is there a raison d'Être for an aramaic targum in a hebrew-speaking society

Revue des Études juives, 160 (3-4), juillet-décembre 2001, pp. 357-378

A b r a h a m T A L

Tel-Aviv University

IS THERE A RAISON D'ÊTRE FOR AN ARAMAIC TARGUMIN A HEBREW-SPEAKING SOCIETY?

RÉSUMÉ

L'opinion traditionnelle selon laquelle le Targum araméen était une nécessitésociale, destinée aux masses qui ne maîtrisaient plus l'hébreu, est actuellementcontestée par les découvertes récentes qui ont prouvé la vitalité de l'hébreu et sonusage extensif aux temps où le premier Targum fut conçu. Cet article propose lathèse que le Targum du type Onqelos n'avait pas comme but d'exposer aux massesignorantes la Loi de Moïse dont la langue originelle ne leur était plus accessible. Aucontraire, son dessein était de protéger l'original de l'inclination à le «moderniser»en accord avec le langage et les idées contemporaines. Comme on l'apprend desrouleaux de la mer Morte, du Pentateuque samaritain et même des sources rabbini-ques, de tels exemplaires harmonisants de la Loi existaient durant les premiers siè-cles de l'ère chrétienne. L'emploi du Targum à côté de l'original permettait de lamoderniser, sans altérer le texte sacré.

SUMMARY

The traditional view considering the Aramaic Targum as a social necessity aimed atthe masses that no longer understood Hebrew is challenged by the recently dis-closed testimonies that Hebrew was in active use among the common people by thetime the first Targum was conceived. The present article submits the thesis that theOnqelos type Targum was not destined to expose the ignorant masses to the Law,whose language was inaccessible to them. It was rather directed against the ten-dency to “modernize” the text of the holy writ in accordance with the contempo-rary linguistic habits and ideological trends. As we learn from the Dead Sea scrolls,the Samaritan Pentateuch and even rabbinical testimonies, such harmonizing exem-plars of the Law existed in the first centuries C.E. The use of the Targum alongwith the original made possible the modernization, without altering the sacred text.

Introduction1

Recent research has raised crucial questions regarding the position ofHebrew vis-à-vis Aramaic during the Second Temple period, producing

1. Unless otherwise stated, all translations from Hebrew and Aramaic are mine - A. T.The following abbreviations are frequently used: b.: Babylonian Talmud; Kutscher:

358 IS THERE A RAISON D'ÊTRE FOR AN ARAMAIC TARGUM?

some embarrassment among scholars involved in Aramaic studies, particu-larly among those interested in the Targum. The cardinal discoveries in theJudean Desert, which clearly, anchor the vitality of Hebrew in Palestineduring the Second Temple period, are apparently incompatible with theexistence of a contemporary Aramaic Targum in the same area. For ifeveryone speaks Hebrew, who needs an Aramaic translation of the Torah?

More than a hundred years ago, considerable consensus existed amongscholars with regard to the position of Hebrew in the linguistic environmentof Palestine during the Second Temple period, based upon a somewhat ro-mantic belief about the return of the exiles from Babylon, that took placeunder the benevolent auspices of the Persian emperors. The prevailing viewwas that the return from Babylon was animated by religious enthusiasm. Itwas there, in exile, that their strong devotion to the Law evolved. Upontheir return to the homeland, they established a firmly crystallized society,grounded in scrupulous adherence to the prescriptions of the holy Torah.The returned exilees, rebuilders of Jerusalem and the Temple, born mainlyin exile, had their educated in Babylon, and, naturally, no longer spoke He-brew. Their vernacular, obviously, was the language they acquired in exile:Aramaic. Nevertheless, one essential fact could not be ignored: the largemajority by far of this period’s Jewish literary output was written in He-brew, generally termed as “Mishnaic Hebrew”.

To explain this “anomaly”, the well-known theory regarding the statusof Hebrew in the new Jewish society was generated. First formulated byS. Lewisohn in his pamphlet Essay on the Grammar of the Language of theMishna (Vienna 1815 [Hebrew]), it was further enunciated by A. Geiger inthe introduction to his Lehr- und Lesebuch zur Sprache der Mischnah(Breslau 1845):

Seit der Zeit des zweiten Tempels war bereits die Volksprache der Juden inPalästina das Aramäische; damals began daher schon das Uebersetzung der imGotteshaufe vorzulesenden Stücke aus den Pentateuch, und zum Theil auchaus den Propheten, in das Aramäische… Das Hebräische hatte somit auf-gehört, eine lebendige Sprach zu sein, dennoch aber blieb es, wie das Latei-nische im Mittelalter, eine religiöse Gelehrtensprache während der Zeit deszweiten Tempels… Die Sprache der Mischnah ist demnach ihren Wesen nachdie hebräische, nur eine spätere Ausbildung derselben, nachdem sie bereitsaufgehört hatte, in dem Munde des Volkes zu leben (pp. 1-2).

E. Y. KUTSCHER, The Language and Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa),Leiden, 1974; LOT: The Literary and Oral Traditions of Hebrew and Aramaic among theSamaritans, vols. I-V, Jerusalem, 1957-1977 (Hebrew); m.: Mishnah; Segal: M. H. SEGAL, AGrammar of Mishnaic Hebrew, Oxford, 1927; MT: Masoretic Text; SP: The Samaritan Pen-tateuch; t.: Tosephtah; y.: Yerushalmi Talmud.

IS THERE A RAISON D'ÊTRE FOR AN ARAMAIC TARGUM? 359

Although Geiger’s position was criticized by H. Graetz, who character-ized it “Grundirrthum”2, it continued to influence scholars until the turn ofthe century, when M. H. Segal’s research led him to the following quite dif-ferent conclusion3:

The answer, therefore, which grammar has to offer to the question whetherMH was a natural, living and popular dialect, developed gradually and system-atically out of old Hebrew or merely an artificial and mechanical scholasticjargon,… is… unequivocally in favor of the former alternative… (p. 735).

Since then, a new factor has entered the debate, one that changed thegeneral attitude vis-à-vis the position of Second Temple Hebrew consider-ably: the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nahal Îever and Wadi Muraba¨at docu-ments. The multitude of compositions discovered, extremely rich in literarystyle and linguistic innovations, attest to Hebrew productivity during theSecond Temple period. Moreover, many of these documents reveal that theuse of Hebrew was not restricted to literary expression; rather it was aliving language used in non-literary documents as well, such as lists of —real or imaginary — hidden treasures and letters written by military leadersto various addressees. I refer to the Copper Scroll on one hand and to theBar-Cochba’s letters on the other. Both represent a linguistic register verysimilar to Mishnaic Hebrew4. The discovery of Hebrew letters along withAramaic and Greek ones, casts a new light on R. Jonathan of Bet Guvrin’sdictum: ,ארבעה לשונות נאים שישתמש בהן העולם ואילו הן: לעז לזמר, רומי לקרבFour languages are appropriately used in the“ סורסי לאילייא, עברי לדיבור.world and these are: La’az [= Greek] for song, Latin for battle, Syriac[= Aramaic] for wailing, Hebrew for speech (y. Megilla 71b)”5.

This evidence for the active use of Hebrew ostensibly put an end to thedispute regarding its position during the period treated in this paper. How-ever, some hesitations still remained, as seen from J. A. Fitzmyer’s conclu-sion to his article on the languages of Palestine:

2. Orientalistische Litteraturblatt 1845, pp. 14-15.3. M. H. SEGAL, “Mishnaic Hebrew and its Relation to Biblical Hebrew and to Aramaic”,

Jewish Quarterly Review, O. S. XX (1908), pp. 648-737. See also A Grammar of MishnaicHebrew, Oxford, 1927, passim.

4. J. T. Milik, the editor of the text, expressed his belief: “The thesis of scholars likeSegal, ben-Jehuda and Klausner, according to whom Mishnaic Hebrew was a language spo-ken by the population of Judaea during Persian and Greco-Roman periods, is no longer a hy-pothesis; it is an established fact” (Discoveries in the Judean Desert II, p. 70). See alsoJ. M. GRINTZ, “Hebrew as the Spoken and Written Language in the Last Days of the SecondTemple”, Journal of Biblical Literature 79 (1960), pp. 32-47.

5. On this matter, see E. Y. KUTSCHER, “The Hebrew and Aramaic Letters of Bar Kosebaand his Contemporaries”, Leshonenu 26 (1962), p. 8.


I should maintain that the most commonly used language in Palestine in thefirst century A. D. was Aramaic… But pockets of Palestinian Jews also usedHebrew, even though its use was not widespread. The emergence of thetargums supports this6.

Fitzmyer finds support for his opinion about the limited use of Hebrewin the existence of the Aramaic Targum. This position differs from thetraditional view mentioned above only in its admission of the existence“pockets of Palestinian Jews” among whom Hebrew was still a livinglanguage. Such a view is, of course, admissible, as far as the transitionalperiod from Hebrew to Aramaic is concerned, i. e., most of the secondcentury C.E., but questionable with regard to the Second Temple period.

Standard Literary Aramaic

Discoveries of Aramaic documents at Qumran shed new light on theAramaic used during the Second Temple period. These documents, whichrepresent a range of subjects, are written in an Aramaic that differs fromBiblical Aramaic and the language of the archives of Elephantine on onehand, and from the Aramaic of the “Palestinian” Targums on the other, afortiori from the Aramaic of the Talmud and Midrash. This Aramaic resem-bles in many respects the prevalent language preserved in many documentsin the region from Palmyra in the desert to Palestine and the Sinai peninsulaand to the northern part of the Arabian peninsula. This is a novel form ofAramaic, one presaging the characteristics of the Aramaic dialects to de-velop some centuries later. At this stage it is still non dialectal, servingmany ethnic groups alongside their autochthonal languages. J. C. Green-field labelled this language “Standard Literary Aramaic”7.

Naturally, these discoveries reopened the old much-disputed question ofthe origin and time of Onqelos. Given the large number of participants inthis dispute8, I shall limit myself to those most relevant to our topic.

According to A. Geiger, primitive Onqelos and the Targum of the Proph-ets were the work of a kind of Übersetzergilde, which functioned in SecondTemple Palestine, and produced an Aramaic translation replete with homi-

6. “The languages of Palestine in the First Century A. D.”, Catholic Biblical Quarterly,32 (1970), p. 531 (= A Wandering Aramean, Collected Aramaic Essays, Scholars Press,Chico, California, 1979, p. 46).

7. J. C. GREENFIELD, “Standard Literary Aramaic” in André Caquot et David Cohen(eds.), Actes du Premier Congrès international de linguistique sémitique et chamito-sémi-tique, Paris 16-19 juillet 1969, The Hague - Paris 1974, pp. 280-289.

8. See the account given by U. GLESSMER, Einleitung in die Targume zum Pentateuch,Tübingen, 1995, pp. 92-94.


letical and halakhic interpretations frequently deviating from Scripture’sliteral meaning. As handed down to later generations, they both are theproduct of a thorough redactional process performed in Babylon, part of thewide reform that took place within this cultural and religious center, whichdetermined the character of Judaism for the centuries to come:

Jedenfalls haben sie beide ihre Schlussredaktion in Babylonien erhal-ten; Sprache und Auffassungweise gehören der dortiger Gegen und Richtungan9.

A more extreme position was taken by Z. Fränkel, who attributed thecomposition of Onqelos to Babylonian Judaism:

Die aus Babylon zurückkehrenden Exulanten hatten…die aramäische Sprachemitgebracht, durch die nahe Berührung mit Syrien… bekam jedoch derVolksdialekt eine syrische Färbung und wandelte sich in Westaramäisch um.In diesem Dialekt ist der jerusalemische Talmud und das targum Jonathan zumPentateuch verfasst. Die babylonischen Juden sprachen das Ostaramäische, indiesem Dialekt sind verfasst der babylonische Talmud, Targum Onkelos undnoch andere Targumim10.

Many scholars shared this view, most prominently, P. Kahle, who main-tained in various articles the thesis that Onqelos was of Babylonian origin;for example, in his The Cairo Geniza, Oxford 1947, p. 117 he states:“…there is no doubt that they [Onqelos and Jonathan to the Prophets -A.T.] were composed in Babylonia”. However, in the second edition(Oxford 1959, p. 194), he admits the possibility of a Palestinian prov-enance, albeit without abandoning his original position: “…The otheralternative is… that the Targum Onqelos originated in Babylonia”. Thisposition was utterly opposed to Th. Nöldeke, who believed that Onqeloswas of Palestinian origin. In the introduction to his monumental Mandaicgrammar he stated:

Zu beachten ist übrigens, dass das officielle Targum (Onkelos und Jonathan),obwohl in Babylonien redigiert, einen Dialect zeigt, dessen Grundlagepalästinisch ist11.

A similar opinion was expressed by Dalman. He assumed that Onqelosemerged in Judea, the spiritual center of the Second Temple period, not inthe Aramaic vernacular but in a sort of upper-language, designed to repro-duce the Hebrew original faithfully:

9. A. GEIGER, Urschrift und Übersetzungen der Bibel in ihrer Abhängigkeit von derinnern Entwiklung des Judentums, Frankfurt a/M 19282 (first edition: 1857), p. 13.

10. Z. FRÄNKEL, Zu Targum der Propheten, Breslau, 1872, pp. 5-6.11. Th. NÖLDEKE, Mandäische Grammatik, Halle, 1875, p. XXVII, n. 1.


Dabei ist aber das Onkelostargum auch nicht die Niederschrift einerÜbersetzung des Pentateuchs in den judäischen Volksdialekt, sondern einegelehrte und künstliche Nachbildung des hebräischen Originals…12

In his linguistic analysis of Genesis Apocryphon, E. Y. Kutscher clearlydemonstrated that this document was composed in Palestine in the firstcentury B.C.E. He also found a striking linguistic resemblance betweenthe scroll and Onqelos13. Based on this resemblance we can concludethat both the Genesis Apocryphon and Onqelos represent Greenfield’s“Standard Literary Aramaic.”

Targum in Rabbinic sources

Once again we raise the question of what role the Targum played in whatnow appears to have been a Hebrew-speaking society. Although the oldestrabbinic sources mention Targums in many instances, unfortunately, they,as well as later testimonies, do not offer an unequivocal answer to thisquestion. Let us consider the most important ones, noting that the notion ofTargum has more than one meaning in these sources. In m. Yadayim IV, 5Targum refers to the Aramaic portions of the books of Daniel and Ezra:תרגום שבעזרא ושבדניאל מטמא את הידים תרגום שכתבו עברית ועברי שכתבו תרגוםוכתב עברי אינו מטמא את הידים. לעולם אינו מטמא את הידים עד שיכתבינו אשורית.The Aramaic of Ezra and Daniel renders the hands unclean“ ,על העור בדיו.If an Aramaic [portion of the Scriptures] was written (= translated) intoHebrew, or if Hebrew [Scripture] was written in Aramaic, or in (ancient)Hebrew script, it does not render the hands unclean. [The Holy Scriptures]render the hands unclean only if they are written in Assyrian characters, onleather, and in ink”. From the reference to Ezra and Daniel we can inferthat the Mishna adverts here to the Aramaic chapters of the Bible andthat the word תרגום here denotes “Aramaic”. According to this citation,these chapters are not considered sacred as long as they are written in theancient Hebrew characters utilized for non sacred writings14. However,

12. G. DALMAN, Grammatik des jüdisch-palästinischen Aramäisch, Leipzig, 19052,pp. 12-13.

13. E.Y. KUTSCHER, “The Language of the ‘Genesis Apocryphon’. A Preliminary Study”,Scripta Hierosolymitana IV (1957), pp. 1-35. See especially, pp. 9-10 and n. 44.

14. See b. Sanh. 21b:ביררו להן לישראל כתב אשורית ולשון הקודש והניחו להדיוטות כתב"עברית ולשון ארמי. מאן הדיוטות, אמר רב חסדא כותאי. מאי כתב עברית אמר רב חסדא כתבAssyrian” characters and “the Sacred Language” was selected for Israel, and“ ליבונאה".“Hebrew characters” and “Aramaic language” was left to the commoners. Who are the com-moners? R. Hisda said: the Cutheans (i. e., the Samaritans). What are “Hebrew characters”?R. Hisda said: Libona'a characters (probably the Canaanite alphabet). The exact meanings ofthe terms found in this passage are beyond the scope of this study.


m. Megilla II, 1 uses the word תרגום in the sense of translation into anotherlanguage: הקורא את המגילה למפריע לא יצא. קראה על פה קראה תרגום בכל-If one reads the Scroll (i. e. the book of Esther in the syna“ ,לשון לא יצא.gogue) in wrong order, he does not fulfill his duty. If one reads it by heart,or if he reads it in Aramaic or in any other language, he does not fulfill theduty (of reading the Scroll)”.

This rather negative attitude towards the Targum, obviously provides in-direct testimony to its penetration into cultic life. There are even indicationsthat at a certain point in its struggle for recognition the (Aramaic) Targumdid enjoy a certain success, as witnessed by some halakhic passages thatreflect attempts to regularize the use of the Targum in the synagogal ser-vice, albeit not without limitations to secure the primordiality of the origi-nal holy writ. One such witness is m. Megilla IV, 4: הקורא בתורה לא יפחותOne who“ ,משלושה פסוקים. לא יקרא למתורגמן יותר מפסוק אחד ובנביא שלושה.reads the Torah (i. e., one who is invited to read in the synagogue) may notread less than three verses. One may not read to the interpreter [from theHebrew into the Aramaic] more than one verse [at a time]… but [if hereads] in the Prophets, [he is allowed to read] three [consecutive verses]”.The Torah involves more precision than the Prophets, therefore, the transla-tion must follow every single verse closely, so that the translator can re-member its wording and translate accurately. This commandment, as wellas many others, were intended to limit the use of the Targum as much aspossible. Yet this tendency to admit the Targum with what were considerednecessary restrictions, brought other restrictions in its wake, such as theprohibition to read or to translate certain passages, which may discredit theancestors of the nation, in public (m. Megilla IV, 10)15. Note that we dealwith an oral Targum at this stage, not a written one16.

There are, however, some indications of a position that afforded theTargum a distinguished position at a certain point in Jewish antiquity. Forexample, the tannaitic treatise Sifre Devarim states (§161): למען ילמדליראה את ייי אלוהיך. מלמד שהיראה מביאה לידי מקרא. מקרא מביא לידי תרגום.תרגום מביא לידי משנה. משנה מביאה לידי תלמוד. תלמוד מביא לידי מעשה. מעשה.that he may learn to fear the Lord your (!) God (Deut“ ,מביא לידי יראה.17:19), it teaches that reverence leads to reading [of the Scriptures], rea-ding leads to translation, translation leads to (verbal) teaching, teaching

15. The question of the forbidden passages has been thoroughly treated by M. GINSBUR-

GER, “Verbotene targumim”, Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums44 (1900), pp. 1-7.

16. Perhaps the aversion to a written Targum stems from the general disinclination torecord oral traditions. See b. GITTIN 60b: דברים שבכתב אי אתה רשאי לאומרן על פה, דבריםThe words which are written you are not at liberty to‘ ,שבעל פה אי אתה רשאי לאומרן בכתב.say by heart, and the words transmitted orally you are not at liberty to recite from writing’.


leads to learning, learning leads to performance, performance leads toreverence”. If the Aramaic translation is meant, then the Sifre assigns to theTargum a rather important rank in the chain of wisdom17. Nevertheless,there is strong reserve among tannaitic circles regarding the very existenceof the Aramaic Targum, as witnessed by y. Megilla 71c: רבן שמעון בןגמליאל אומר אף בספרים לא התירו שיכתבו אלא יוונית. בדקו ומצאו שאין התורה

יוונית. בורגני אחד בידא להם ארמית מתוך יכולה להיתרגם אלא יוונית. , “R. Simeonben Gamaliel says: even books (= sacred rolls?) it was permitted only thatthey be written in Greek. It was investigated and found out that the Torahcan only be translated into Greek. A certain watchmen forged Aramaicfrom Greek.”18

As far as the attitude toward a written Targum is concerned, t. ShabbatXII, 2 is instructive: .היו כתובים תרגום ובכל לשון מצילין אותן, “If they (= theholy writings) were written in Aramaic or in any other language, theyshould be saved [from fire]”. The passage unequivocally adduces the veryexistence of books that contain Targum. Their holiness is expressed by theobligation to save them in the case of fire. The struggle for recognitionsometimes produced confrontations among the rabbis (ibid.): אמ' ר' יוסה

א אצל רבן גמליאל לטבריא ומצאו שהיה יושב על שולחנו שלתפלמעשה שהלך ר' חיוחנן בן נזיף ובידו ספר איוב תרגום והיה קורא בו. אמ' לו ר' חלפתא זכור הייתיברבן גמליאל הזקן אבי אביך שהיה יושב על גב מעלה בהר הבית והביאו לפניו ספרR. Iose said: R. Helpeta“ ,איוב תרגום ואמר לבניו (= לבניי) וגנזו תחת הנדבך.went to Rabban Gamaliel in Tiberias and found him seated at the table ofYohanan ben Nazif (= “the rebuked?”). In his hand was the Book of Job inTargum which he was reading. R. Helpeta said to him: I recall RabbanGamaliel the Elder, your grandfather, sitting on the staircase [going up to]the Temple mount (see m. Middot II, 3). The Book of Job in Targum wasbrought before him, and he instructed the builder to hide it under the courseof stones”. Rabban Gamaliel of Iabne, heir to Rabban Johanan ben Zakkaias Nasi (= prince), studies a Targum, which his grandfather, the head of theSanhedrin, had disqualified in front of the elders assembled “on the stair-case of the Temple mount”. This was a most revered public place, fromwhere communiqués were sent to the Galilee and to the Diaspora (see t.Sanhedrin II, 6)19.

17. Cf. m. Avot III, 17: אם אין חכמה אין יראה, אם אין יראה אין חכמה, “if there is no wis-dom, there is no fear, if there is no fear, there is no wisdom”.

18. This passage is very difficult. It occurs, with great variation, in Esther Rabba (IV, 11-12), according to which Lieberman reconstitutes the original: ברברי (= יווני) אחד בידה להוןand translates: “a watchman took out the Latin from the Greek”. See ,לשון רומי מלשון יוניS. LIEBERMAN, Greek in Jewish Palestine, New York 19652, p. 17.

19. The whole matter is widely treated in R. LE DÉAUT, Introduction à la littératuretargumique, Roma, 1966, pp. 38-51.


The controversy surrounding the question of the legitimacy of a writtenTargum continued during the amoraic period. Thus y. Megilla 74d relates:ר' שמואל בר רב יצחק עאל לכנישתא. חמא חד ספר מושט תרגומא מן גו סיפרא.אמר ליה: אסיר לך. דברים שנאמרו בפה בפה ודברים שנאמרו בכתב בכתב.“R. Samuel bar R. Isaac went to a synagogue and saw a teacher presentinga Targum from a book. He said to him: It is forbidden to do it that way.Things stated orally [must be presented] orally. Things stated in writing[must be presented] in writing” (see note 16).

For whom was the Targum composed?

From these passages, as well as from many others, scattered throughouttannaitic and amoraic sources, we can adduce the struggle of the AramaicTargum for recognition. It was difficult, indeed, to install it into the syna-gogue service. Unfortunately, the records provide nothing by far of an an-swer to the question asked earlier: given the fact that Hebrew was spokenwhen the Targum emerged, for whom was it conceived? Let us first con-sider the traditional answers given in former generations.

In his commentary to b. Megilla 21b Rashi states: שהתרגום אינו אלאלהשמיע לנשים ועמי הארץ שאינן מכירים בלשון הקודש והתרגום הוא לעז הבבליים…the Targum is…“ ,ובתרגום של תורה צריכין אנו לחזור שיהו מבינין את המצות.aimed at women and commoners, who do not understand the Holy Lan-guage; the Targum is [composed in the] foreign language of theBabylonians… We must [teach them] the Targum of the Torah repeatedlyso that they understand its commandments”. In Rashi’s opinion, therefore,educated people were not in need of a Targum, for they had mastered theHebrew of the Scriptures and, as opposed to the uneducated, were not likelyto misunderstand the commandments of the Torah. In his Ohev Ger S. D.Luzzatto follows Rashi20: “Targum Onqelos was not conceived for thelearned, but for the commoners. Its main concern was to remove any stum-bling block from the path of the masses and the proselytes, so that theirhearing [of the reading of the Scriptures] would be beneficial to them”.

A contemporary expression of this view is found in Aberbach andGrossfeld’s introduction to their English translation of Onqelos21: “…thereis no doubt that T.O. [Targum Onqelos - A.T.] was designated for thebenefit of the Aramaic-speaking masses, not for scholars who were gene-

20. S. D. LUZZATTO, Philoxenus, sive de Onkelosi, chaldaica Pentateuchi versione,Dissertatio hermeneutico-critica…, Cracoviae MDCCCXCV, p. 1.

21. M. ABERBACH and B. GROSSFELD, Targum Onkelos to Genesis, vol. I, Hoboken, N. J.,1982, p. 9.


rally familiar with Hebrew and spoke it among themselves, at least inlearned discussions, as late as the third century C.E.”. We have seen abovethat “the masses” were not unfamiliar with Hebrew at the time whenOnqelos was composed. On the contrary, there are tangible testimonies thateven in the late second century C.E. Hebrew was in active use among thecommon people22. A well-known instance is the anecdote related in y.Megilla 73a (= b. Megilla 18a) regarding of R. Judah the Prince’s maid,who candidly edified the scholars assembled there about the meaning ofcertain Hebrew words. Indeed, the less learned, the inhabitants of the out-lying places, belong to the category of speakers last affected by the proces-ses of language-shift23. This observation, of course, does not support thethesis of Rashi and his followers, from Luzzatto to Aberbach and Gross-feld.

In a lecture delivered at the John Rylands Library in Manchester in 1970,James Barr proposed the following thesis24:

Though the Targum originated in communities in which the knowledge of He-brew was negligible, it came to spread by adoption to communities in whichboth Hebrew and Aramaic were known. It functioned not simply as a straighttranslation of the Hebrew Bible, but as a paraphrastic interpretation… we haveto distinguish between two things: difficulty in understanding the Old Testa-ment is one thing, and complete ignorance of Hebrew is another. A personwho could speak Hebrew in the first century, and even one who could write —or could even speak! — ‘biblical’ Hebrew, as some of the Qumran peoplecould, could still be in difficulty with the actual biblical text. The text was nowholy, and it was not possible to bring it up to date by a rewriting in a morecontemporary Hebrew. Hebrew commentaries (the pesher type) existed, butnot modernizations of the actual text. For those who knew Hebrew, the Ara-maic version functioned as a more or less authoritative interpretation, which

22. This, of course leads to the question of what language Jesus spoke. It is interesting tonote that his teachings, carefully transmitted for centuries, were preserved in Greek, not in hisspoken language, which was a disputed matter: was it Hebrew or Aramaic? This questionsparked a long polemic which engaged many scholars for years. The majority admits thattranscription of words, such as jli jli lema sabaxqanei (Matthew 27:46), taliqa koum(Mark 5:41), reflects Aramaic, but with regard to effaqa (Mark 7:41), Abba (vocative,Mark 14:36) a consensus has yet to be reached. See, e. g., A. MAYER, Jesu Muttersprache,Freiburg, 1896; M. BLACK, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts, Oxford, 19673;ID., “Aramaic Studies and the Language of Jesus”, In Memoriam Paul Kahle, Berlin, 1968,pp. 17-28; Sh. MORAG, “effaqá, certainly Hebrew, not Aramaic”, Journal for Semitic Stu-dies 17 (1972), pp. 198-202, and many others. H. BIRKELAND (The Language of Jesus, Oslo,1954) was convinced that Jesus’ language was Hebrew and that the Targum was intended forthe Babylonian Jews who could not handle Hebrew (p. 31).

23. See U. WEINREICH, Languages in Contact, New York 1953, pp. 95-97, 108). As forthe shift from Hebrew to Aramaic in the late 2nd century C. E., see E. Y. KUTSCHER, TheLanguage and Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa), Leiden, 1974, pp. 12-13.

24. “Which Language did Jesus Speak? — Some Remarks of a Semitist”, Bulletin ofJohn Rylands Library 53 (1970), pp. 9-29.


both elucidated the linguistic obscurities of the original and smoothed out itsreligious difficulties.

In this brilliant analysis, Barr still pays tribute to the conception of aTargum as a linguistic necessity and attributes its composition to “commu-nities in which the knowledge of Hebrew was negligible”, although we lacksolid testimony for a linguistic division within the Jewish population,whose local communities seem to share the same liturgical and other cultichabits. However, his assumption that “a person who could speak Hebrew inthe first century… could still be in difficulty with the actual biblical text” isfar more pertinent. Moreover, I believe that the solution to the problemraised earlier lies in the conclusion of the above-cited passage. AlthoughBarr wrongly attributes the role of a commentary to the pesher25, he cor-rectly notes that the Aramaic version “elucidates linguistic obscurities andsmooths out religious difficulties”.

Ch. Rabin26 as well raises the question “for whom were the targumsmade? If we are right in our view that Mishnaic Hebrew was spoken duringthe Second Temple period, there seems to be no raison d'être for targumsin Judea at that period”. Rabin thinks that the Targum was a necessity forits time, designed to close the gap between Biblical Hebrew and spokenHebrew and to prevent the holy text from being paraphrased:

A paraphrase into Hebrew was impossible, because the uninstructed couldeasily take the paraphrase as part of the sacred text… It [the Targum - A.T.]was therefore an almost ideal way out of the difficulty to provide the explana-tions in a literary language, transitional Aramaic, which was no doubt widelyunderstood (p. 1030).

In the following lines, I wish to further flesh out and substantiate thisthesis.

It is indeed very likely that the first Aramaic Targum was composed in aHebrew speaking environment. Obviously, not a Biblical Hebrew-speakingenvironment but still one where Biblical Hebrew was not only understoodbut even practised for literary purposes, albeit in a new form — with itsown grammar, vocabulary, and style — but still linked to the past, viz., theHebrew reflected by the writings of Qumran and its vicinity. We may saywithout fear of exaggeration that this was the “modern” Hebrew used

25. A pesher is not a commentary in the usual sense of the word. It is rather a kind ofactualization of Scripture which connects a prophecy or a narrative with a contemporary orfuture event or figure.

26. “Hebrew and Aramaic in the First Century”, in S. SAFRAI & M. STERN (eds.) Com-pendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum, vol. 1.2, 1976, pp. 1007-1039. See espe-cially pp. 1029-1031.


within a population that extended beyond the tiny geographical area demar-cated by the term “Judean Desert”27. Many arguments have been made foror against the independent status of this Hebrew; however, nobody deniesthe fact that the literature for which it was used had a certain public and,therefore, this language was in circulation alongside what is known asMishnaic Hebrew. This means that Biblical Hebrew did not become incom-prehensible to the public at large. After all, the uninterrupted practice of theTorah reading, as well as the continuous exegetical and homiletical treat-ment of the Scriptures in public28 kept its contents as well as its language inthe public eye, and recte, understanding. Under such circumstances, ithardly seems plausible to assume that the text read in the presence of an au-dience frequently attending synagogue was completely alien to that audi-ence. Moreover, there is little reason to assume that the great literary com-positions of the epoch, such as Ben Sirah or the Apocrypha were intendedfor a limited circle of specialists. Given their linguistic affinity with Bibli-cal Hebrew, it is conceivable that the language of the Scriptures comprisedno obstacle to their audience29.

If all this is correct, then the Targum was not imperative in order to makeScripture accessible to the masses. It was rather intended to protect Scrip-ture from the masses! The main concern of those who encouraged the pro-duction and propagation of the Targum was to eschew a transfiguration ofthe holy writ. And indeed, this fear was not ungrounded, as attempts to re-write the text, to adapt it to current linguistic habits and to give it a more“modern” image existed in various circles. We may distinguish here be-tween two types: (1) “modernization” that become the norm in certaincommunities, and (2) attempts that did not develop into stable traditions.

The Samaritan tradition

The first category is represented by the Samaritan tradition. Samaritansnever hesitated to introduce textual improvements into the Scriptures when-

27. For the status of this Hebrew, see E. QIMRON, “The Contribution of the JudaeanDesert Scrolls to the Study of Ancient Hebrew”, Qadmoniot XXX (1990), pp. 82-85 (He-brew). See also the important article by J. F. ELWOLDE, “Developments in Hebrew Vocabu-lary between Bible and Mishnah”, in T. MURAOKA and J. F. ELWOLDE (eds.), The Hebrew ofthe Dead Sea Scrolls & Ben Sira, Proceedings of a Symposium held at Leiden University, 11-14 December 1995, Leiden, 1997, pp. 17-55.

28. Public lectures held by the rabbis are mentioned in several sources. See, for example,the story about a woman attending the derasha of R. Meir in y. Sota 16d.

29. See the candid story (Neh 8) about the popular assembly under Ezra's leadership dur-ing the Sukkot festival, when Ezra opened the book of the Torah in front of “men andwomen” (v. 3) and the “Levites helped the people to understand the Law” (v. 7). They ex-plained the law, they did not translate it.


ever they considered this necessary to render them coherent or linguisticallyappropriate30. For example, in the large recapitulative portions in Exodus,Numbers, and Deuteronomy, parts of the narrative are frequently repeatedaccording to their corresponding parallel passages31. We also find numer-ous adjustments made in order to produce an unquestionable text; forexample SP’s narration of the story of Qain and Abel is impeccable: ויאמרand Qain said to Abel his brother, let us go out“ ,קין אל הבל אחיו נלכה השדהto the field” (Gen 4:8), whereas the last two words are missing in the MT,producing literary unease32. Incongruent constructions are also changed; forexample, the singular imperative with the plural ראה למדתי אתכם (Deut4:5) was changed into the congruous ראו למדתי אתכם. Similarly, the dis-crepancy between תחת כי אהב את אבתיך and ויבחר בזרעו אחריו (Deut 4:37)was settled: תחת כי אהב את אבתיך ויבחר בזרעם אחריהם, etc.

Change of different order is found in Numbers 22:32, where the SP readsbecause your way has deteriorated before me”, instead of“ הרע דרכך לנגדיMT’s cryptic ירט הדרך לנגדי. The meaning of ירט has been a matter of dis-pute in biblical interpretation from its very beginning. The Targums under-stood it midrashically, e.g.: סטת אורחא, “the way has deviated”, etc. Thesame interpretation has been assimilated by the SP, which simply substi-tuted the common הרע for the hapax legomenon 33ירט.

Many similar changes made to avoid old, obsolete words can be cited.Such is ותורד כדה,“and she lowered her jar” in Gen 24:20 which replacesthe ר כדהעתו , “and she emptied her jar”34. Samaritan Hebrew does not rec-ognize the verb ערה, even in its other two occurrences, where it has thesense of “expose”35.

30. The best survey of the changes the Samaritans Pentateuch presents was W. GESENIUS,De Pentateuchi Samaritani origine indole et auctoritate, Halae, 1815. A modern and welldocumented survey is B. K. WALTKE, “The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Text of the OldTestament” in J. B. PAYNE (ed.), New Perspectives on the Old Testament, Waco TX, 1970,pp. 212-239.

31. GESENIUS, op. cit., pp. 47-48.32. The SP is in line with the Septuagint, diélqwmen eìv tò pedíon, and even with the

Jewish Palestinian Targumim: ואמר קין להבל אחוי אתא ונפוק תרינן לאפי ברא (M. L. KLEIN,Manuscripts of Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch, vol. I, Cincinnati, 1986). If indeed thisis an interpretative addition, it has been incorporated into the text of the Greek and JewishAramaic versions as well as in the Samaritan text.

33. GESENIUS, op. cit., p. 39.34. GESENIUS, op. cit., p. 31.35. I refer to Lev 20:18 where the MT has ואיש אשר ישכב את אשה דוה וגלה את ערותה את

if a man lies with a menstruating woman, and uncovers her nakedness, he has“ ,מקרה הערהexposed her source, etc.”. The SP replaces the verb הערה transforming the syntax of thewhole verse: וגלה את ערותה את מקור הערוה, “and uncovers her pudenda, the source of thepudenda”. The phrase is here a mere explicative apposition to the preceding phrase, not itsapodosis, as in MT. Similarly, in the following verse.


However, when it comes to SP’s linguistic system, matters are, in a largemeasure, concealed by its unvocalized text. After several attempts, onlypartly successful, made in the nineteenth century and later in the 1950s, itwas only recently that an account of its linguistic structure has been givenin a full phonetic transliteration of the traditional Samaritan reading. Thetext, as published and analyzed by Ben-Îayyim, represents a real adapta-tion of the old Hebrew Pentateuch into the Hebrew vernacular in circulationduring what may be generally called “the Mishnaic Period”36. In Ben-Îayyim’s words37:

If the expressions ‘language of the Torah’ [Biblical Hebrew - A.T.], ‘languageof the Sages’ [Mishnaic Hebrew - A.T.] are taken merely as signposts we areentitled to say that… the ‘language of the Torah’ of the Samaritans has acloser relationship to the ‘language of the Sages’ than it has to the ‘languageof the Torah’ of the Jews.

Here are a few examples attesting to the linguistic metamorphosis thattook place in the process of modernization of the scriptural text.

1. The absolute infinitive, so frequent in the MT, was largely eliminated,being replaced by a finite verb, in accordance with Mishnaic Hebrew usa-ge38: וישובו המים הלוך ושוב, “and the waters receded from the earth (con-tinually)” (Gen 8:3), was replaced by the perfect וישובו המים הלכו ושבו. For:remember this day” (Ex 13: 3) the SP has an imperative“ זכור את היום הזה:Sometimes the absolute infinitive is replaced by a noun .זכרו את היום הזהfor כי ברך אברכך, “I will (indeed) bless you” (Gen 22:17), the SP has כי-for He has triumphed (glo“ ,גאה גאה for ;(pronounced birrok) ברוך אברכךriously)” (Ex 15:1), the SP has גוי גאה, “a proud nation”.

2. Where the construct infinitive is used in an unusual way, a circumlo-cution is preferred. Such is נות החלום אל פרעהשועל ה , “and the doubling ofPharaoh’s dream” (Gen 41:32), which was transformed into the commonand the dream appeared for the second time to“ ,ועלה שנית החלום לפרעהPharaoh”. This recalls Mishnaic Hebrew, where the construct infinitivenever occurs without a prefixed ל (in compound predicates)39.

3. The inner passive voice was replaced by the active voice. Thus in Exרשו ממצריםג 12:39 , “they were thrust out of Egypt”, was replaced by גרשום-the Egyptians thrust them out”. We also find replacement by a re“ ,מצרים

36. Z. BEN-ÎAYYIM, The Literary and Oral Tradition of Hebrew and Aramaic Amongstthe Samaritans, Jerusalem, 1957-1987, vol. IV, Jerusalem, 1977.

37. Z. BEN-ÎAYYIM, “Samaritan Hebrew — An Evaluation” in A. D. CROWN (ed.), TheSamaritans, Tübingen, 1989, pp. 517-530, esp. p. 523.

38. LOT, vol. V, §2.14.4. Cf. Segal, pp. 155-156.39. Segal, p. 165.


flexive conjugation: ונגנב מבית האיש (Ex 22:6) for נב מבית האישוג , bothmeaning “and it was stolen from the house of its owner”40. The preferencegiven to the active voice is paralleled by the inclination towards thereflexive, especially when MT has an intransitive verb: Gen 45:24 אלfor “do not quarrel”. This is in ,אל תרגזו instead of the masoretic ,תתרגזוline with Mishnaic Hebrew which replaced many intransitive verbs withreflexives. Thus חמד became נתחמד, etc41.

4. The נפעל conjugation has been replaced in a multitude of instances bythe Mishnaic Hebrew נתפעל. Thus ונברכו, “shall bless themselves” (Gen18:18) is rendered in the Samaritan pronunciation as wnibbarrÇku. Thedoubling of both the first and the second radicals indicates the presence of a.42ונתברכו ,.i. e ,ת with an assimilated נתפעל

These few examples, picked at random from a multitude, suggest that thetremendous change that has taken place in the language of the SP follows apath of adaptation to the general linguistic evolution reflected by MishnaicHebrew.

Non stabilized Traditions

The second category consists of various witnesses to textual divergencesfrom the canonical Bible, which did not develop into recognized tradition.Many such divergent texts belong to the Qumran sectarians, who producedcopies of biblical books. The diversity of the readings found in the Isaiahscroll, 1QIsa, is in a large measure a product of their efforts to offer amodern version of the original (also reflected to a degree in Qumran:1QIsb; but see below). Some examples of how textual difficulties weresmoothed out follow.

1. The passive Qal participle, non-existent in Mishnaic Hebrew, has beeninterpreted as a second Pu¨al participle in גוי ממשך ומורט, “a nation tall andsmooth” (Isa 18:2, 7), whose מ prefix has been haplologically elided. Sucha grammatical aberration was intolerable to the scribe of the scroll, whopromptly restored the lost mem: 43גוי ממשך וממרט.

2. Isa 56:4 אשר ישמרו את שבתותי ובחרו באשר חפצתי, “who keep my Sab-baths and choose the things that please me” contains an inverted imperfectwith a waw consecutivum, not used in Mishnaic Hebrew44. The scribe

40. LOT, vol. V, §2.10.41. Segal, p. 67.42. LOT, vol. V, §2.1.4.43. See Kutscher, p. 344.44. Segal, p. 54.


replaced it by the imperfect with waw copulativum: אשר ישמורו את שבתותי.thus harmonizing the verse’s verbal forms ,ויבחורו באשר חפצתי

3. The opposition between the plural and the singular in Isa 56:5: ונתתיI will give them… I will give him” is resolved thus in the“ ,להם... ואתן לוscroll: ונתתי להמה... אתן להמה.

4. An incongruence in gender occurs in Isa 56:6 between the feminineSabbath and the related masculine pronominal suffix related to it: כל שומר-every one who keeps the Sabbat from profaning it”. This in“ ,שבת מחללוcongruence was harmonized by the use of the feminine suffix: ושומרים את.השבת מחללה

5. The elliptic phrase עולתיהם וזבחיהם לרצון על מזבחי (Isa 56:7) is com-pleted in 1QIsa: עולותיהמה וזבחיהמה יעלו לרצון על מזבחי, “their burnt offer-ings and their sacrifices will go up on my altar”.

6. The repeated archaism כל חיתו שדי... כל חיתו ביער, “all the beasts ofthe field…” (Isa 56:9) were substituted by normal forms: ...כול חיות שדה.וכול חיות ביער

7. Sometimes typical biblical expressions, considered grammatically orlexically obsolete, were found unacceptable, such as: מי בקש זאת מידכם רמס.who had required this at your hand to tread my courts?” (Isa 1:12)“ ,חצריIn contemporary Hebrew the infinitive had lost its ancient nominal status,and could no more stand alone being used exclusively in its verbal sense,always with the prefix 45ל. Obviously, the scribe preferred the form preva-lent in his times: לרמס. He made the same alteration in the following verse,replacing לא תוסיפו הביא מנחת שוא with the “modern” 46להביא, sinceMishnaic Hebrew did not tolerate רמס ,הביא, demanding להביא ,לרמוס in-stead. In both cases, it would be hard to believe that the older forms wereno longer understood, therefore the only justification for the replacementcould be modernization. A clearly Mishnaic form of the infinitive occurs inIsa 30:2, namely: ההולכים לרד מצרים, “who set out to go down to Egypt”.The old infinitive of I-yod verbs, לרדת, was restored by a supralinear ת, butthe fact remains that the scribe originally followed Mishnaic Hebrew47.

8. The third person plural of verbs tends to replace the inner passive inexpressing indefiniteness, in accordance with Mishnaic Hebrew48. Thus,,will they take the prey from the mighty?” (Isa 49:24)“ ,היקחו מגבור מלקוחreplaces MT’s חקיה , “can… be taken”; ששון ושמחה ימצאו בה, “joy andgladness they will find in her” (51:3), replaces MT’s אצמי , “will be

45. On the infinitive in Mishnaic Hebrew, see Segal, pp. 165-167.46. Kutscher, pp. 41, 346.47. Kutscher, p. 344.48. See Segal, pp. 210-212.


found”; וקראו לך גודר פרץ, “they will call you the repairer of the breach”(58:12) replaces קרא לךו , “you shall be called…”. The same tendency maybe detected in Chronicles, e. g., ויקברו אתו עם אבותיו, “and they buried himwith his fathers” (II 25:28), when 2Kgs 14:20 is cited: ר…בקיו , “and hewas buried…”49.

Similar to the SP (see above), at Qumran passive conjugations were sub-stituted by reflexive ones, e. g., ועל בורכים תשתעשו… ובי[רו]שלים תתנחמו,“and on her knees you shall be fondled… and in Jerusalem you shall becomforted” (Isa 66:12-13) for MT’s מוחנעו… תשעשת . (Cf. the TempleScroll’s כיא כול הנפש אשר לא תתענה, “for whoever will not be afflicted”(col. XXV:11-12), a paraphrase of Lev 23:29: הנע כי כל הנפש אשר לא ת )50.

Unlike 1QIsa, the text of 1QIsb is infinitely more conservative, that is,very close to the MT. As it is in a very fragmentary state, I could comparethe readings for chapters 43-60 alone. In all of them 1QIsb follows the read-ings of the MT, emphasizing the existence of contradictory tendencies inso-far as the transmission of Scripture is concerned.

Indeed, similar adaptations to the contemporary linguistic and stylistichabits occur in other biblical texts found at Qumran. For example, in a frag-ment of Deuteronomy (4QDeutn) the scribe substituted the more popular-out of its hills”, unusual in Mishnaic He“ ,ומהרריה for the old (8:9) ומהריהbrew51. He also exchanged לא תתאוה בית רעך, “you shall not covet yourneighbor’s house” (5:17) for לא תחמוד בית רעך, since the root או"י, unlike-does not exist in Mishnaic Hebrew52. However, there also are frag ,חמ"דments of Deuteronomy far closer to the MT, such as 4QDta, 4QDtd, 4QDtg.The impression gathered from the examples treated above is one of diver-sity: the caves of the Judaean Desert preserved more than one tradition,the conservative and the innovative side by side53. Naturally such adapta-

49. Kutscher, p. 402.50. See G. BRIN, “Linguistic Observations on the Temple Scroll”, Leshonenu 43 (1979),

p. 25 [Hebrew].51. It occurs only in the following idiomatic clusters הררים התלויים בשערה, “castles in

Spain” (t. Erubin VIII,3; Îagiga I, 9; Sifre Devarim §335); and in a citation from Deut33:15 in Sifre Devarim §353: הררי קדם.

52. Thus, the text was harmonized with the parallel passage in Ex 20:13. For the sake ofharmonization he changed מתוך האש הענן והערפל, “out of the midst of the fire, the cloud andthe gloom” (5:18) into “darkness, cloud and gloom”, in accordance with 4:11. See E. ESHEL,“4QDeut, A Text That Has Undergone Harmonistic Editing”, Hebrew Union College An-nual, LXII (1991), pp. 117-154.

53. To be sure, linguistic innovation in the spirit of later times already exist in the canoni-cal Bible itself, as the books of Chronicles attest, when compared with the parallel books ofSamuel and Kings. Here also, Mishnaic Hebrew manifests itself in many instances, in bothgrammar and lexicon. See, for example, S. JAFET, “Interchanges of Roots, in Verbs, in Paral-lel Texts in Chronicles”, Leshonenu 31 (1966-67), pp. 165-179; 261-279 [Hebrew].


tions54 could not be acceptable to the ears of orthodox Judaism which couldnot admit any attempt to alter the form of the Scripture.

The rejection of adaptations, of course, affected only a portion of the plu-ralistic Second Temple Jewish society. The existence of divergent, at leastpartial, versions of the Bible within the very core of rabbinic Judaism iswell known. A case in point is the copy of the Torah in the possession ofthe outstanding second century scholar Rabbi Meir, with whom a large partof the Mishna is associated55. The old Midrashic anthology Bereshit Rabba,cites three divergent readings from his copy, all of which reveal a “modern-izing” approach to the text56. Two of them disclose phonetic developmentscharacteristic of a spoken language. (a) a dephonemization of d/t in finalposition: בתורתו של ר' מאיר מצאו והנה טוב מאד והנה טוב מות, “In the Torahof Rabbi Meir it has been found written והנה טוב מאד (as) והנה טוב מות”(Gen 1:31 — p. 70); (b) the confusion of gutturals, characteristic of the lat-est phases of Second Temple Hebrew: בתורתו של ר' מאיר מצאו כתוב כתנותfor) ”כתנות אור In the Torah of Rabbi Meir it has been found written“ ,אור-Gen 3:21 — p. 196)57. The third instance is a case of grammati ,כתנות עורcal adjustment aimed at attaining congruence between a plural subject and asingular predicate (p. 1181): בתורתו של ר' מאיר מצאו כתוב ובן דן חושים, “Inthe Torah of Rabbi Meir it has been found written ובן דן חושים (for ובני דןGen 46:23)”. Another reference to Rabbi Meir’s Torah is found in ,חשיםy. Ta¨anit 64a: משא דומה משא רומי כתוב מצאו מאיר ר' של בתורתו , “In the

54. The innovations of the Temple Scroll are of a different order. Here the text is not aadapted copy of a biblical book, but a paraphrase, and, as such, adjustments are to be ex-pected. Indeed, they abound in every column. Eloquent examples are the use of איך, “how”(col. 61, line 2) instead of איכה in a citation from Deut 18:21, the replacement of the condi-tional particle כי with the normal parallel אם used in Mishnaic Hebrew: col. 52, 8; 53, 12;54, 8; etc. For a comprehensive examination of the Bible as presented in the Temple Scroll,G. BRIN, Issues in the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Tel-Aviv, 1994, pp. 172-221.

55. Probably written by him, for he was a לבלר – libellarius – a scribe in contemporaryHebrew. This is what b. Sota 20a relates: כשבאתי אצל ר' ישמעאל א"ל בני מה מלאכתך, אמרתילו לבלר אני. אמר לי בני הוי זהיר שמלאכתך מלאכת שמים היא שמא תחסיר אות אחת או תתיר אותWhen I came to R. Ishma'el he said to me: ‘My“ ,אחת נמצאת אתה מחריב את כל העולם כלו.son, what is your profession?’ I told him ‘I am a libellarius’. He told me: ‘Be careful, foryour profession is a godly one. If you omit a letter or write a superfluous letter, you may de-stroy the entire universe”. Furthermore, b. Megilla 18a relates: מעשה ברבי מאיר שהלך לעברR. Meir went to proclaim a leap year in“ ,שנים בעסיא ולא היתה שם מגילה וכתבה מלבו וקראה.Asia, and there was no megilla, so he wrote one by heart and read it”. See also QoheletRabba II: ר' מאיר היה לבלר טוב ומובחר, “R. Meir was a good and distinguished libellarius”.

56. Cited from the critical edition: Y. THEODOR & H. ALBECK, Bereshit Rabba, Jerusalem,1965 (reprint).

57. Cf. the Jerusalem Targum which reads לבושין דיקר = garments of glory (var. דאוקר), aword play on אור, rather than on עור, “leather” (Gen 3:21). On the reduction of gutturals, seeE. Y. KUTSCHER, Studies in Galilean Aramaic, Ramat Gan, 1976 (Transl.: M. Sokoloff),p. 67ff.; LOT V, §1.1.8.


Torah of Rabbi Meir it has been found written משא דומה (as) משא רומי (Isa21:11)”. Apparently, this is an actualization of the ancient text, undoubt-edly, a reminder of a homily that connected Edom with Rome, both de-tested for various reasons. A similar association of Edom with Rome occursin one of the manuscripts of the Samaritan Targum, which renders והיה.58ויהי רומה ירתה Edom shall be dispossessed” (Nu 24:18) as“ ,אדום ירשהWhatever midrashic use made of these divergent readings in order to findmaterial justifications for its hermeneutic discourses, the simple fact re-mains that these readings existed and were known. Still another reference toRabbi Meir’s divergent text is found in the eleventh-century anthologyBereshit Rabbati, compiled by R. Moshe Haddarshan: בתורתו של ר' מאירIn the Torah of Rabbi Meir it is“ ,כתוב וישני לאב שנאמר אשר ישה59 ברעהוwritten וישני (for וישימני - Gen 45:8)”. Here the midrash cites additional tes-timony from a copy of the Torah located in a Rome synagogue: דין מן מליאדכתיבן באורייתא דנפקת מן ירושלם בשביתא וסלקת לרומי והות גניזא בכנישתאThis is one of the words (= versions) written in the Torah, which“ ,דאסוירוסwas taken from Jerusalem and brought in captivity to Rome and was hiddenin the synagogue of Severus”. A list of further textual divergences occur-ring in this book is given. R. David Qimhi mentions the same book in hiscommentary to Gen 1:3, to which he attributes the version טוב מות men-tioned above60. The Codex of the Severus synagogue is also mentioned,together with a list of its variants, in the Damascus Codex61.

A book presenting textual variants “found in Jerusalem” is mentioned inthe Geonic responsa published by Harkavi: כך שמענו מפי חכמים הראשוניםשאמרו בריתא הדא בספרים מסכתא באותו ספר תורה שמצאו אותו בירושלם שהיהמשונה בכתב ובמנין פסוקין שלו וכן ספר תילים וכן ספר דברי הימים אבל עכשו איןThus have we“ ,תורה אלא כך ואין תילים אלא כך ואין דברי הימים אלא כך.heard from the ancient Sages’ who said this Beraita in Masekhet Soferim(VI, 4) about a Torah that they found in Jerusalem, which was different inwriting (=orthography?) and its numeration of verses…, however, nowthere is no Torah but thus (= the conventional version)…”62.

58. See MS A of my edition: The Samaritan Targum of the Pentateuch, vols. I-III, Tel-Aviv, 1980-83.

59. H. ALBECK (ed.), Midrash Bereshit Rabbati, Jerusalem, 1940, pp. 209-212.60. The Commentary of R. David Qimhi to the Pentateuch, The Book of Genesis,

Pressburg, 1842 [Hebrew]. See A. EPSTEIN, “Ein von Titus nach Rom gebrachter Pentateuch-Codex und seine Varianten”, MGWJ 34 (1885), pp. 337-351. A recent study regarding thereadings of the “Severus scroll” is J. P. Siegel, The Severus Scroll and 1QIsa, Scholars Press,Missoula 1975.

61. A. A. HARKAVI, Îadashim gam Yeshanim, part VI, (Ha'asif, 1885), p. 4 [Hebrew].62. A. A. HARKAVI, Zikkaron Larishonim wegam La'aÌaronim, vol. 1, Berlin, 1887, p. 3.


Indeed, books representing divergent versions are mentioned in severalsources. There is a reference thereof in tractate Sofrim63: אמר ר' שמעון בןלקיש שלשה ספרים נמצאו בעזרה ספר מעון. ספר זעטוטי. ספר הוא. באחד מצאוכתוב מעון ובשנים מצאו כתוב מעונה אלהי קדם. וקיימו שנים ובטלו אחד. באחדמצאו כתוב וישלח את זעטוטי בני ישראל ובשנים מצאו כתוב וישלח את נערי בניישראל וקיימו שנים ובטלו אחד. באחד מצאו כתוב אחד עשר הוא ובשנים מצאו כת'Rabbi Simeon ben Laqish said: Three‘ ,אחד עשר היא. ובטלו אחד וקיימו שניםscrolls were found in the Temple courtyard: Maon Scroll, Za¨atute Scrolland He Scroll. In one of them they found written מעון and in two of themthey found written מעונה אלהי קדם “the eternal God is your dwelling place”(Deut 33:27) and they adopted the two and abrogated the one. In one ofthem they found written וישלח את זעטוטי בני ישראל and in two of them theyfound written וישלח את נערי בני ישראל, “and he sent the young men of thepeople of Israel (Ex 24:5)” and they adopted the two and abrogated theone. In one of them they found written eleven הוא and in two of them theyfound written eleven היא (= eleven instances of the feminine pronoun forthe masculine) and they adopted the two and abrogated the one’.

The question whether all of these instances were real divergent versionsor marginal glosses, written for homiletical purposes and finally replacingthe original, was a matter of dispute for decades. I believe that the materialbrought to light from the Dead Sea caves favors those who assert that therewas more than one textual tradition within Second Temple Judaism. In anycase, the existence of various textual types within mainstream Judaism atthat time is not yet self-evident. What the sources present is no more thansporadic relics of unrealized textual harmonizations, which remainedunaccepted by mainstream Judaism.

Truly divergent texts were in broader circulation among various (dissi-dent?) circles, such as the Qumran community. It is probable that the sud-den end of the community prevented them from developing into lasting tra-ditions. As we have seen above, the only “modernizing” attempt that be-came obligatory in a given environment and that has survived to the presentwas the Samaritan Pentateuch64.

63. M. HIGGER, Masekhet Sofrim, New York, 1937, pp. 169-171. The reference occurswith minor changes in Sifre Devarim §356 (ed. FINKELSTEIN, Berlin, 1940, p. 423), y. Ta¨anit68a, Avot deRabbi Nathan §34 (§38 in version b) and in Machzor Vitri, ed. HOROVITZ, Jerusa-lem, 1963 (reprint), p. 696. For a treatment of the passage, see M. H. SEGAL in D. Yellin’sFestschrift, Jerusalem, 1935, pp. 1- 22; S. TALMON, in Segal’s Festschrift, Jerusalem, 1965,pp. 252-264.

64. Actually, the Samaritan tradition was rather flexible in its attitude towards the textuntil the late Middle Ages. See my article “Divergent Traditions of the Samaritan Pentateuchas Reflected by its Aramaic Targum”, Journal of the Aramaic Bible I (1999), pp. 297-315.


Conclusion

For normative Judaism the external form of the Scriptures had the samemeasure of holiness as their substance. This is why it remained opposed toany attempt, whether voluntary or involuntary, to remodel their form. Fi-nally, a solution was adopted that could enable the text of the holy writ toresist such attempts: the Aramaic Targum. As Aramaic was widely knownin the bilingual/multilingual Palestinian society, it could be successfullyused in order to surmount the lofty character of the Hebrew original. Beingdistinct from Hebrew, there was no danger that Aramaic would penetratethe text of the Torah in the course of parallel reading. Obviously, the pro-cess of the composition of the Aramaic Targum took place when both lan-guages were in use; therefore, we must assume that the oldest AramaicTargum in use was the prototype of the Targum from which Onqelos isdescended. The affinity between the Aramaic of the Dead Sea Scrolls andOnqelos proves that the language in which the first Targum of the Torah —either Onqelos, or its supposed progenitor — was composed was “StandardLiterary Aramaic”65.

Not everyone found this solution acceptable. As we saw above, therewere those who banned the use of Targums66. In the final analysis, no ob-stacle could bar the Targum from spreading to the synagogue, where it wasadmitted. However, this was a long process accompanied by restrictions toensure the primordiality of the Hebrew original. In order to prevent theTargum from replacing the Scriptures, its reading was subject to strict regu-lation.

The situation was different among the Samaritans. As they were preparedto make the Torah as popular as possible, they adopted a pragmatic ap-proach and made the necessary linguistic and ideological-religious adapta-tions. This explains why there was no Samaritan Aramaic Targum contem-

65. Jonathan was its partner for the Former Prophets, and no linguistic difference existsbetween them. Even for some of the Hagiographa there was a Targum, as proven by Jobfrom Qumran, close to them in language. A very learned study was recently published:W. F. SMELIK, The Targum of Judges, Leiden, 1995. The author treats extensively theproblems of the Targum in general and of the Targum of the Prophets in particular.

66. b. Megilla 3a relates the embarrassment that the composition of the Targum of theProphets created: תרגום של נביאים יונתן בן עוזיאל אמרו… ונזדעזעה ארץ ישראל… יצאה בת קולואמרה מי הוא זה שגילה סתריי לבני אדם, עמד יונתן בן עוזיאל על רגליו ואמר אני הוא שגיליתי סתריך-The Targum of the Prophets was com“ ,לבני אדם… לכבודך עשיתי שלא ירבו מחלוקת בישראל.posed by Jonathan b. Uzziel… and the Land of Israel quaked [thereupon]… a Bat Qol cameforth and exclaimed ‘who is this that revealed my secrets to mankind?’ Then Jonathan b.Uzziel arose and said: ‘It is I who revealed your secrets to mankind… I have done this foryour honour, so that dissension may not increase…’. ”


porary with Onqelos. Over the course of time, things changed. Hebrew lostits status as spoken language in Palestine, and the Samaritans were facedwith the problem of understanding the Torah properly, which they solvedby translating the Torah into Aramaic. This however happened much later,in the third century, when Palestinian Aramaic was the local vernacularand, as such, differed greatly from the “Standard Literary Aramaic” of theSecond Temple period. It is, therefore, distance in time, in the first place,which separates the Aramaic of the Samaritan Targum from the Aramaic ofOnqelos.

Hebrew’s loss of status affected the Jewish population equally, whichbecame Aramaic speaking. The Scriptures were no longer properly under-stood, and the Targum was a necessity. But Onqelos, with its elevated lan-guage, prevalent at the end of the pre-Christian Era, was now equally re-mote from popular understanding. Accordingly, a new Targum was com-posed in contemporary Aramaic: the so-called Jerusalem or PalestinianTargum67. To this period also belongs the Samaritan Aramaic Targum in itsoldest form68. Onqelos was forgotten and its reading was no longer prac-tised in Palestine. It was in Babylon that it survived through constant use inthe synagogue69.

67. For the character of this Targum, whose language manifests affinities with the Jerusa-lem Talmud, see my articles “The Infinitive in Palestinian Aramaic”, Anniversary Volumededicated to Z. Ben-Îayyim, Jerusalem, 1983, pp. 201-218 (Hebrew); “The Dialects ofJewish Palestinian Aramaic and the Palestinian Targum of the Pentateuch”, Sefarad 46(1986), pp. 441-448.

68. The chronological position of the various versions of the Samaritan Targum is treatedin my The Samaritan Targum of the Pentateuch, vol. III, Tel-Aviv, 1983, pp. 93-105.

69. Even a Masora was composed there. See for example: S. LANDAUER, Die Masorahzum Onkelos, Amsterdam, 1896.

is there a raison d'Être for an aramaic targum in a hebrew-speaking society

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