mashal

In Jewish teaching, there is a device called “mashal/nimshal,” in which the mashal is a parable or metaphoric tale from which the nimshal or moral is drawn.

Standing in The Breach 2005

A mashal is the Hebrew literary device that purpots destroy the listener's/readers illusions and force him or her to face reality.

mashal dudemanflab 2002

Years ago, I read an analysis of Till We Have Faces that discussed the Hebrew mashal as a text in which the character is "forced into unwelcome self-understanding"; my MC feels justified and self-righteous about many things, and we find out that all is not what it seems to her.

Author-friends, Meet Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich 2010

Years ago, I read an analysis of Till We Have Faces that discussed the Hebrew mashal as a text in which the character is "forced into unwelcome self-understanding"; my MC feels justified and self-righteous about many things, and we find out that all is not what it seems to her.

Archive 2010-02-01 2010

Then she gestured at the classroom filled with students, the notes we were taking, the windows overlooking a field tangled with the thick green vegetation of a Pennsylvania July, the blue sky and whipped-cream clouds above: “All this is mashal.”

Standing in The Breach 2005

The mashal is told in words and concepts we can understand, often referring to familiar people and things; the mashal then shows by analogy how the same ideas and understandings reverberate in higher realms.

Standing in The Breach 2005

And if she had said the same thing to another woman, it would have been "dai desh mashal."

Asimov's Science Fiction 2003

Modern research inclines to take the mashal or similitude as a primitive norm for Hebrew verse in general; and Prov., x, is quoted by way of showing the three varieties indicated by Lowth.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 12: Philip II-Reuss 1840-1916 1913

Ezekiel 24: 3-5, is expressly named a mashal, and may be compared with the Gospel similitude of the leaven.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 11: New Mexico-Philip 1840-1916 1913

The word parable (Hebrew mashal; Syrian mathla, Greek parabole) signifies in general a comparison, or a parallel, by which one thing is used to illustrate another.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 11: New Mexico-Philip 1840-1916 1913