Translator Christy Hemphill publishes an article is titled, “All in a Week’s Work: Using Conceptual Metaphor Theory to Explain Figurative Meaning in Genesis 1” in the December 2019 issue of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (volume 71(4), pages 233-242).
Yes, the Creation Story contains figurative meaning. Metaphors come to life in the process of situating the literal meaning of the text. Perception supports a phantasm, bursting with figurative meaning.
The modern imagination is thwarted by those playing the role of scientist. Skeptics take the words of Genesis 1 literally and conclude that it cannot describe anything more than that. Their attitude forecloses on figurative meaning.
Hemphill makes an end-run around this blockade by insisting that metaphor theory is supported by the findings of cognitive science. The Creation Story stands as a testament to the realness of our own evolved cognition. Once the story is taken literally, then it becomes a target for figurative meaning.
These comments take Hemphill’s end-run one step further, by showing how metaphor theory associates to the category-based nested form.
This association connects to linguistics.
Ferdinand de Saussure defines spoken language as two arbitrarily related systems of differences, parole and langue. Parole is speech. Langue is “what goes on in one’s head when one hears a spoken word”.
According the masterwork, The Human Niche, and Comments on Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky’s Book (2017) Why Only Us?, langue can be modeled as an interscope.
So where does metaphor theory fit in?
Metaphor theory situates literal meaning by filling in the langue interscope.
Concordance comes from the fact that literal meaning is situated by figurative meaning. Figurative meaning includes artistic (not scientific) concordism.
