The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

BOCCACCINI Targum Neofiti as a Proto-Rabbinic Document 255
any ideological boundary. Extant manuscripts are copies of copies;
language and style have been submitted to several revisions. 3
Dating these kinds of documents may seem like solving an unsolvable
puzzle. Scholars have often been tempted to study traditions
instead of studying documents, and to compare parallels instead of
comparing ideological systems. But rabbinic documents are not
chaotic collections of ancient material and parallels; they are consistent
ideological documents. Even the most ancient traditions and the
most common parallels were set in a context that picked up some
traditions among a larger amount of ancient material and made them
interact with new material. Both ancient and new traditions were
arranged around a generative idea which defined the specific weight
and rank of each constituent element. The result was the creation of
new ideological systems. Hence, in rabbinic (and targumic) studies,
emphasis should be shifted from traditions to documents, and from
parallels to ideological systems; in other words, from source-criticism
to systemic analysis. The primary question is not 'How old are traditions
and parallels in this or that document?' but 'How old is the ideological
system created by this or that document and what is the
generative idea of each system?'
2. The Concept of the Oral Law
One of the pillars of rabbinic Judaism is the idea that on Sinai God
revealed to Moses both the written and the oral law. In later documents
this idea is attributed to ancient rabbis like Hillel and Shammai
and to Moses himself, but this idea is not so ancient. We do not have
any evidence of this before the third century CE. 4
3. Such is the conclusion of textual studies, also in Targums; see B.B. Levy,
Targum Neophyti 1: A Textual Study (2 vols.; Lanham, 1986-87). Dating languages
does not necessarily mean dating documents; 'a late dating...may simply be the
unconscious reflection of the time of Medieval copysts' (M.C. Doubles, 'Indications
of Antiquity in the Orthography and Morphology of the Fragment Targum', in In
Memoriam Paul Kahle [ed. M. Black and G. Fohrer; Berlin, 1968], pp. 79-89).
4. Despite their different approaches, both J. Neusner (The Mishnah before 70
[Atlanta, 1987]) and E.P. Sanders (Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah
[Philadelphia and London, 1990]) agree on this. Also S. Safrai admits that 'the
unambiguous statement that Oral Torah as such was given at Sinai is found from the
early Amoraic period', although his article on 'Oral Law' (in S. Safrai [ed.], The