This paper examines how the Lakoff-Johnson-Turner theory of cognitive metaphor can be applied to religious language. After a brief description of the relationship between religion and metaphor, it focuses on the analysis of the saying "you are the salt of the earth" (Mt. 5:13). The reflection reveals that the sentence is a redefinition through the patriarchal Jewish "conceptual system" of an old Semitic mother-centered metaphor. A conclusion that emerges is that a metaphor's meaning may change drastically through the systematic reinterpretation of its signs into a new coherent cultural conceptualization while its "experiential basis" remains universal. (Laurence Eruusard)