes of all kinds have always confronted humans with great challenges. The present study examines the question of how literary texts process and deal with these challenges through the imaginary world of metaphors. It concentrates on the metaphor of childbirth, which compares people racked with crisis to women in labour (and sometimes vice versa). The texts examined are taken from the Ancient Orient and the Old Testament, together with a text exemplar from the Qumran corpus, which takes up the metaphor of childbirth and develops it further.
Notes: Description based on print version record.
Table of contents: title: Frontmatter; Table of Contents; Introduction; Chapter 1. Birth as Event and Metaphor in the Acient Near East; Chapter 2. Birth as Event and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible; Chapter 3. The Biblical Birth Metaphor for Cases of Local Crisis; Chapter 4. The Biblical Birth Metaphor for Cases of Universal Crisis; Chapter 5. The Biblical Birth Metaphor for Cases of Personal Crisis; Chapter 6. 1QH XI, 1-18: The Birth Metaphor at Qumran; Conclusion; Backmatter.