Posture and bodily movements in the Bible and biblical religions

Project Information

POSTURE

Grant agreement ID: 101066209

DOI

10.3030/101066209

Project closed

EC signature date 23 May 2022

Start date 1 June 2022

End date 31 July 2025

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 266 152,49

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI ROMA LA SAPIENZA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - POSTURE (Posture and bodily movements in the Bible and biblical religions)

Reporting period: 2024-08-01 to 2025-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

POSTURE investigates the theme of bodily attitudes, postures and movements within one of the most important pieces of cultural heritage, i.e. the Hebrew Bible. Furthermore, it explores the interpretation, transmission and transformation of this theme within cultural products (ancient biblical translations and subsequent exegetical traditions) that, either directly or indirectly, depend on the Bible.

POSTURE intersects two scientific fields, i.e. the semantics of Biblical Hebrew/Aramaic (BH/BA) and the anthropology of the biblical world and related contexts. From a linguistic point of view, verbs of posture and motion show several interesting idiomatic and metaphorical usages, being used to express also abstract concepts and grammatical aspects. From a socio-anthropological point of view, posture and body language can express real or assumed power relationships and hierarchies. They can serve as “externalizers” of status, gender, age, and physical weakness. Self-positioning and patterns of movement serve to establish, express, and maintain group identity. Moving towards a person is also a special kind of social act, indicating the desire to interact or to obtain something (e.g. information, protection, friendship, help), while maintaining a distance may indicate hostility, self-protection, respect, or dominance over others. Specific body movements are associated with honourable behaviour toward an elder or an authority, whereas intentional transgressions of official etiquette are sign of open contrast and provocation.

The combination of semantic and anthropological investigations represents the innovation of POSTURE: exploring the semantics of posture and motion verbs in the Hebrew Bible from the social, anthropological and interactional perspectives will allow to rethink the idea of body in this context. Furthermore, the study of the reception of biblical “postures” in different cultural products (translations and exegetical traditions) will shed light on historical and intercultural processes in Antiquity and Late Antiquity.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The first phase focused on training in semantics and its methodologies, applied to core posture verbs such as y-š-b (“to sit”), ʿmd (“to stand”), and škb (“to lie down”). This analysis was later expanded by integrating the category of verbal aspect and by systematically correlating posture verbs with motion verbs such as qwm (“to rise”) and hlk (“to walk”).

During the return phase, the scope broadened to interlinguistic comparison with Greek and Aramaic translations, as well as to reception in Jewish and Christian traditions. A corpus of nearly 1,800 occurrences of posture verbs was collected and analyzed, offering a comprehensive picture of their static and dynamic uses.

A central achievement was the organization of the international conference Motion and Posture in the Bible (Rome, May 2024), the first multi-day international conference I curated independently. It extended the methodology of POSTURE to additional verbs, gestures, and languages (Akkadian, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic). I am editing the conference proceedings, which will include two of my contributions and an introduction.

Publications produced during the fellowship include two articles forthcoming in the proceedings volume and one accepted in a peer-reviewed, A-ranked journal. In addition, the results were presented at the Summer School in Languages of the Christian East (Rome, July 2025) and will be discussed at the study day Cognitive Linguistic Approaches to Biblical Hebrew (Amsterdam, November 2025).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Research on motion and posture verbs in Biblical Hebrew had not yet been based on purely linguistic criteria, involving semantics and syntax in particular.
To date, we only know these verbs from lexicographical entries in dictionaries. Some studies deal with the polysemy of some of them but limit themselves to describing the meanings they convey in different contexts of use. However, a general theory of such verbs in Hebrew is still lacking.

POSTURE advanced the field in several ways:
- First systematic semantic study of Hebrew posture verbs, integrating aspect and syntax.
- Three-dimensional model of posture/motion semantics, linking static and dynamic phases.
- Connection between linguistic findings and anthropology, showing how body language expressed identity, hierarchy, and social interaction.
- Analysis of the transmission of bodily conceptions across languages and traditions.
- New scholarly resources, while also fostering wider cultural interest in the critical study of the Bible.

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