The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

MAHER Targum Pseudo-Jonathan of Deuteronomy 1.1-8 271
miracles which God performed for his people in the course of their
journey to the Promised Land. However, Pseudo-Jonathan, like the
Fragmentary Targums and Ctg Br, mentions explicitly only one
miracle, namely, the making of twelve paths in the sea for the tribes
of Israel. It must be said then that the reading 'while you were standing
at the Sea of Reeds' which we find in Neofiti, Fragmentary Targums
and Ctg Br is more appropriate then Pseudo-Jonathan's 'many miracles
and wonders...since you crossed over the Sea of Reeds'. The
reference in the Palestinian Targums to the many miracles at the sea
recalls the tradition that ten miracles were performed for the ancestors
at the sea (P. Abot 5.4; ARN A 16 ch. 33, and ARN B 17 ch. 36).
The tradition that the Lord made twelve paths in the sea, a tradition
that is well attested in the midrashic literature, 18 has been mentioned
already by Pseudo-Jonathan in Exod. 14.21, but not in Neofiti or in P.
(Only the opening words of this verse are preserved in V.) The
acrostic poem to Exod. 14.29-31 published by M. Klein 19 also states
that the sea was split into twelve divisions corresponding to the twelve
tribes. Thus Pseudo-Jonathan is the only Targum to refer to the division
of the sea into twelve paths both in Exod. 14.21 and in Deut. 1.1,
although the number twelve is not explicitly mentioned in the latter
text. It is characteristic of Pseudo-Jonathan to repeat midrashic
traditions in this way, sometimes adding such traditions in places
where the biblical text offers no basis for such additions. 20 In our present
case the targumic mention of the twelve ways through the sea in
Deut. 1.1 is more meaningful in Pseudo-Jonathan than in the other
Palestinian Targums, since Pseudo-Jonathan takes up a theme that has
already been mentioned in that Targum's account of the crossing of
the sea. The twofold mention of this tradition in appropriate contexts
in Pseudo-Jonathan also fits in with the view that this Targum is a literary
work written for cultivated Jews rather than a translation that
16. ARN A = The Fathers according to Rabbi Nathan (trans. J. Goldin; Yale
Judaica Series 10; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955)
17. ARN B = The Fathers according to Rabbi Nathan (trans. AJ. Saldarini;
SJLA 11; Leiden: Brill, 1957).
18. Cf. e.g., PRE 42: 'the waters congealed, and they were made into twelve valleys,
corresponding to the twelve tribes...'; Mekilta 14.16 (ed. M. Friedmann;
Vienna 1870; reprint, 1968), p. 30a; Deut. R. 11.10.
19. Genizah Manuscripts 1.230-31.
20. Cf. Maher, Genesis, pp. 6, 155 n. 9, 165 n. 11.