The metaphors of the ‘Shadow’ in Ancient Hebrew literature in the Light of their Semitic and Greek Backgrounds

The semantic investigation of the figurative usage of צֵל within the Hebrew Bible has shown a transition from the positive meaning of protection to the negative meaning of transitoriness. The analysis of the Septuagint renderings has disclosed a special approach in handling such imagery: the translators refrained from using the obvious equivalent σκιά in those contexts involving the idea of protection as a social relation. The semantic variance registered both within the Ancient Hebrew texts and cross-linguistically in the Septuagint shows how language mirrors contrasting cultural speculations about the same natural phenomenon, which may overlap and replace one another over time and across different discourse traditions. The paper aims at setting these different cultural ideas in a larger framework; at inquiring how they could come about within the Ancient Hebrew literature; at investigating why the usage of σκιά may have caused semantic clash in Greek in the Septuagint translators’ mind.