Metaphors in 4Q424

Bio: Danilo Verde is the 2025–2026 Cook-Crone Research Bye-Fellow at Gonville & Caius College (Cambridge University). He holds a PhD in Theology from KU Leuven and has held research appointments at KU Leuven (2014–2024) and the University of Salzburg (2025). His research focuses on the linguistic, conceptual, and cultural worlds of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and ancient Judaism. His interests include metaphor, gender, trauma, utopia, and the interplay between religious language, ideology, and power. Alongside other projects, he is currently co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible with Ryan Bonfiglio (Emory University), Hanne Løland Levinson (Minnesota University), and Pierre Van Hecke (KU Leuven).

Abstract: Over the past several decades, cognitive linguistics has reshaped scholarly understandings of metaphor, demonstrating its central role in human cognition and its power to structure perception, reasoning, and communication. While these insights have been fruitfully applied in biblical studies—especially in work on the Hebrew Bible—they have only rarely informed the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This paper brings cognitive metaphor theory into closer conversation with Scrolls research by examining how their authors deploy both conventional and creative metaphors to articulate their ideas. After outlining key theoretical distinctions between entrenched conceptual metaphors and their innovative extensions, the paper explores a set of case studies from 4Q424 that illustrate how Scrolls compositions draw upon shared metaphorical traditions while also reshaping them in contextually specific and imaginative ways. By tracing this dynamic interplay of continuity and creativity, the paper highlights how metaphor analysis can illuminate the Scrolls’ embeddedness within—and their novel contribution to—the linguistic and conceptual world of ancient Judaism.