Unipolar Conceptual Metaphors in Biblical Hebrew

Abstract

The cognitive approach to metaphor has faced many challenges: one of these challenges is a lack of more cross-linguistic and cross-cultural research that needs to be done to better understand the claim of the cognitive approach that abstract concepts and abstract reasoning are partly metaphorical. This paper provides evidence that a universal spatial metaphorical system exists (the claim of Cognitive Linguistics) and shows that the theory of conceptual metaphor accommodates the findings to a certain extent. However, this theory of conceptual metaphor does not account for the entire Biblical Hebrew conceptual system and needs to be rethought. This study extends the existing knowledge of conceptual metaphor. Specifically, it expands the knowledge concerning verbs conflating a bipolar conceptual component, that is, MOTION and PATH. This study discusses evidence from the Hebrew Bible, and argues that the Biblical Hebrew verbs (yrd) (descend) and ('lh)(ascend)’s bipolar lexical concepts MOTION DOWN and MOTION UP, respectively, may split into two unipolar lexical concepts MOTION and DOWN and MOTION and UP, respectively, and in which only one unipolar lexical concept, that is DOWN or UP, respectively, is used for metaphorical conceptual mapping.