Colors as a semiotic tool for Bible analysis

Abstract

The chapter presents a new and complex approach to colors in the Bible. ‎The demonstration of the method requires defining the distinction between verbal and visual color as feasible sign systems. No such distinction has been made up to now. This method serves one major goal: a better understanding of ‎biblical texts originally given in Hebrew, with a focus on hermeneutics. A subsidiary ‎aim is the disclosure of the various structures of color presence in biblical ‎texts. This also involves a detailed semiotics of color, including a complex ‎method based on both the achievements of other scholars and a specific ‎proposal to treat colors as a language, as a sign system. The semiotics of ‎color in the Bible includes four principal areas: color as a sign in general, ‎color semiotics in the Bible and their specificities in both Hebrew and ‎translations in different languages. As a case study, the article focuses on ‎one verse, Song 1:5, treated as a “semiotic iceberg,” i.e., a structure with a ‎visible semantic level supported by “submerged” or less apparent ones. Presenting this method cannot be short and simple because, on the one hand, ‎it is complex, holistic and interdisciplinary, and on the other, there are many ‎novelties in the analysis, including new terms and hypotheses that we must ‎connect with existing terminology in color research. As such, we provide ‎clarification for a number of terms, such as verbal and visual colors as signs, ‎color language and color speech, semio-osmosis, color as a cultural unit, the ‎inner form of the word, mega-color, basic color terms (BCT), prototype ‎Terms (PT), rivals for prototypes (RT) and basic features of prototypes ‎‎(BFPT).‎