Bible. Thus the Targums, both in their periods of vigour and decay, exercised, directly and indirectly, a salutary influence. In each case the knowledge of Hebrew was promoted; and it advanced so much, that by 1000 A.D. the Jews of Irak, like those of the rest of the world then, and as in our own days, certainly knew the pure Hebrew better than the Aramaic idiom. The same was the case in other Arabic-speaking parts, as Spain, Africa, &c.,—Yemen then and still forming a solitary exception. [1]
Authorship and Age of the Various Targums.—The Targums on the various books of the Bible are not merely by various authors, but also of various ages. They have only one thing in common,—all of them rest on oral traditions, which are hundreds of years older than the earliest form of the written Targums now in our hands. We enumerate them according to Biblical order, although that is not necessarily the chronological order in which they were either composed or committed to writing.
I. The Pentateuch. — (α) There is a complete Targum known as Onḳelos (אזנקלזם, אזנקלם, נקלזם, אזנק׳לזם). The person and even the name of Onḳelos have been for the last three hundred years a crux criticorum.
According to the Babylonian Talmud, Megil., 3a, "Onḳelos (son of Calonicus, Gitt.,56b, or of Calonymus, Ab. Zar., 11a), the proselyte, composed the Targum on the Pentateuch (אמרז) out of the mouth of R. Eli'ezer and R. Yehoshua'," who taught in the 1st and 2d centuries. In the Jerusalem Talmud, Meg., i. 9, the same thing is related on the same authorities, and almost in the same words, of the proselyte Aquila (Akylas) of Pontus, whose Greek version of the Bible was much used by Greek-speaking Jews down to the time of Justinian {Nov., cxlvi. cap. 1). [2] There are other parallels between what Tosephto and the Babylonian Talmud tell of Onḳelos and what the Jerusalem Talmud and the Midrash tell of Aquila. Both throw their idolatrous inheritance into the Dead Sea (Tos., Demai, vi. 12; T. Y., Demai, vi. 10), and both have connexions with Roman emperors, Onḳelos being sister’s son of Titus (Gittin, 56b), and Aquila of Hadrian (Midr. Tanh., Mishpatim; see, also, for Onḳelos, Ab. Z., 11a, and for Aquila’s connexion with Hadrian, T. Y., Hag., ii. 1; Shem. Rab., xxx.; Epiphanius, De Mens. Et Pond., xiv. sq. ). From these facts some (see H. Adler, Nethinah lagger, in the Vilna Pent,, 1874, Introd.) still argue that Onḳelos is but another name for Aquila, and that the Greek translator also wrote our Targum. This view was long ago refuted by R. 'Azaryah de’ Rossi, [3] and is quite untenable. It is incredible that Aquila or any other Greek could have had the mastery of Aramaic and of traditional lore as well as of Hebrew which the Targum displays; and the phrase of T. Y.,Megil. , i. 9, “an untutored person picked out for them Aramaic from the Greek, is quite inapplicable to Onḳelos, and ought to be taken as referring to the Peshito Syriac, which is admittedly dependent on the LXX. In a Jewish writing "for them"—set absolutely—means “for the Christians.” The view now accepted by most critics is that the word Onḳelos is a Babylonian corruption of Akylas, but that the name “Targum Onḳelos” originally meant no more than “Targum in the style of Aqiiila,” i.e., bearing to the freer Palestinian Targums a similar relation to that of Aquila’s version to the Septuagint. [4] On this view there never was a real person called Onḳelos. But how Akylas (ץק׳לם ; in Ber. Rab. i. middle, אק׳לזם or ק׳ל׳ן, i.e., ק׳לץ) could be corrupted into Onḳelos has not been satisfactorily explained; and, besides the traditions about Onḳelos which resemble what is known about Aquila, there are others, and these older than either Gemara, which have no such resemblance, and assign to him an earlier date, associating him with R. Gamliel the elder, the teacher of St Paul (Tosephto, Shab., vii. [viii.] 18; Hag., iii. 2, 3; Kel. Bab. Bath., ii. 4; Miḳv., vi. 3; Talmud B., Ab. Zar,, 11a; Mas. Semaḥ., viii. init.). The Zohar (iii. leaf 73a of the small ed.) ascribes his being circumcised to Hillel (R. Gamliel’s grandfather) and Shammai. These notices, it is true, do not speak of Onḳelos as a targumist; and, indeed, the Targum being a representative piece of the oral law was certainly not written down, private notes (megilloth setharim) excepted, before the Mishnah, Tosephto, &c., i.e., till about the end of the 6th or the beginning of the 7th century. But in the opinion of the present writer this need not prevent us from recognizing Onḳelos as a corrector and compiler of oral Targum in the 1st century. As regards the name, it may be suggested that Onḳelos is a deliberate perversion of Evangelus, a Greek proper name which exactly translates the Jewish (and especially Babylonian- Jewish) name Mebasser. As the Christian writings are called Aven (iniquity, idolatry), and as the pre-Mishnic teacher R. Meir calls the gospel (evangelion) ongillayon (iniquity of the roll; T. B., Shab., leaf 116, Amst. ed. of 1645), or, by inversion, gilyon-aven (roll of iniquity), the name Evangelus, which suggested associations with the gospel, might be perverted into Onḳelos quasi On-keles (iniquity of disgrace). And, while a Babylonian Jew coming to Palestine might find it convenient to translate his Hebrew name into Evangelus, this good Greek name was enough to suggest in after times that he was of heathen origin and so to facilitate the confusion with Aquila. The idiom of the Targum Onḳelos, which is held to be Palestinian with some Babylonian features, points to Babylonia as the country of its final redactor, if to Palestine as its source. It must be remembered that Hillel and other great fountains of Palestinian learning were of Babylonian origin. [5]
(β) Certain Targumic fragments on the Pentateuch go under the name of Targum Yerushalmi, or, rather, Palestinian Targum. These are the remains of a much larger Jerusalem Targum, once current in Palestine. But, the Palestinian rabbis not having approved of it, because it accorded in various of its interpretations and phrases with interpretations and phrases to
- ↑ In Yemen the Targum is publicly recited to this day, and, strange to say, by boys of nine years of age or so in turn. See J. Saphir, Eben Sappir, i. (Lyck, 1866, 8vo) leaves 53b, 61a. Saphir once told the present writer that a youth, eighteen years of age (ut supra, 61b), who carried his travelling-bag and served as his guide over the mountains, Saïd, i.e., Se'adyah, by name and a shoemaker by trade, could translate to him in Aramaic from memory any passage Saphir recited in Hebrew.
- ↑ For the connexion of Aquila with R. Eli'ezer and R. Yehoshua', see also Beresh. Rab., Ixx. ; Bemidh. Rab., viii. end; Kohel. Rab., vii. 8.
- ↑ I.e., “min Haadummim.” The Adummim are supposed to be one of the four noble families carried to Rome by Titus.
- ↑ The Jerusalem Talmud repeatedly cites Aquila’s renderings and never names Onḳelos. But it does show acquaintance with renderings found in Onḳelos (e.g., Megil,, iv. 11; cf. Onḳ, on Exod. xxxii. 35). In the Midrash Rabbah, besides many citations from Aquila, we find one of Onḳelos by name (in Bem. R., ix. in fine; Onḳ. on Deut. xxxii. 24) and various allusions (without name) to renderings found in him. He is also cited by name in the Palestinian Pireḳe de-R. Eli'ezer, xxxviii.
- ↑ Bibliography of the Targum אזנקלזם—(A) There are very fine MSS. of this Targum at Parma, Oxford, Cambridge (Dd. 11, 26, Add. 446, 1053), the British Museum, Kissingen (Rabbin Bamberger), &c. (B) A Massoreth on our Targum by an anonymous author, who must have lived in or before the 12th century, has been published—(1) by Luzzatto (Oṣar Neḥmad, iv.); (2) by Adler (Vilna edition of the Pentateuch of 1874) ; and (3) by Berliner (with a German translation, &c., Leipsic, 1877, 8vo). (C) Leading editions:—(1) Bologna, 1482, editio princeps, without vowel-points; (2) the Complutensian polyglott; (3) the Bomberg Rabbinic Bible of 1517; (4) Sabbioneta, 1557, 16mo (reprinted, not without mistakes, at Berlin, 1884, imp. 8vo); and (5) Vilna edition of the Pentateuch of 1874, the Targum being pointed according to a Bodleian MS. (Canon. Orient. 91). (D) Translations:—(a) into Latin—(1) by Alphonsus Zamorensis (Polygl., 1517, &c.); (2) by P. Fagius (Strasburg, 1546, folio); (5) into English by Etheridge (Targums, London, 1862–65, 8vo). (E) Commentaries, all in Hebrew:—(1) Pathshegen, by an anonymous Provençal rabbi of the 12th century (see Maḥzor), in the Vilna Pentateuch of 1874; (2) by R. Mordekhai b. Naphtali (Amsterdam, 1671–77, fol.); (3) Leḥem Vesimlah (double commentary) by R. Bensiyyon Berkowitz (Vilna, 1846–56); (4) by Dr Nathan M. Adler (Vilna Pentateuch of 1874, ut supra). (F) Other literature (also for the other Targums):—(a) in Hebrew—Meor 'Enayim, by R. 'Azaryah m. Haadummim (cheapest and best edition, Vilna, 1863; Mine Targumo, by R. Y. Berlin or Pick (Breslau, 1851, 4to); Oheb Ger, by S. D. Luzzatto (Vienna, 1830); Oteh Or, by the before-named B. Berkowitz (Vilna, 1843); Iggereth Biḳḳoreth, by R. Z. H. Hayyuth (Chajes), ed, Brüll, Presburg (1853, 8vo); Rapoport, Erekh Millin, (Prague, 1852, 4to); Löwy, Biḳḳoreth Hattalmud, i. (Vienna, 1868, 8vo); (5) in Latin—Morinus, Exercitationes, ii. viii, 6 (Paris, 1660); Winer, De Onkeloso (Leipsic, 1820, 4to); R. Anger, De Onkelo (Leipsic, 1845–46); (c) in German—Zunz, Gottesd. Vorträge (Berlin, 1832); Geiger, Urschrift (Breslau, 1857); Hamburger, Real-Encyclopädie; Targum Onḳelos, by Dr A. Berliner (Berlin, 1884, imp. 8vo). On this work, see Nöldeke, in Zarncke’s Centralbl., 1884, No. 39, and Lagarde in Gött. Gel. Anzeig., November 1886 (No. 22); (d) in English: E. Deutsch, in his Literary Remains—to be used with caution. (G) Lexicons to this and other Targums:—(1) as for the Talmuds and Midrashim, so also for the Targum, R. Nathan b. Yehiel's Arukh (see Talmud, p. 37, note 7) stands first; (2) next to it is Elias Levita’s Methurgerman (Isny, 1541, fol.); (3) Buxtorf’s Lexicon Chaldaicum, Talmudicum, et Rabbinicum (cheap and new, though by no means best, edition, Leipsic, 1869–75); (4) Levy’s Chald. Wörterb. (1866–68); (5) Jastrow’s Dictionary, i. (New York, 1886). (H) Grammars:—(1) Juda Jeitteles’s Mebo Hallashon (Prague, 1813, 4to); (2) Bliicher’s Marpe Leshon Arammi (Vienna, 1838); (3) Fürst’s Lehrgeb. d, Aram. Idiome (Leipsic, 1855); (4) Lerner’s Diḳduḳ Lashon Arammith (Warsaw, 1875); all in 8vo.
