Old Testament Conceptual Metaphors and the Christology of Luke’s Gospel

Extensive scholarship has been devoted to Jesus’ depiction in the Gospels, and how such depiction is influenced by the Old Testament. Gregory R. Lanier presents a newcase for the importance of conceptual metaphor, arguing that the Gospel of Luke employs certain metaphors reflected in Israel’s traditions—such as “horn of salvation,” “dawn from on high,” “mother bird gathering Jerusalem’s children,” and “crushing stone”—in order to portray the identity of Jesus as both an agent of salvation and, more provocatively, the one God of Israel.Setting his argument at the intersection of three sub-fields of New Testament scholarship—early Christology, the use of Israel’s Scriptures in the New Testament, and contemporary metaphor theory—Lanier suggests ways to overcome the “low”-“high ”binary and perceive the Gospel’s Christology as multi-faceted. Applying metaphor theory to the influence of the Old Testament metaphors on Luke’s Christology, Lanier adds methodological rigor to the tracing of such influences in cases where standard criteria for quotations and allusions/echoes are stretched thin.