The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

156 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
Onqelos and Jonathan in Palestine is simply that it is not a Palestinian
product. I have argued that it is not a Babylonian product either; but
the political and economic connections of lower Mesopotamia to upper
Mesopotamia and to Syria were stronger than the connections of the
latter to Palestine. That would explain the adoption of Onqelos and
Jonathan in lower Mesopotamia.
The second fact that supports, at least in a mild way, the origin of
Onqelos and Jonathan in the Central Aramaic area is the undoubted
connection of the Peshitta to the targumic interpretive tradition. I do
not want to press this too strongly, since the Peshitta has certain things
in common with the Palestinian Targums too, in places where Targum
Onqelos is silent. But the Peshitta Pentateuch is an example of a
Central Aramaic translation of scripture written against the background
of the same kinds of exegetical tradition evident in Targum
Onqelos.
Obviously much work still remains to be done in the study of the
language of Onqelos and Jonathan. I would hope that my suggestion of
a new perspective would help to avoid further fruitless arguments
based on a simplistic model of Aramaic, and to point out new ways of
construing linguistic facts in the light of dialectology.