The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

352 THE MOSES AT QUMRAN
in the Thanksgiving Hymns (Hodayot a ) and in Num 11:12, a brief sketch of
the significant parallels in a Pauline letter (1 Thess 2:7–12) and the Odes
of Solomon (19:1–4) will be offered.
1.1 On the Semantic Potency and “Models” of Imagery
The key role of imagery and the intricate nature of the metaphorical
world have received welcome attention among biblical scholars. 5 James
Barr explains that there is a key relationship between semantics and interpretation.
6 Words are not complete semantic units by themselves; rather,
they have various meanings in differing contexts. The whole array of
semantic devices—ranging from simile and metaphor to typology and
allegory—is both essential and integral to human expression. Such literary
devices help to express diverse and complex matters in fresh and
lucid ways.
Max Black speaks of two of the possible classes of semantic “models”:
scale models (a miniature or representative reproduction of selected features
of the “original”) and analogue models (a reproduction of the “structure or web
of relationships in an original”). 7 “The analogue model shares with its original
not a set of features or an identical proportionality of magnitude but,
more abstractly, the same structure or pattern of relationships.” 8 It is clear that
the use of parental imagery by the hymnist (and others) falls into the latter
class of models. Thus the parental imagery found in the Thanksgiving
Hymns (Hodayot a ) evokes an ethos as well as a whole range of emotions
that are to be understood in the framework of a complex web of relationships
that existed at Qumran.
5. Three representative works are: James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language
(Glasgow: Oxford University Press, 1961); George B. Caird, The Language and Imagery
of the Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980); and Peter W. Macky, The Centrality of
Metaphors to Biblical Thought: A Method of Interpreting the Bible (Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen
Press, 1990).
6. Semantics is now approached from various perspectives, including from the
viewpoints of philosophy (e.g., a seminal work by Max Black, Models and Metaphors:
Studies in Language and Philosophy [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962]) and linguistics
(so, Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language).
7. Black, Models and Metaphors, 219–23; 222; emphasis added.
8. Ibid., 223; emphasis added.