Projects
The Complex Image of a God Fighting for his People
A Cognitive-Linguistic and Theological-Ethical Study of the War Narratives in the Book of Joshua
The conquest of Canaan by the Israelites is described in Joshua 1-12. In this conquest, YHWH, the God of Israel plays an active role. Against the background of contemporary religious violence, a critical exegesis of these stories is of the utmost importance. The violent rhetoric of these stories causes serious hermeneutical problems, as YHWH and violence are closely connected. In the scholarly literature, no clear answer has been formulated to the question how YHWH and violence are conceptualized and how these two are conceptually connected. The exegetical research on the conquest stories (Josh 6; 8; 10-11) laid all emphasis on the concept חרם (ban/ devoted thing). However, besides חרם also other concepts are used which are important for this conceptualization.
My research aims at filling this lacuna by offering in the first part of my research a Cognitive-Linguistic study of Joshua 6, 8 and 10-11 whereby all the concepts used in the description of war and the role YHWH plays therein will be analyzed from a semasiological (studying the different meanings of one concept in language) and an onomasiological perspective (studying the different names a language uses for one concept). On the basis of this analysis, I shall develop, in a second part of my research, a critical-ethical reflection on these texts as the reception history of the conquest stories is highly problematic. With this double movement I intend to offer important hermeneutical keys to interpret these texts in an exegetically and ethically relevant manner.
Expressing Suffering in Words
The Use of Metaphor in the Conceptualisation of Suffering in the Book of Job
The book of Job deals with human suffering and problematizes God’s credibility in the face of suffering. Both human suffering and divine involvement are described in highly metaphorical terms throughout the book of Job. A profound familiarity with these metaphors is an indispensable condition for its interpretation.
The project “Expressing Suffering in Words” aims at providing an analysis of all the metaphors used to describe Job’s condition in order to gain a better understanding in the way in which suffering is conceptualized in the book of Job. The objectives in doing so are three-fold:
1. Firstly, to provide an overview of all the metaphors of human suffering in the book of Job.
2. Secondly, to provide a thorough semantic and conceptual analysis of each of the individual metaphors. Two more specific goals are related to this second objective:
a. On the one hand, the aim to offer a more adequate lexicographical description of some of the lexical items involved in the metaphors;
b. On the other hand, the aspiration to solve the interpretational cruces that have been caused by an erroneous or limited understanding of the metaphor’s conceptual structure.
3. Thirdly, to relate the use of the different metaphors throughout the text with the book’s argumentative development.
The goals of this project are not only to gain a better understanding of the Joban metaphors in their historical context and to advance the semantic knowledge of the Hebrew language, but also to provide a critical and hermeneutically sound basis for a renewed contemporary reflection on existential human suffering.
The methodology will draw on the insights in the functioning of metaphor as described in cognitive linguistics, which postulates that metaphors are not in the first place stylistic ways of embellishing literary texts, but fundamentally reflect the way in which people conceptualise reality.
This project is part of the research project 'Depicting Suffering, Imagining God. The Use of Metaphor in the Conceptualisation of Suffering and of the Divine in the Book of Job.
God in Words and Pictures
Conceptual Metaphor and the Depiction of the Divine in the Book of Job
This research project starts from the observation that in spite of the growing attention for metaphors and metaphorical conceptualizations, also in biblical studies, relatively little attention has been paid to the phenomenon in the book of Job. This lacuna is all the more striking since the book of Job deals with the divine as one of the central issues in human thought. As the book arose in a strongly monotheistic context – a context in which a large part of the world population finds itself – the book is also concerned with the question of how the goodness, and indeed the divinity of the Godhead can be maintained in the face of suffering (the theodicy question). Coming to terms with the imperfection of human existence is one of the existential challenges each human being is confronted with, and the book of Job provides, as one of world literature’s most important reflections on the issue, its readers with some hermeneutical keys to cope with it. In order to understand the book’s suggestions on the question of suffering and of God’s position with regard to suffering, a thorough insight in the way in which these two issues are conceptualized is indispensable. Since most of what is said in the book of Job about the human condition and about the involvement of the divine is metaphorical in nature, this will entail a thorough understanding of the metaphors at work in the text. A profound acquaintance with the book's metaphors is indispensable both for the correct understanding of the book of Job and biblical wisdom literature more generally, and for an assessment of the hermeneutical value of the book of Job. This project aims at filling the lacuna sketched above, by providing an exhaustive, detailed and methodologically rigid analysis of all the metaphors used to describe God's involvement with man in the face of suffering in order to gain a better understanding in the way in which the relationship between God and Job is conceptualized in the book of Job.
