Chaldee Targums

Chaldee Targums
Name	Chaldee Targums
Author	Various
Country	Ancient Near East
Language	Aramaic
Subject	Biblical interpretation
Genre	Targum
Pub date	Antiquity–Middle Ages

Chaldee Targums

The Chaldee Targums are a corpus of Aramaic interpretive translations of the Hebrew Bible that played a central role in Jewish textual culture, exegesis, and liturgy. Originating in the late Second Temple and Rabbinic periods, they intersect with traditions associated with Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud, Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Herod the Great, and later medieval schools in Tiberias, Babylon, Alexandria, Constantinople and Cairo.

Introduction

Targums are vernacular renderings and paraphrases that mediate texts for communities influenced by figures such as Simon bar Kokhba, Hillel the Elder, Shammai, Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Meir, and authors of works in the milieu of Mishnah, Midrash Rabbah, Pirkei Avot, Sifra, and Sifrei. The Chaldee corpus is associated with traditions found in colophons of manuscripts preserved in collections connected to Cairo Geniza, Bodleian Library, Vatican Library, British Library, and catalogues assembled by scholars like Jacob ben Hayyim, Elijah Levita, Abraham ibn Ezra, Maimonides, Rashi, Nahmanides, and Saadia Gaon.

Historical Background and Origins

Scholars situate the emergence of the Chaldee Targums amid sociopolitical contexts involving Achaemenid Empire, Alexander the Great, Seleucid Empire, Hasmonean dynasty, Herodian dynasty, Roman Republic, and Byzantine Empire. Usage reflects interactions with communities impacted by events such as the Destruction of the Second Temple, Bar Kokhba revolt, Council of Jamnia debates, and diasporic developments in Peraea, Judea, Galilee, and Babylonia. The production and recension of targumic material involve figures and institutions like Tannaim, Amoraim, Geonim, Saadiah Gaon, Rabbenu Gershom, Moses ben Nachman and medieval centers such as Narbonne, Toledo, Salonika, and Venice.

Language and Literary Features

The Chaldee Targums exhibit features of Imperial and Late Aramaic with influences from Biblical Hebrew, Mishnaic Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Persian, and Arabic lexical strata. Their dialectal profile aligns with varieties attested in inscriptions from Palmyra, Nabataeans, Dura-Europos, and papyri from Elephantine. Literary phenomena include free translation, paraphrase, expansion, midrashic aggadah, halakhic glosses, and exegetical harmonization comparable to techniques in Targum Onkelos tradition, Targum Jonathan style, and materials preserved alongside Midrash Tanhuma. Stylistic markers link to scribal practices in repositories curated by collectors like Jacob Emden, Wolfgang Capito, Joseph Scaliger, and Johann Buxtorf.

Major Targums (e.g., Onkelos, Jonathan, Jerusalem)

Primary representatives include the translation attributed in tradition to figures connected with Onkelos (associated historically with Tiberias and rabbinic attributions), the targum to the Prophets linked with Jonathan ben Uzziel and debated in connection with Amoraim, and the so-called Jerusalem targum(s) reflecting western Palestinian recension tied to schools in Bet Shean, Beit El, Lydda, and Caesarea. Manuscript families preserve variant readings reminiscent of editorial interventions by authorities such as Rashi, Moses Maimonides, Abravanel, Yitzhak Alfasi, Isaac Abravanel, and citations in medieval works like Sefer HaYashar and Sefer HaZohar.

Textual Transmission and Manuscripts

Transmission history is documented through codices, fragments, palimpsests, and citations across libraries and archives including Cairo Geniza caches, collections at the Bodleian Library, British Library, Vatican Library, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Leopold Zunz holdings, and early printed editions from Venice and Constantinople. Critical editions and manuscript studies involve scholars such as Louis Ginzberg, Paul Fenton, Alexander Sperber, Hermann L. Strack, Gershom Scholem, Josef Justus Scaliger, Moritz Steinschneider, Michael Fishbane, Ezra Fleischer, Jacob Neusner, Moshe Greenberg, Samuel Rolles Driver, Emil Schürer, Charles Taylor, Ismar Elbogen, Georgiana Hadas-Lebel and projects of institutions like Jewish Theological Seminary and Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Religious Use and Liturgical Function

The targums function within synagogue practice, study halls, and communal education alongside liturgical books such as Siddur, Piyyut corpora, Megillot, and chanting traditions rooted in Tiberian vocalization and Temurah systems. Their role was assessed by authorities including Maimonides in his legal writings, debated by medieval rabbinic figures like Rabbi Joseph Karo, Rabbi Isaac Luria, Rabbenu Tam, and integrated into teaching methods employed in yeshivot and academies influenced by Geonic responsa, Karaite polemics, and rabbinic halakhic rulings found in Shulchan Aruch commentary.

Influence, Reception, and Modern Scholarship

Reception history traces impact on Christian patristic writers, Origen, Jerome, Augustine, and later Christian Hebraists like Sebastian Münster, Johann Buxtorf the Elder, John Lightfoot, Isaac Newton and Judaeo-Christian exchanges evident in Renaissance scholarship across Padua, Salamanca, Amsterdam, Prague, Leyden and modern critical studies by James Barr, Moshe Greenberg, Martin McNamara, Michael Stone, Jon D. Levenson, Peter Schäfer, Ronald Hendel, A. Cohen and research programs at University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of Chicago, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Toronto, Tel Aviv University, Jewish Theological Seminary, Bar-Ilan University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Institute for Advanced Study and libraries such as Bodleian Library, National Library of Israel, Vatican Library. Contemporary fields engaging the targums include textual criticism, comparative Semitics, liturgical studies, and interreligious philology represented in conferences of SBL, AJS, Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and publications in journals like Journal of Jewish Studies, Vetus Testamentum, Hebrew Union College Annual, Jewish Quarterly Review.

Category:Aramaic Bible translations