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TARGUM

A written translation or paraphrase of a biblical text. The need for rendering the Bible into Aramaic or Greek arose in the Second Temple period, when for many Jews the Hebrew of ancient Scriptures ceased to be the spoken language. The Greek LXX and Aramaic Targum of Job discovered at Qumran (11QTJob) are evidence that in prerabbinic Judaism translating had already developed into a complex process, through which the original text was expanded with interpolated exegetical interpretations. By establishing rules and limitations, the Mishnah testified to the struggle of the rising rabbinic movement to control this phenomenon after the 1st century c.e. These rules first applied to both Aramaic and Greek translations. The need for setting clear boundaries between rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, however, gradually led the rabbis to abandon Greek as a legitimate language of theological discourse and to concentrate exclusively on Aramaic. So, while “Targum” could designate a translation of a biblical text into any language, it is to the corpus of Aramaic versions composed in rabbinic times that the term more specifically applies. The rabbis realized the importance of Targum as a highly effective means of religious education in schools, as well as in the liturgical setting of the synagogue. The Targum was understood as part of the Oral Torah. Its haggadah was tendentially harmonized to the rabbinic theological and halakhic principles. The culmination of this process was the composition in Babylon of official rabbinic Targums (Onkelos to the Pentateuch and Jonathan to the Prophets).

Rabbinic authorities found it very difficult to control these autonomous and creative techniques of translation on which the Targums were based. In many cases, the antiquity of targumic tradition demonstrated an amazing power of resistance, stronger than any attempt to censorship. Its captivating exegesis never ceased to attract the curiosity, if not the religious consensus, of readers and scholars who, as late as the Middle Ages, continued to write in this tradition and took pleasure in making copies of earlier Targums.

A chronology of extant rabbinic Targums can be only tentatively reconstructed. The presence of premishnaic traits suggests that the composition of the Targum Neofiti might go back to the 2nd century c.e. Closely related to Neofiti but certainly later is the Fragmentary Targum, which owes its name to its survival only in scholarly excerpts. The redaction of the Targum Onkelos probably took place in the 4th or 5th century and marked the most consistent attempt to rabbinize the Targum and produce an official standard text. From talmudic times (7th-8th century) comes finally the most expansive of the Targums of the Pentateuch, the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, which represents a sort of summa of centuries of exegetical creativity and rabbinic ingenuity (and censorship), in a uniquely free combination of early and late traditions. The composition of the Targums to the Prophets and the Writings (only Ezra-Nehemiah and Daniel are without Targums) is generally dated to talmudic and posttalmudic times, even though it is apparent that some of them also contain pieces of ancient exegesis.

Bibliography. P. V. M. Flesher, “The Targumim in the Context of Rabbinic Literature,” in J. Neusner, Introduction to Rabbinic Literature (New York, 1994), 611-29; M. McNamara, The New Testament and the Palestinian Targums to the Pentateuch. AnBib 27A (1966, repr. Rome, 1978); McNamara and D. R. G. Beattie, eds., The Aramaic Bible: Targums in Their Historical Context. JSOTSup 166 (Sheffield, 1994).

Gabriele Boccaccini

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

TARGUM

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)