Inasmuch as all imagery embodies the temporary displacement of the terminology ’at issue’ in favour of ’extraneous’ terminology, all imagery embodies a deviation from the terminological norm, albeit a familiar kind of deviation. Metaphor alone has the distinction of achieving this deviation through a simultaneous departure from the normal usage of the language as a whole. This, as is well known, is precisely what the so-called ’dead’ or ’faded’ or ’linguistic’ metaphor does not do. Tree in a family tree, for instance, is a ’dead metaphor’ and involves no departure from normal usage.

JH Elliott argued that the Petrine terms παροικία, πάροικος, and παρεπίδημος are literal, while the majority of scholars understand them metaphorically. This chapter therefore defines metaphors, establishes the criteria by which they can be identifies, and develops tools for their analysis. Metaphors are defined as speaking about one thing (tenor, or target domain) in terms of another (vehicle, or source domain). Though the Petrine regeneration metaphor is cognitive, it is expressed in language grounded in Jewish and Greco-Roman culture. Metaphors are rich, interactive, and not reducible to prose. Simple metaphors can be combined into complex, systematic and narrative structures, which may contain embedded, culturally-based value judgments. This study employs the Metaphor Identification Process (MIP) to determine whether kinship terms in 1 Peter are metaphorical.