What's a meta for? metaphor creates meaning; and is not just for optional illustration

Kenneth Bailey:
At least since the fifth century B.C., and the great days of classical Greece, the Western mind has done its serious thinking in concepts. In most forms of discourse, we from the West begin with an idea and then occasionally illustrate that idea with a simile, metaphor, or parable.

The conceptual language is primary and the metaphor or parable is secondary. The first is critical, the second is optional. If the listener/reader is intelligent enough, the speaker/writer may dispense with illustrations. For indeed the story is presented only to clarify the meaning of the concept. If people are able to catch that meaning without using up time with illustrations, so much the better.
 

The illustration is useful for simplification, the Western mind thinks. It aids memory. It assists in adding emotional coloration and in catching and holding attention. But through all of this, the pictorial remains a secondary form of speech. The concept continues as the primary form of theological language.
 

A theological discourse is created by attaching one concept to another by means of logic. Philosophy then provides an overall structure for the material. This has been the primary Greco-Roman form of theological discourse and thereby the dominant Western form. It has been in use for centuries.

But there is another way to “do theology.” Middle Eastern creators of meaning do not offer a concept and then illustrate (or choose not to illustrate) with a metaphor or parable. For them the equation is reversed.
Rather than
 

concept + illustration
 

the Middle Easterner offers
 

parable + conceptual interpretation.
 

The Middle Eastern mind creates meaning by the use of simile, metaphor, proverb, parable, and dramatic action. The person involved is not illustrating a concept but is rather creating meaning by reference to something concrete.
 

The primary language is that of the metaphor/parable and the secondary language is the conceptual interpretation of the metaphor that in Biblical literature is often given with it.

[An] example of this structure is in the well-known text of Isaiah 53:7-8:
 

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth, INJUSTICE/ SILENCE

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, PARABLE

and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, PARABLE

so he did not open his mouth SILENCE

By a perversion of justice he was taken away. INJUSTICE
 

The parable appears in the center and is encased with concepts that direct any reflection on the parable’s meaning. The meaning is created by metaphor. At the same time the metaphor, as it were, “cries out” for conceptual interpretation which appears in the text as a frame set around the metaphor. Thus concepts appear with the parable in Biblical literature and are not strangers to it (cf. also Isaiah 5:1-7).
 

Second, clearly the metaphorical language is the primarylanguage which creates the meaning set forth in the discourse. The metaphor says more than the conceptual frame. The conceptual interpretive language is important yet secondary. The reader of Is. 53:7-8 knows that the lamb is unjustly treated and that it is silent. Thoughtful contemplation on this “parable of the lamb before its killer and shearer” has for centuries taken readers into great depths of meaning that reach far beyond the interpretation that encases the parable.
 

The concepts that surround the Biblical metaphors (as can be seen in the above texts) catch only a part of the meaning of the metaphor. Yes, the servant of God is unjustly treated. Yes, he is silent. But the picture of the lamb standing mute before the butcher or shearer creates far more meaning than the concepts which surround it.   Finding the Lost Cultural Keys to Luke 15