Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Kevin Graham" <kevlds AT hotmail.com>]

== Similarly, CLM in Biblical Hebrew encompasses shapes that are similar or 
representative to another object, an imperfect copy as it were (made of gold 
in 1 Samuel 6) of which "shadow" is just one variety of CLM.

Can you provide instances where "shadow" is to be prefered over the "image" 
rendering?

== Then we must also consider idiomatic use. E.g. Numbers 35:52 "you will 
make the shadows of their statues (used as idols) lost" which would include 
not only getting rid of the idols themselves (by melting down, burying, etc. 
so that they cast no shadows), but also any small representation thereof 
that would be carried as an amulet or put in a little shrine in a house.

I see no reason to translate this as "shadow" since "image" makes perfectly 
good sense. I think you meant to cite Num 33:52, as 35:52 doesn't exist:

"then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, 
and destroy all their figured stones, and destroy all their molten images, 
and demolish all their high places:"

Again, I fail to see the justification for "shadow" rendering in this 
instance.

= So as I said before, strictly from a linguistic viewpoint, we cannot make 
a claim that CLM )LHYM indicates that God had a physical body.

Thus far this argument appears incoherent. Perhaps I'm missing the forest 
for the trees. Jewish scholar Gershom Sholem cuts through the ambiguity when 
he says the meaning of tselem, "refers to a three-dimensional image or 
form."  Gershom Sholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts 
in the Kabbalah., 1991, Schocken Books, 17. See also P. Humbert, who said 
Gen 1:26 means "that humanity was created with the same physical form as the 
deity, of which [it] is a moulded three-dimensional embodiment, delineated 
and exteriorized'."(P. Humbert, Etudes sur le récit du paradis et de la 
chute dans la Genèse [Neuchâtel: Secrétariat del' Université, 1940], p. 157)