Cumulative Part-Whole Relations as a Verbal and Visual Rhetorical Strategy: Song of Songs 7 and Composite Beings of the Southern Levant

Abstract

In biblical studies, a growing interest in metaphors as the conceptual key to the ancient mind has arisen. However, in contrast with the popularity of metaphor, other tropes have received little attention. This article sheds light on another rhetorical feature: ‘cumulative part-whole relations,’ which construct a new whole by compounding disparate body parts, a textual and visual strategy deliberately used to cross boundaries of individual parts, to integrate the parts into a larger whole, and to demonstrate superiority and supernatural powers. Through examining visual and textual examples from the ancient Near East, including Song 7.1–6 and the composite creatures ( Mischwesen) from the Levant, this article reveals that the rhetorical mechanism of the cumulation of part-whole relations follows the logic that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, while that whole remains a single one no matter how many parts are compounded.