The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

MAPPING THE SYNOPTIC PALESTINIAN TARGUMS
OF THE PENTATEUCH
Paul V.M. Flesher
The Palestinian Targums of the Pentateuch form a maddening assortment
of similarities and differences—similarities that invite delineation
of how the texts relate to each other, differences which frustrate
that activity. They contain extensive agreements in words, sentences
and paragraphs, interspersed with apparently random disagreements
in other words, sentences and paragraphs. But one aspect of organization
stands out in this confusion: the similarities nearly always appear
in the same order—partly because the Targums translate the same
text, and partly because they tend to add the same material in the same
location within those translations. This parallel character means that
the Palestinian Targums are synoptic, that—as the Greek root,
synorao, indicates—they can be laid side-by-side and 'viewed
together'. Such viewing reveals the broad extent of their agreements,
while at the same time it brings their differences into sharp contrast.
Recognition of the Palestinian Targums' extensive similarities and
differences is not new; Targum scholars have wrestled with this
problem for decades. My file cabinets and bookshelves contain hundreds
of studies that emphasize the similarities between, say, Neofiti
and the Fragmentary Targums, or the differences between, for
instance, Pseudo-Jonathan and Neofiti. But scholars have yet to reach
any broad consensus regarding the character of each Palestinian
Targum or of the Targums' relationships to each other. This impasse
stems in part from methodology. Most studies focus on only a short
segment of the text, a few verses or sometimes a chapter or two. 1
1. A. Shinan's dissertation, B.B. Levy's study of Neofiti and my own work
comprise some of the few exceptions to this generalization. See A. Shinan, The
Aggadah in the Aramaic Targums to the Pentateuch (Jerusalem: Makor, 1979); and
B.B. Levy, Targum Neophyti: A Textual Study (Lanham, MD: University Press of