The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

160 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
2. The Completion of the Pentateuch and of the Prophetic Canon
Let us begin with the end of the exile. Those who returned from exile
were not without 'holy' scriptures during and after the building of the
Second Temple. Probably the exiles brought with them an earlier
form of the priestly code and in the homeland itself the deuteronomic
work had been developing since the middle of the seventh century.
This last complex joined with the older historical tradition of the
'Yehovist' and became a mammoth work which already comprised
substantial parts of the Torah and of the historical books from Genesis
2 to 2 Kings 25. The earlier prophetic collections were added to these.
Against Wellhausen's opinion that the post-exilic time was an epoch
of decline, it must be emphasized that the great theological concepts of
Israel matured and found their final written form in Persian and early
Hellenistic times. Thus in contrast the post-exilic epoch was a very
creative one. In the tiny Judea of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, a
spiritual-intellectual concentration took place, which later through
Christianity and Islam moved world history, and which can only be
compared to the effects of Athens during the same epoch. But in
Athens we know the names of the philosophers and poets, in Judea we
find anonymous priests and scribes who, in contrast to the authors in
the Greek intellectual metropolis, did not feel themselves subject to
their own individuality but solely to the divine will which had been
communicated to Moses at Sinai and to the word of prophetic revelation.
It was in this way that they gave the final form first to the 'Law'
and then to the 'Prophets'. The importance of these final scribal
redactions, which developed through a long process, is still underestimated
today. The decisive step happened towards the end of the
fifth century when the priestly code was integrated into the first part
of the Yehovist-deuteronomic collection and this first part was separated
from the rest of the historical work as an independent unit of
five books. It extended from creation to the death of Moses and constituted
a continuous 'biographical'-historical narrative with extensive
sections on law. From them a pane potion it received its name: the
Law (of Moses). The second part, beginning with Joshua, the 'helper
of Moses in his prophetic office' (Sir. 46.1) and ending with the exile
in Babylon came next after this 'law book of Moses' and was subordinated
to it. And after the completion of the prophetic collection from
Isaiah to Malachi, about 150 years later, this second historical part