2023.11.08 | Oscar E. Jiménez. Metaphors in the Narrative of Ephesians 2:11–22: Motion towards Maximal Proximity and Higher Status. Linguistic Biblical Studies 20. Leiden: Brill, 2022. pp. xiii + 221.

Review by Kai Akagi, Rikkyo University.

Oscar E. Jiménez’s Metaphors in the Narrative of Ephesians 2:11–22: Motion towards Maximal Proximity and Higher Status is the published version of Jiménez’s PhD thesis completed at London School of Theology. The volume provides a reading of Ephesians 2:11–22, approaching this text from the two perspectives included in the volume’s title: metaphors and narrative. Specifically, Jiménez employs conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) to analyze and articulate the significance and function of metaphors in the text. At the same time, he approaches the text as a “narrative” consisting of a “drama” in three acts such that each part of Ephesians 2:11–22 may be considered as part of a progression integrally related to the other parts of the text.

Following an opening introduction, or “prologue,” Jiménez explains the method of the volume in a long second chapter of “stage directions.” The following three chapters (3 through 5) consider in turn the three “acts” of Ephesians 2:11–22, and the volume concludes with both a concluding “epilogue” of its argument and a postscript concerning application of the volume’s exegesis for the Church in the present.

The chapter on methodology clarifies the volume’s use of the term “narrative” and provides a summary explanation of CMT necessary for understanding the subsequent chapters. Although using the term “narrative,” the volume does not employ narratology or narrative criticism, nor does Jiménez use “narrative” to refer to a narrowly defined literary genre. Rather, Jiménez equates “narrative” with “story” (p. 17), stating that the differentiating characteristic of “narrative”/“story” is plot. A text that is not narrative “is neither entertaining nor argumentative” while a “narrative” “has surprise, raises questions, and has a problem/resolution progression” (p. 18). Recognizing this broad, and atypical, use of the term “narrative” (which, by its breadth, encompasses epistolary literature in which argumentation or other forms of logical progression appear) is necessary for understanding the volume’s characterization of Ephesians 2:11–22 as “narrative.”

The second half of the chapter on methodology provides an explanation of CMT and frame semantics. The discussion of CMT primarily draws from Zoltán Kövecses, George Lakoff, and Mark Johnson, while that on frame semantics is based on the work of Charles Fillmore. This part of the volume is itself of value due to Jiménez’s clear explanation despite the theoretical complexity of the subject matter, and it could be used independently as an introduction to the application of these theories in biblical studies. Although the introduction and chapter on methodology together comprise a large proportion of the volume (50 of 177 pages of main text), as a non-specialist in CMT, I was grateful for Jiménez’s articulate introduction to CMT and frame semantics.

The three main chapter of the volume consider Ephesians 2:11–22 according to the three “acts” of 2:11–13, 2:14–18, and 2:19–22, marked by ποτέ, νυνί, γάρ, and Ἄρα οὖν. Jiménez explains each of these “acts” according to their literary context within the epistle and in relation to each other while analyzing the major metaphors that occur in them. Jiménez focuses on three primary metaphors established in “Act I”: “Israel is a container,” “Christ is a container,” and “an emotional relationship is a distance between two entities.” The progression of the three acts according to Jiménez’s analysis is one of transformation from outsiders to insiders by means of reconciliation both to God and other people with the result of union as citizens, members of the household of God, and a temple.

Readers may question various points of Jiménez’s interpretation. His understanding of language of alienation and nearness in Ephesians 2:11–13 as expressing an “emotional relationship” (p. 52), for example, does not engage with the Isaianic allusions of this language nor the significance of language of “nearness” in relation to the tabernacle/temple. The explanation of en Christo as the metaphor “Christ is a container” (pp. 77–82) does not engage the extensive scholarship on this phrase in Pauline literature, nor address possible uses of it specific to Ephesians, such as its allusion to the Abrahamic covenant proposed by Marcus Barth.^[1] The exegesis often does not appear to result from the methods emphasized in the volume (those of CMT and of “narrative” reading, broadly understood); rather, these methods are the means of articulating Jiménez’s reading of Ephesians 2:11–22. In so far as this is the case, another interpreter could similarly employ these methods with a different resulting interpretation. While readers may thus desire more discussion in parts of the volume or disagree with some of its interpretation, Jiménez’s volume offers a creative approach with value in its clear explanation and demonstration of how CMT may be applied.

As Jiménez notes in the introduction, a significant portion of previous research on Ephesians has tended to approach the epistle as a presentation of ethical principles, often without sufficient attention to overarching themes, logical progression, and the relationship between the various theological assertions and ethical instruction that appear in the epistle. His work draws attention to the complex progression of thought of Ephesians 2:11–22 and encourages careful attention to the use of metaphors in the reading of Ephesians. It is of value for study of Ephesians 2:11–22 and as an introduction to the application of CMT in biblical studies.

Kai Akagi
Rikkyo University

^[1] Ephesians (Anchor Bible 34; New York: Doubleday, 1974), 78.