LINGUIST List 12.1004

Tue Apr 10 2001

Books: Cross Cultural Communication

Editor for this issue: Naomi Ogasawara <naomilinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Kimberly Kahn, Cross Cultural Communication: What did Jesus Mean? by Wierzbicka

WHAT DID JESUS MEAN?: Explaining the Sermon on the Mount
and the Parables in Simple and Universal Human Concepts
Anna Wierzbicka, Australian National University, Canberra

In this highly interdisciplinary work, linguist Anna Wierzbicka casts
new light on the words of Jesus by taking her well-known semantic
theory of "universal human concepts"- concepts which are intuitively
understandable and self-explanatory across languages-and bringing it
to bear on Jesus' parables and the Sermon on the Mount. Her approach
results in strikingly novel interpretations of the Gospels. Written in
dialogue with other biblical commentators, What Did Jesus Mean? is
both scholarly rigorous yet accessible.

April 2001 528 pp.
0-19-513733-7 paper $29.95
0-19-513732-9 cloth $65.00
Oxford University Press