Leben in Metaphern: Aspekte einer metaphorischen Realität in der Apokalyptik

In their seminal study “Metaphors We Live By,” George P. Lakoff and Mark L. Johnson examined every day live on the basis of taxonomy of metaphorical speeches. Generally speaking, apocalyptic metaphors were conceptualized to create an imagined world of transcendent reality. Nevertheless, those metaphors that reveal an otherworldly context coincide with a historical reality which points to the time of their authorship. Lakoff and Johnson refer to these realities as “conceptual systems.” Generally speaking, ancient Jewish apocalypses from the third and second centuries BCE reflect and create in fact “conceptual systems” when they use metaphorical speeches. E.g., the symbolic speeches about the sea and the beasts in Dan 7, including the “little horn,” on the one hand and the epiphanies of the “Ancient of Days” and the “Son of Man” on the other give rise to the question whether the Chaoskampf mythology is related to a certain religio-historical background. But the real world of the author(s) in Dan 7 is the time of the Antiochian crisis (168/67–165/64 BCE). Therefore, the system of symbols and metaphors in the Book of Daniel refers to this epoch. And the uttered resentment against foreign rule, which was widespread in eschatological prophecies in Hellenistic times, uses language and motifs that emphasize the cosmological and universal aspect of the chaos that the foreign rule provoked. The cosmological dimension that is guaranteed by the examined mythical backgrounds calls for “solutions” that are, analogously, cosmological. A major tool of constructing this cosmos is the use of metaphors within ancient Jewish apocalypticism.