The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON THE LANGUAGE OF ONQELOS AND
JONATHAN
Edward M. Cook
Scholars have held two views about the origin of Targum Onqelos and
Jonathan: one, that they were written in the East by Babylonian Jews,
the second, that they were written in the West by Palestinian Jews.
The first view has been defended by A. Geiger, Paul Kahle, Franz
Rosenthal, H.L. Ginsberg, and, at one time, by Klaus Beyer. The
second view is represented by Th. Noldeke, Gustav Dalman,
E.Y. Kutscher, Jonas Greenfield, S.A. Kaufman, Avraham Tal, and,
now, apparently, by Klaus Beyer.
To judge by the various forewords, introductions, and prolegomena
to the Aramaic Bible series, the second view is now most generally
accepted. Grossfeld, Harrington and Saldarini, Hayward, and Cathcart
and Gordon all accept, with varying degrees of certainty, the Western
origin of the targumim with which they deal, although Chilton is
more cautious. (Levey does not discuss the question at all.) 1
To a large degree, this popularity of the Western view in the series
and elsewhere is due to certain linguistic arguments put forward initially
by Kutscher, and developed in different ways by Greenfield and
Tal. In this paper I want to argue that these linguistic arguments fail at
1. B. Grossfeld, The Targum Onqelos to Genesis (The Aramaic Bible, 6;
Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1988), pp. 10-11; D. Harrington and
AJ. Saldarini, Targum Jonathan of the Former Prophets (The Aramaic Bible, 10;
Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1987), p. 3; R. Hayward, The Targum of
Jeremiah (The Aramaic Bible, 12; Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1987), p. 35;
K. Cathcart and R.P. Gordon, The Targum of the Minor Prophets (The Aramaic
Bible, 14; Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1989), p. 12; B. Chilton, The Isaiah
Targum (The Aramaic Bible, 11; Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1987), p. xxi;
S. Levey, The Targum ofEzekiel (The Aramaic Bible, 13; Wilmington, DE: Michael
Glazier, 1987)