FAITH WITHOUT WORKS IS DEAD – BIBLICAL PROVERBIAL PARALLELISM IN ENGLISH AND SERBIAN1
Abstract
The Bible is the holy book of the Christian religion and it features a particular
genre of oral literature known as proverbs. Proverbs embody wisdom amalgamated through
generations, providing and promoting values, socio-cultural norms and knowledge in a pithy,
expressive custom. The aim of this research is to establish the similarities between two
collections of Biblical proverbs, Mieder’s Not by Bread Alone: Proverbs of the Bible (1990) in
English and Stošić’s Biblijske poslovice i izreke (Biblical Proverbs and Sayings, 2007) in
Serbian. The attempt is to compare Biblical proverbs found in these two collections in order to
determine the levels of parallelism between the two books, and what such findings reveal about
the two peoples’ common moral and ethical codes of behaviour rooted in Protestantism and
Orthodox Christianity respectively. The focus will be on finding common proverbs in the
collections, by which we examine shared ethical values and appropriate behaviour which reflect
the cultural heritage materialised in English and Serbian proverbs.
References
https://biblija.biblija-govori.hr
https://citajbibliju.com
https://www.etymonline.com/word/lex%20talionis
https://www.etymonline.com/word/Mammon#etymonline_v_6762
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org
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