The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

262 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
insidious from the ideological point of view—is to see the one where
we have the many. Material from different Targums has been often
gathered and combined as if it were part of one ideology—'the' targumic
thought. 13 But discontinuity—not less than continuity—characterizes
targumic tradition; each Targum has its own personality and
defines a distinct ideological system.
The fact that in some cases later Targums, like Pseudo-Jonathan,
contain older material than Neofiti, does not imply a generative text as
the sum of all the oldest targumic traditions. The reemergence of very
ancient traditions is a common phenomenon in later documents of
rabbinic Judaism. Out of the original setting and deprived of any
disturbing ideology, this material was recycled for new functions, or
reemerged as inert matter for legends. This phenomenon occurred in
talmudic times when the rabbinic system became mature and strong
enough to encompass within its boundaries ideas that in the past had
originated rival systems. 14
The quotation in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Gen 6.4) of the fallen
ANGELS sHEMAHAZZAI AND aZAZEL IS A CASE IN POINT tHIS QUOTATION WAS
made possible exactly by the fact that the memory (and danger) of the
original setting of this Henochic tradition was by then completely
lost. 15 The mention of fallen angels is absolutely marginal and does
not disturb the entire system of Pseudo-Jonathan, to which it adds only
a folkloric savour. This would have been impossible in Neofiti: at the
end of the second century the competition with the apocalyptic movement
and early Christianity was still too strong. It is not by chance
that no mention of evil angels is made in Neofiti and Mishnah and that
13. E. Levine's, The Aramaic Version of the Bible (Berlin and New York, 1988)
offers a good example of this methodology, which parallels analogous approaches to
rabbinic sources (cf. E.E. Urbach, The Sages, Their Concepts and Beliefs [Hebrew]a
[Jerusalem, 1969; Engl. edn, Jerusalem, 1975]).
14. Not surprisingly, Pseudo-Jonathan (7th-8th cent. CE) is the Targum that
presents the highest degree of both internal unity and contradictions. See A. Shinan,
'The Palestinian Targums—Repetitions, Internal Unity, Contradictions', JJS 36
(1985), pp. 72-87.
15. The angelic sin is one of the founding ideas—if not the core—of the ancient
Jewish apocalyptic tradition; see P. Sacchi, L'apocalittica giudaica e la sua storia
(Brescia, 1991); G. Boccaccini, 'Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition: The Contribution of
Italian Scholarship', in Mysteries and Revelations: Apocalyptic Studies since the
Uppsala Colloquium, (ed. J.J. Collins and J.H. Charlesworth: Sheffield, 1991),
pp. 38-58.