The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

SHINAN The Aggadah of the Palestinian Targums 205
without proof—to Midrash. It would seem that the vast diffusion of
rabbinic literature, along with the veneration it has commanded ever
since the Geonic period, have combined to create scholarly categorical
conclusions such as: 'All targums... [imbibe] from the Talmudic and
Midrashic literature and not the other way around, as is well known', 6
or, to cite another example, 'It's known that the Palestinian Targums...
are based on the words or our sages'. 7
The common assumption, therefore, is that the Aggadot reflected in
Talmud and Midrash are the source from which the Targums drew.
And this is, in effect, the assumption propelling the disregard with
which many scholars—who tread the path of Aggadah or otherwise
deal with the world of rabbinic literature and ideas—regard Targum.
So for example, the late E.E. Urbach in his extensive work, The
Sages—Their Concepts and Beliefs (1979). Among the sources
creating his painstaking picture of the rabbinic world of ideas does he
not mention in the preface to his work—as expected—Mishnah and
Tosefta, both of the Talmuds, Halakhic and Aggadic Midrashim? 8 And
indeed, even a casual thumbing through this most comprehensive volume
and a peek at its highly detailed indexes reveal that the author
was faithful to his word. The Targums are mentioned in passing only.
This patent disregard is characteristic also of the literature preceding
Urbach's book. It is found in George Foote Moore's Judaism in the
First Centuries of the Christian Era, first published in 1927, and continues
in other books that are still being written to this very day.
Oblivion to the possibility that Targum is that which influenced
midrashic expression is also at the bottom of the explicit supposition
that targumic traditions without parallels in rabbinic literature are
undoubtedly 'a vestige of Midrash hoary with antiquity lost to the
ages'. 9 According to such a perception, the Targums have nothing
6. E.Z. Melamed, 'A Response', Tarbiz 41 (1972), p. 130 [Hebrew].
7. Z.M. Rabinovitz, Halakah and Aggadah in the Liturgical Poetry of Yannai
(Tel Aviv, 1965), p. 56 [Hebrew].
8. Page 1 (in the Hebrew edition). Urbach unfurls the list of literary forms that
he examined in order to write his book, mentioning aphorisms and parables, homilies
and anecdotes (p. 2); prayers also find a place in this list, thereby fusing even the
ancient strata of liturgy into the rabbinic world described in his book.
9. M.M. Brayer, 'The Pentateuchal Targum Attributed to Jonathan ben Uzziel—
A Source for Unknown Midrashim', in The Abraham Weiss Jubilee Volume (New
York, 1964), pp. 201-31 [Hebrew].