The Language and Imagery of the Bible

Caird's study of how the language of the Bible works, published by Duckworth in its Studies in Theology series in 1980 (Westminster Press in the United States) and reissued by Eerdmans in 1997 with a foreword by N. T. Wright; it won the Collins Religious Book Award. The first part sets out what Caird calls linguistic principles: the uses of language, distinguished as informative, cognitive, performative, expressive and cohesive; the meaning of meaning; opacity, vagueness and ambiguity; and translation. The second, under the heading of metaphor, treats literal and non-literal speech, the degree of correspondence a picture intends, parable and allegory, and the biblical writers' own awareness of their tools. The last part turns to language about history, myth and eschatology, where the book develops its thesis about the use of the language of myth and eschatology in the New Testament. D. R. De Lacey, reviewing it in 1983, called it one of the most stimulating books on the interpretation of the Bible of recent years.