Family of the King: Dynamics of Metaphor in the Gospel According to John

Nearly all metaphors in the Gospel according to John relate to ancient family imagery. Thus, the disciples are born of the Father; the Father provides them with bread and drink (water); He educates them and protects them and a dwelling is prepared for them, and so on. This family imagery, which is interwoven throughout the Gospel in a complex network, provides a key to the understanding of the message of the Fourth Gospel. In this volume, after exploring numerous state-of-the-art theories on metaphor, a customised metaphor theory is developed from the Fourth Gospel itself, which can be applied to the analysis of the Gospel as a whole. The theory is based on two of the best-known metaphors in the Fourth Gospel: I am the Good Shepherd, and I am the True Vine. Subsequently, all other metaphors are analysed according to this theory.