The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

242 The Aramaic Bible: The Targums in their Historical Context
origin in Babylonia. Kutscher's well-known view 53 places its origin in
Palestine sometime during the early part of the second century CE as
its language is basically Imperial Aramaic colored by Western
Aramaic. The eastern Aramaic elements it contains are to be
attributed to its eventual transmission in Babylonia. As to the question
of why it disappeared from Palestine and survived in Babylonia,
Kutscher reasons that after the destruction of the Temple and the subsequent
crushing of the Bar Kokhba revolt, events which destroyed
the cultural centers of Judea, the literal style of Onqelos—Imperial
Aramaic colored by Western Aramaic, vanished and was replaced by
the local spoken Western Aramaic dialects which were beginning to be
used as a means of literary expression and thus gave birth to the
Palestinian Targum. In Babylonia, however, these catastrophic events
of the West did not effect it and this Targum was there edited (thus
explaining the presence of eastern Aramaic elements in it, according
to Kutscher) for the sake of the Babylonian Jews for whom such a
need existed at that time (late second-early third century CE).
4. Onqelos and the Midrash
In comparing the historical background of both the Halakhic
Midrashim and Onqelos with regards to home of origin, authorship,
and final date of redaction, it becomes apparent that we are dealing
with a common location—Palestine—and a common period—approximately
the second to fourth century CE. But even more remarkable is
the common possession of a philosophy of exegesis—the school of
thought of R. Aqiba. Onqelos's association with the latter (y. Qid. 1.1)
is agreed upon by most scholars and was set forth by A.E. Silverstone, 54
against the earlier view to the contrary expressed by M. Friedmann. 55
The prevailing tendency has always been to invoke the phenomenon of
borrowing, and to attribute the existence of material in one text as
having been borrowed from the other. Usually it is the Targum which
is considered the borrower from the Midrash. 56 The fallibility of this
53. Cf. 'The Language of the Genesis Apocryphon: A Preliminary Study',
Scripta Hierosolymitana 4 (1958), pp. 2-3 and 9ff.
54. See his Aquila and Onkelos (Manchester, 1931).
55. For which see his Onkelos undAkylas (Vienna, 1896).
56. So for instance Berliner in Einleitung..., p. 225. M.M. Kasher, Torah
Shelema 25 (1974), p. 80 in his discussion of the Halakhic and Aggadic elements in