Biblical Imagery O/P

Lukas

does any one know why this is out of print, is there maybe a revised version coming. And is it worth still getting.

Yasmin Stephen

What is "Biblical Imagery O/P"?

DMB

I couldn't figure it out, but found this new book. Pretty interesting, especially the cover and the two 'beings' up above Jesus and the twelve?

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Early-Christian-Ancient-World/dp/1032105488/r

Lukas

sorry for not naming proper

https://www.logos.com/product/30241/dictionary-of-biblical-imagery?queryId=ff4b4fd6db0d35a6b9f2550859ca1cb1

DMB

Can't speak to a new edition or out of print, but its a basic dictionary on imagery in the Bible. There's few examples, and even those are stock images. If you're familiar with the imagery, you can quickly see the book is high-level; doesn't dig down very far.

Not sure why it holds on to a high price (even Amazon). Maybe just a standard tome.

Lukas

@DMB but at such a price will you say its worth getting, does one make use of it alot.

DMB

I never used it, but I'd assume if one were doing a sermon that involved imagery (which the Bible excels in), it'd be good for cross-examples. Would I pay $40? No. I think I got it in a package or sale.

But for perspective, I'm most interested in imagery as it flows from culture to culture (eg Sumerian, Akkadian groups, Egyptian, Hittite, Ugarit and so forth) … vs imagery in the Bible. Even some of the NTs Jesus imagery looks like a lot of the historical imagery was still in play in the Galilee region, in the 1st century,

So also the book I discovered.

Extra: My two absolutely favorite imagery volumes in Logos, I couldn't find on Logos.com. I'm so tired of that website. Maybe they sell them; maybe they don't. Sorry for the rant.

DMM

Why do you say it's out of print? It's currently available for purchase on Amazon and other retailers.

I find it to be very helpful, especially for background information and how the cultures of the times may have viewed the topic. I will frequently refer to it.

I have to disagree with DMB, I would say that the book digs down pretty deep.

Here's the text of the article on Mortality so you can take a look. I would say that's very thorough.

"MORTALITY

Mortality is perhaps the greatest given of human life in the world: the one thing that we know about all people is that they are destined to die. The imagery of mortality, in turn, represents people’s awareness of their mortal condition.
Mortality in the Old Testament. In the curse God places on the first man, the Lord God says, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19 RSV). Thus begins the biblical story of human mortality, the result of disobedience of God. The image of our physical return to the substance from which humans and the animals come is important in the OT, as when the Preacher says that “man has no advantage over the beasts; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again” (Eccles 3:19–20 RSV). Again, “Man cannot abide in his pomp, he is like the beasts that perish” (Ps 49:12 RSV).
Righteous persons in the OT typically live long lives on earth, dying “in ripe old age, as a shock of grain comes up to the threshing floor in its season” (Job 5:26 RSV). Nevertheless, even for them, with the exceptions of Enoch and Elijah, death is “the way of all the earth,” as Joshua and David each remark (Josh 23:14 RSV; 1 Kings 2:2). Just as there is “a time to be born,” there is “a time to die” (Eccles 3:2). The flesh of the wise and the foolish alike will perish, and the self-assured resemble sheep with death as their shepherd: “Straight to the grave they descend, and their form shall waste away; Sheol shall be their home” (Ps 49:14 RSV). In an equally vivid picture we read that people’s “graves are their homes for ever, … though they named lands their own” (Ps 49:11 RSV). Psalm 90:3 pictures the universal human fate in terms of people’s being “turned … back to the dust” as the eternal God says, “Turn back, O children of men!” (RSV).
Sheol, a vaguely envisioned place for the souls of the dead in the afterlife, is “the house appointed for all living” (Job 30:23 RSV) and a devourer that “has enlarged its appetite and opened its mouth beyond measure” (Is 5:14 RSV). It is apparently where the dead passively join their ancestors, where they are “gathered” to their “people” (Gen 25:8) or “sleep” with their “fathers” (Deut 31:16). Dead bodies, sources of contamination (Num 19:11), remain buried, as in the cave at Machpelah, where Jacob wishes to be buried with Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah and Leah (Gen 49:29–32), or as in the ancestral sepulchers in Jerusalem (Neh 2:3).
OT images of mortality are gloomy in spirit—a statement of defeat for human aspiration. Even though the glory of a rich person’s house may increase, “when he dies he will carry nothing away; his glory will not go down after him” (Ps 49:17 RSV). Even if a person “counts himself happy” and “does well for himself,” his inevitable fate is to “go to the generation of his fathers, who will never more see the light” (Ps 49:18–19 RSV). Part of the defeat involved in mortality is that after a person’s death “there is no enduring remembrance” of the person, “seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten” (Eccles 2:16 RSV). Being divested is part of the picture: “As he came from his mother’s womb he shall go again, naked as he came, and shall take nothing … away in his hand” (Eccles 5:15 RSV). As for the destination of the dead in the OT, it is a shadowy nonexistence-a “land of gloom and deep darkness … and chaos” (Job 10:21–22 RSV) where “the wicked cease from troubling” and “the prisoners … hear not the voice of the taskmaster” (Job 3:17–18 RSV).
The most haunting biblical portrait of human mortality is probably the metaphoric description of physiological symptoms of aging that appears in the last chapter of Ecclesiastes (Eccles 12:1–7). Here mortality takes the palpable form of weakening eyesight, trembling hands and arms, stooped shoulders; loss of hearing, appetite, sleep and speech; feebleness and danger in walking; and loss of desire for life. By itself this is a portrait of old age rather than mortality, but it is only a prelude to the dissolution of physical life, pictured as the irremediable breaking of household objects (cord snapped, golden bowl broken, pitcher shattered), accompanied by mourners who “go about the streets” as the deceased “goes to his eternal home” and “the dust returns to the earth as it was” (RSV).
Even in the OT, however, there are several images that could be interpreted as showing the defeat of mortality. Psalm 49 is one of the most extended repositories of images of mortality in the Bible, but in the midst of the litany of decay the poet asserts that “God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me” (Ps 49:15 RSV). The speaker in Psalm 73 declares that “afterward thou [God] wilt receive me to glory” (Ps 73:24) and that God is his great desire not only “upon earth” but also “for ever” (Ps 73:25–26). Similarly, the picture of death near the end of Ecclesiastes makes a distinction between the physical decay of the body (“the dust returns to the earth as it was”) and the release of “the spirit,” which “returns to God who gave it” (Eccles 12:7).
Although the great image of the dry bones in Ezekiel 37:1–14 presents a kind of immortality, it is actually a collective triumph of “the whole house of Israel” (Ezek 37:11) over national mortality, a triumph in which the *“graves” (Ezek 37:12) are metaphorical rather than literal. The return from the dead of the widow of Zarephath’s son (1 Kings 17:8–24) and the similar event with the Shunammite’s son (2 Kings 4:18–37) are examples of individual, but only temporary, defeats of mortality. It is probably with Enoch, who “walked with God” and then “was not, for God took him,” that we have the first OT example of the immortality of a particular human being (Gen 5:24 RSV). Another such example, with more vivid imagery, appears in 2 Kings 2:11, when “a chariot of fire and horses of fire” part Elijah from Elisha and the older prophet ascends “by a whirlwind into heaven” (RSV). Yet the cases of Enoch and Elijah are special. The most noteworthy image of general individual immortality, or at least perpetual existence, appears in the words of the angel to Daniel about the troubled time to come: “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan 12:2 RSV). We also have Job’s great vision of a blessed hope: “I know that … after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25–26 RSV).
Mortality in the New Testament. In the NT such miracles of Jesus as the raising from death of the widow of Nain’s son (Lk 7:11–17) and of Lazarus of Bethany (Jn 11:1–44) point to the supreme image of mortality-Jesus’ own death on the cross—and the supreme image of triumph over mortality—the resurrection.
The Gospels describe Jesus as having given up his “spirit” (Mt 27:50; Jn 19:30) or “breathed his last” (Mk 15:37), or having committed his “spirit” to his Father and then having “breathed his last” (Lk 23:46). The images are similar, because the Greek verb exepneusen, translated in the RSV as “breathed his last,” is closely related to the noun pneuma, which may be translated *“breath” or “spirit.” The underlying idea, regardless of the particular Gospel, is not of some powerful trance but of death in its common, profound human sense.
That Jesus was mortal was a consequence of his humanity, but his death was purposeful in a way that most human deaths do not immediately seem to be. John 10:11 gives us the image of Jesus as “the good shepherd” who “lays down his life for the sheep” (RSV; see SHEEP, SHEPHERD), while Matthew 20:28 shows Jesus as the servant who will “give his life as a ransom for many” (RSV). In 2 Timothy 1:10 Jesus is the Savior who “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (RSV).
Nevertheless, the earliest Christians were soon faced with the problem of the mortality of their own flesh, and Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–17 of how “those who are asleep,” “the dead in Christ,” will “meet the Lord in the air” (RSV) as he descends, as will those still living on earth at the time of the second coming. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul combines the image of death as sleep with agricultural imagery, describing the resurrected Christ as “the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor 15:20 RSV); he proclaims that “as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor 15:22 RSV) and that “the last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor 15:26 RSV). Paul eventually returns to agriculture, a familiar subject even for first-century urban Christians, and uses the image of “a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain” (1 Cor 15:37 RSV), which must be planted, as the perishable fleshly body must be buried before the resurrection, when a “spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:44) will be raised never to perish.
Revelation’s images of mortality and the Christian triumph over it are apocalyptic. “Death” rides “a pale horse,” followed by “Hades,” and they devastate one-fourth of the earth (Rev 6:8); but eventually they relinquish “the dead in them” and are both cast into “the second death, the lake of fire,” where those whose names are not in “the book of life” must also go (Rev 20:13–15 RSV). For the saved, the curse of mortality that began with the first sin has passed: “a new heaven and a new earth” will come, the “new Jerusalem” will descend from heaven, God will live with humans, and “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more” (Rev 21:1–4 RSV).
See also AFTERLIFE; BURIAL, FUNERAL; DEATH; DECAY; GRAVE; IMMORTALITY; PERMANENCE; RESURRECTION; TRANSIENCE; TREE OF LIFE; WORM."

DMB