How do I find the metaphorical usages of a concept such as Valley, Mountain, River etc?
I know in Scripture all of those physical objects have metaphorical application.
Thanks for your help!
Do you mean metaphorical in the classical sense Bullinger, Ethelbert William. Figures of Speech Used in the Bible. London; New York: Eyre & Spottiswoode; E. & J. B. Young & Co., 1898. or in the contemporary linguistic sense Westbury, Joshua R., Jeremy Thompson, Jimmy Parks, and Kristopher A. Lyle, eds. Lexham Figurative Language of the Bible Glossary. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2016.? or are you speaking of typology? Three different answers ,,,
Welcome to the forums, Stephan!
If you have a passage with that usage, right click the word and look for an entry with Metaphor on the left side (or an entry that suggests that). Then select Bible Search on the other side e.g. "mountain" at Mt 17.20 ---> {Section <FigurativeLanguageCategory = Meta, Struct>}
You then have to select the specific words that belong to that category ---> (mountain, river) INTERSECTS {Section <FigurativeLanguageCategory = Meta, Struct>}
Unfortunately there are a few other categories of metaphor if you have access to the documentation. From there you learn to use:
(mountain, river) INTERSECTS {Label Figurative Language WHERE Category ~ <FigurativeLanguageCategory Metaphor>}
.
Bullinger's "Figures of Speech" are limited through having to be in passages in that book e.g. from "mountain" in Rev 8.8 you can derive:
(mountain, river) INTERSECTS {Label Figure of Speech WHERE Name ~ "Metaphor"}
Bullinger has a different understanding of "metaphor" but the two may complement each other.
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