The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

PREFACE
The essays here published represent the papers read at the international
conference on 'The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical
Context' held at the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, July 1992.
The Targums have attracted the atttention of Christian European
scholars from the fifteenth century onwards. They were printed for
the first time in the Rabbinic Bibles, and then (accompanied by Latin
translations) in the great Polyglot Bibles of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Christian interest in them was probably due to belief
that they antedated the Christian era and helped better understand the
New Testament writings. After a period of some neglect, interest in
them became keener with the chance find in the Vatican Library in
1949 of a complete copy of the Palestinian Targum of the Pentateuch.
The discovery of the Qumran scrolls from 1947 onwards, coupled
with a greater understanding of the development of the Aramaic language,
of Judaism itself, and a more refined methodology, cast serious
doubt on the early date sometimes assigned to the Targums and consequently
on their relevance for the study of the New Testament writings.
Despite all this, interest in the traditional Aramaic Targums has not
merely continued but has become keener. The Aramaic translations,
however, were now being studied for the information they contained
on Aramaic, on Jewish tradition and the possible interactions between
Judaism and Christianity. And on these and other topics the Targums
will continue to be of interest to scholars in a variety of disciplines.
The Aramaic language of the Targums takes us across time and space
from Babylon, through Syria, Palestine, and Egypt into Europe, and
from the turn of our era into mediaeval times and the Renaissance.
Questions about the origins and transmission of these texts do likewise.
Examination of their content takes us into Jewish halakah and
haggadah, into the possible influence of Jewish traditions on Christian
texts and possibly the reverse of this—Jewish reaction to Christian
teaching. They take us beyond the New Testament era into patristic