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40. Moreover, I would have learned men to know that the authors of
our Scriptures use all those forms of expression which grammarians call
by the Greek name tropes, and use them more freely and in greater
variety than people who are unacquainted with the Scriptures, and have
learnt these figures of speech from Other writings, can imagine or
believe. Nevertheless those who know these tropes recognize them in
Scripture, and are very much assisted by their knowledge of them in
understanding Scripture. But this is not the place to teach them to
the illiterate, lest it might seem that I was teaching grammar. I
certainly advise, however, that they be learnt elsewhere, although
indeed I have already given that advice above, in the second book
namely, where I treated of the necessary knowledge of languages. For
the written characters from which grammar itself gets its name (the
Greek name for letters being grammata are the signs of sounds made by
the articulate voice with which we speak. Now of some of these figures
of speech we find in Scripture not only examples (which we have of
them all), but the very names as well: for instance, allegory,
enigma, and parable. However, nearly, all these tropes which are
said to be learnt as a matter of liberal education are found even in the
ordinary speech of men who have learnt no grammar, but are content to
use the vulgar idiom. For who does not say, "So may you
flourish?" And this is the figure of speech called metaphor. Who
does not speak of a fish-pond in which there is no fish, which was not
made for fish, and yet gets its name from fish? And this is the
figure called catachresis.
41. It would be tedious to go over all the rest in this way; for
the speech of the vulgar makes use of them all, even of those more
curious figures which mean the very opposite of what they say, as for
example, those called irony and antiphrasis. Now in irony we indicate
by the tone of voice the meaning we desire to convey; as when we say to
a man who is behaving badly, "You are doing well." But it is not
by the tone of voice that we make an antiphrasis to indicate the
opposite of what the words convey; but either the words in which it is
expressed are used in the opposite of their etymological sense, as a
grove is called lucus from its want of light; or it is customary to use
a certain form of expression, although it puts yes for no by a law of
contraries, as when we ask in a place for what is not there, and get
the answer, "There is plenty;" or we add words that make it plain
we mean the opposite of what we say, as in the expression, "Beware
of him, for he is a good man." And what illiterate man is there that
does not use such expressions, although he knows nothing at all about
either the nature or the names of these figures of speech? And yet the
knowledge of these is necessary for clearing up the difficulties of
Scripture; because when the words taken literally give an absurd
meaning, we ought forthwith to inquire whether they may not be used in
this or that figurative sense which we are unacquainted with; and in
this way many obscure passages have had light thrown upon them.
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