The Literal and the Figurative Meanings of
the Romanian Biblical Zoonyms
This paper deals with some theoretical aspects of the meaning and tries to exemplify them with the names of animals in some religious texts of the Romanian Biblical tradition. The present research relates the literal and the figurative meanings of the 12 Biblical zoonyms (donkey, asp, horse, camel, deer, whale, lion, wholf, lamb, sheep, pigeon, snake, with its synonyms dragon and leviathan), using contexts from XVIth to XXth centuries.
Keywords: literal meaning, figurative meaning, Bible, zoonym, animal.