The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

300 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
literal translation of the Hebrew text? It is true that FTP, FTV, and
Ngl show that the Palestinian Targums contained the substance of this
addition; but they use vocabulary different from that of Neofiti, and
Esau's denial of these things is well known from other rabbinic
sources. 20 If we also take seriously Shinan's suggestion that this
material is not necessarily a polemic directed against a particular
group, but a topos, a general Targumic 'grouse' of literary-didactic
character directed against heresy in general, then we can see how this
whole section might indeed represent an addition to Neofiti's original
text. 21 Thus although Neofiti in its present form portrays Esau as a
wicked heretic, there are grounds for arguing that, in this verse at
least, it may not always have done so.
Genesis 27 tells how Jacob came to receive his father's blessing
instead of Esau: Neofiti has little to tell us about the latter that is not in
the biblical narrative, until we reach v. 29, where Isaac actually
blesses Jacob. He prays that peoples, Hebrew 'mmym, should serve
Jacob: Neofiti speaks of these as 'wmy', and defines them as 'all the
sons of Esau'. In this, it agrees with FTP, FTV, and Pseudo-Jonathan
Of greatest significance for our purposes, however, is Gen. 27.40,
Isaac's necessarily limited blessing of Esau, which in the Bible runs as
follows:
20. Thus FTP, FTV, and Ngl say that Esau desecrated, 'pys, the life of the world
to come, an expression not used by Neofiti which also avoids the word hwlq,
'portion' or 'lot' in connection with the world to come. See also Gen. R. 63.14.
Pseudo-Jonathan of Gen. 25.29 includes Esau's denial of the world to come among
a list of five sins he committed on that day: see Gen. R. 63.11; b. B. Bat. 16b; Exod.
R. 1.1. Thus Esau's denial is not uniformly attached by the Targums themselves to
v. 34 in particular. Further, Neofiti's literal rendering (bzy) of the Hebrew bzh, 'he
despised', is not shared with the other Targums; but it is precisely this Hebrew verb
R. Levi in Gen. R. 63.14 expounds with reference to resurrection of the dead. Might
not Neofiti's present text arise as the result of an addition of the kind of midrash
represented by Gen. R. 63.14, inspired precisely because Targum Neofiti had
retained bzy in its translation? On midrashic additions to Targum Neofiti, see Levy,
Targum Neophyti 1, pp. 54-63.
21. See A. Shinan, The Aggadah in the Aramaic Targums to the Pentateuch
(2 vols.; Jerusalem, 1979) [in Hebrew], I, pp. 98, 117, where other rabbinic
witnesses to the tradition are cited, and attempts to identify the targets of the
supposed polemic are critically assessed.