Corporal metaphor as a means of modeling the sociocultural relations in the Bible
The study is aimed at the reconstruction of the Old Testament and the New Testament views concerning the man. Feature of this study is that the objects are the corporal metaphor exclusively. Hereinafter we mean "corporal metaphor" is the lexical-semantic unit containing corporal connotations in source-area and/or in target-area, and also cases when corporality / bodyness appears as "active background". The methodological bases and prerequisites to that are the following: - first, modern humanitarian and social sciences reasonably distinguish a body and a corporality / bodyness. In our interpretation the human corporality /bodyness is a phenomenon and the concept, reflecting the involvement of human body into multiple semiosis - encoding and decoding processes accompanying the interaction between the "internal" world of man (mental, physiological) and "external" (nature and culture, other "Ego" and the society as a whole); - secondly, we offer original interpretation "the metaphorical", which implies all kinds of indirect nomination, as well as translation (between natural languages and between different semiotic systems). Feature of "the metaphorical" (in particular metaphor in own, narrow sense) that it is aimed at the totality, similarities, but in fact it produces the ontological and gnoseological differences (K. Levi-Stross, 1994) since the birth and promove of new ideas and images (V.Surovtcev, V.Syrov, 1998), to formation and development of concepts and categories (Theory of a metaphor, 1990; T. Shapovalova, 2013). We have made the selective analysis of texts of the Old Testament (OT) and the New Testament (NT) and found that the biblical body-discourse is the metaphorical means of anthropological and extra-anthropological topicalizations: the theme of Creation (the species of being / ens, entity), the theme of Providence, Destiny, Fate / Calling (anthropological and sociocultural characteristics of the person, the theme of labor), the theme of Life and Death (in vital and ethical-valuable sense), the theme of Love (in its various aspects and species), the theme of Beauty (peace and human, external and internal in the different options of their relationship, etc.), the theme of Faith (faith in God and faith as trust), the theme of Knowing, the Truth, understanding (the epistemological, ethical, aesthetic, communicative aspects), etc. It is obvious, there are no meanings which the corporal metaphor can't express. We also make sure that the subject domain of biblical anthropology is much wider than "the human structure" and much wider than the traditional discussions about the dichotomous or trichotomous "composition of the person". The listed topicalizations also tell us much about the structure of culture and the directions of a reflection upon transition from mythological thinking to philosophical. The results of the analysis indicate the Bible realize two models of world-human relations, which are interrelating, interacting and complementing each other - "hierarchical" and "holistic" models. Hierarchical: The hierarchical model is studied more stoutly. In material of corporal metaphors it is expressed by a strict taxonomy of the species of being / ens, from "heavenly" God to the "clay" humans and other living beings and, further, up to "grass" and inanimate nature. This model is represented by a generation discourse "order of the birth". Holistic: The holistic model of the world is studied quite poorly, on it we have concentrated the interest. This model is represented by sociocultural, in particular, ethic and esthetic discourse.
Keywords
библейская антропология, культура, телесная метафора, коллективное тело, социальное тело, метафорическое, единство мира, Biblical anthropology, rarporal metaphor, collective corporality, social body, metaphorical, untegrity of the worldAuthors
Name | Organization | |
Shapovalova Tatiana A. | Tomsk State University of Architecture and Building | stalx@bk.ru |
References

Corporal metaphor as a means of modeling the sociocultural relations in the Bible | Tomsk State University Journal of Cultural Studies and Art History. 2018. № 31. DOI: 10.17223/22220836/31/13