Sense: mind <=> head
n. — a person’s mind perceived in terms of the head.
In the first year of King Belshazzar of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head [רֵאשׁ] as he lay in bed. Then he wrote down the dream…
Daniel 7:1 (NRSV)
In Daniel 7:1, we find an interesting usage of the word “head.” Here the “head” is conceived of as the place where dreams and visions take place. This kind of usage occurs six times in Daniel. That may not seem strange to modern English speakers since we conceive of the head as the place of dreams and thoughts. We use metaphors like “use your head” to refer to our minds. However, in the Hebrew Bible, different aspects of a person’s inner life were referred to by different body parts, such as the heart, the entrails, the breath. The most common entity closest to the modern English “mind” (though there was much non-overlap) was “heart.” For example, in Jeremiah 23:16 we read about “visions of the heart.” Perhaps this is an influence of Greek thought on the Book of Daniel (e.g., see the entry for “head” in the Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible for Greek thinking about the head).
What is the Bible Sense Lexicon?
Sense of the Day is based on content from Logos’ Bible Sense Lexicon, which organizes biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words by meaning based on a variety of semantic relationships. Sense of the Day provides examples of senses in context, along with insight into their application for theology and interpretation.
The Bible Sense Lexicon is a Logos dataset available in Logos 5 Gold and higher base packages. If you’re enrolled in the Logos Academic Discount Program, you can also find the Bible Sense Lexicon in the Biblical Languages base package. Take your studies even further by exploring semantic domains, engaging the biblical text like never before.
Learn more about the Bible Sense Lexicon.