Tag Info

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch dedicated many essays to this subject. They may be found in English translation in his Collected Writings, Volume III; ISBN:0-87306-786-X. The primary tools Rabbi Hirsch uses in his analysis are the following ground rules, which he develops in the introductory chapter (slightly abridged for convenience): The symbolic ...

Here are a few things that might help point the interpreter in the right direction. (NOTE: This answer is from a Christian perspective) The referential nature of language Language is referential. If I say "I own a house," any English-speaker will recognize that I am referring to a place of residence. However, if I said "I own a lamaroutous" that would be ...

I just want to pop in here to add that it's important to remember that the way that we think of "blue", "purple", and "red", is necessarily not the same as how the Biblical audience would have thought of "tekheleth", "argaman", and "shani". In particular, I'm not sure that the "red+blue=purple" argument is particularly applicable here, since these colours ...

I am proposing two options, one obvious and one subtle. The obvious meaning of blue, purple and scarlet, would be that they are associated with precious fabrics and in some cases even royal colors. I think this is sometimes the meaning that they convey in the Bible. For example,  When Mordecai left the king’s presence, he was wearing royal garments of ...

As is the nature of historical fields, such as the anthropological and linguistic fields which serve as our surest means of understanding such colloquial forms of language, at least some uncertainty or ambiguity will always haunt our attempts at determining the meaning of symbols, or most any other metaphor for that matter. Rationally speaking, it is a ...

If an author intends to communicate through symbols he must either rely upon a community's preexisting symbolic language or make an effort to define the meaning of the image within the text itself. Ruben Zimmermann in his book Imagery in the Gospel of John thus offers two criteria for weighing a symbols plausibility: (1) conventional plausibility and (2) ...

Sensus plenior provides means for solving riddles since things which take metaphoric meaning must have that meaning everywhere they occur. The first clue is that though blue, purple and scarlet are closely associated most of the time, occasionally gold is added to the group. We have a group of colors following the pattern of 3+1. This is the pattern of ...

I have encountered so many views on what this means that I have concluded nobody definitely knows. This is not to be unexpected because prophecy, although leading people to a certain true yet ‘vague impression’ of what will occur, is not completely clear, until it does occur. One can easily verify this, as even the disciples could not believe Christ would ...