112 olE JAKoB FIlTvEDT Instead, Paul seems to argue that non-Jews — surprisingly and con- trary to nature — have been included into the covenant that hitherto only included Jews, even though that convenant had always intended to include the nations 41. That Paul held that Jews belong more natu- rally to the covenant than non-Jews seems to be confirmed by Paul’s statement in Gal 2,15, where he speaks of himself and Peter as being Jews by nature, in contrast to Gentile sinners. The prerogative of the Jews is even more clearly spelled out in Rom 11,17-24, developed by means of the metaphor of an olive tree on which some branches are said to belong naturally while others need to be grafted in 42. There remains an aspect of asymmetry in Paul’s thinking, pertaining to the way in which Jews and non-Jews are said to belong to Abraham’s family, which is not adequately accounted for by the hypothesis that Paul reconstructs Abraham’s family as an entirely new ethnic group. v. Metaphors: Some Presuppositions The question, then, is whether a metaphorical interpretation of Paul would help us interpret the paradox in Paul’s argument, pointed out by Buell and Hodge. In order to explore this question, I need to explicate how I will use the term “metaphor”. I understand “metaphor”, in its broad sense, to be the act of understanding one con- ceptual domain in terms of another. The process of metaphorization is creative, in that it pushes towards new understandings and results in fresh meaning 43. A metaphorical statement cannot be reduced to a paraphrase where only one conceptual domain is drawn upon, since it is the very interaction between two conceptual domains that creates the meaning for which the metaphorical statement is a carrier. This al- so implies that metaphorical statements are not correctly understood as mere ornaments of language that substitute for real or true meaning, since the meaning in question results from the interaction between 41 For a more elaborate discussion on how Paul affirms the inclusion of non-Jews into the covenant, while also maintaining that there remains a special situation for ethnic Israel, see o.J. FIlTvEDT, “‘God’s Israel’ in Galatians 6.16. An overview and Assessment of the Key Arguments”, CBR (2017) forthcoming. 42 BuEll – HoDGE, “Politics of Interpretation”, 249. 43 This does not conflict with the fact that metaphors permeate everyday language, or with the fact that some metaphors become so conventional that we easily overlook their metaphorical nature. These two observations are highlighted in G. lAKoFF – M. JoHNSoN, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago, Il 1980).