The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

THE TARGUM: FROM TRANSLATION TO INTERPRETATION
Josep Ribera
It is hard to determine the place of the Targum within the large
quantity of rabbinic literature. Should it be understood as a Midrash?
Or should it be included among the Jewish translations of the Bible? It
is obvious that the Targum is not a halakic Midrash with legislative
modality, and it cannot be compared with homiletic midrashim, in
which a biblical verse is developed with a long, haggadic, edifying
speech. But the question becomes more complicated when the Targum
is compared with the rest of ancient translations. The real issue is to
know in what way the ancient people understood the translation of the
sacred text as the Bible. For them it was not the simple change of
words from one language to another: from the original Hebrew to
Greek, Syriac, 1 Aramaic, or Latin. 2 Their fidelity to original Hebrew
consists mainly of making the sacred text as intelligible as possible to
people with a social, cultural and linguistic context different from that
in which the Bible was written. For this reason every translation tends
towards interpretation. 3 As the aim of the translation was above all the
best possible comprehension of the text written in a language which
was foreign to listeners or readers, the translators employed literary
devices which are found in all ancient versions and which belong to
the Jewish hermeneutic method called derash. 4
1. On the place of Syriac between LXX and Targum see J. Ribera, El Targum de
Isaias (Valencia, 1988), p. 24, n. 27.
2. For Jerome as a translator of the Vulgate see H.F.D. Sparks: 'Jerome as
Biblical Scholar', in The Cambridge History of the Bible. I. From the Beginnings to
Jerome (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 510-41.
3. See R. Le Deaut: 'La Setante, un Targum?', in Etudes sur le Judaisme
hellenistique (Paris, 1984), pp. 151-53.
4. For a bibliography on the concept of derash and its application to Targum,
see Le Deaut, 'La Septante, un Targum?', p. 150, n. 17, 18; A. del Agua, El metodo