Batoul Hassan, Hashim Alhusseini
This study presents a comparative analysis of polytheism in the Glorious Qur'an and the Holy Bible. Most previous studies focus on the religious or linguistic aspects of polytheism; therefore, this study attempts to address this gap by studying its cognitive-semantic aspect of polytheism, clarifying the influence of social and linguistic factors individuals' cognitive beliefs, and identifying the similarities and differences between the selected Qur'anic and Biblical texts. It employs a qualitative approach to analyse six religious texts: three texts from the Glorious Qur'an and the other three texts from the Holy Bible. It adopts an eclectic model which involves Johnson's (1987) Image Schema Theory, Fauconnier's (1984) Mental Space Theory, and Palmer's (1997) Lexical Relations Theory. The analysis shows that both the Glorious Qur'an and the Holy Bible discuss polytheism and its consequences through several texts. The linguistic expressions involved in the selected Qur'anic and Biblical texts as well as the social factors influence individuals' cognitive beliefs. However, the selected Qur'anic and Biblical texts differ in the language where the language of the Glorious Qur'an is direct and argumentative whereas the language of the Biblical texts is descriptive and narrative.