The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

304 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
This understanding is common to the Palestinian Targums as represented
by FTP, the Ngl, and Pseudo-Jonathan, and is expressed in
words and phrases which are almost identical in all these Targums.
The versions of this tradition found in Gen. R. 75.9 and Lev. R. 27.11
show different emphases, and in all probability are later developments
of the stuff found in the Targums. 27 The text of Neofiti runs entirely
smoothly. There is, therefore, no indication in the text that Neofiti's
interpretation of this verse may be secondary.
In the lengthy account of Jacob's return from Laban and his
meeting with Esau, only three aspects of Neofiti require comment.
First, the 400 'men' who accompany Esau according to Gen. 32.7;
33.1 are defined by Neofiti as 'polemarchs' (32.7) and 'foot-soldiers'
(33.1). In the latter verse, the Ngl reads 'polemarchs' again; Pseudo-
Jonathan, also uses this word in both verses. 28 Esau is here presented
as a military commander, an understanding of him which we meet
also in Jubilees and in Josephus, Ant. 1.327 (xx:l). Secondly, Neofiti
does not share with FTP, FTV, and Ngl Jacob's suspicion, voiced in a
paraphrase expounding the word mhnh of 32.3, that Esau has come to
kill him. 29 Thirdly, in the Hebrew of 33.8, Jacob says that he has acted
to gain favour 'in the eyes of my lord', referring to Esau: Neofiti
renders this phrase as 'in your sight', so that Jacob does not appear to
acknowledge Esau's superiority.
27. Apart from the fact that these two sources place their versions of the material
in settings other than Gen. 27.41, it should be noted that their exegetical goals are
quite different from those of Neofiti. Thus Lev. R. gives only a summary of the
tradition. Gen. R. makes Esau recall that God did nothing to Cain for killing his
brother, and removes an ambiguity in the biblical text, found also in Neofiti, by
making Esau plan to kill his father and then his brother. Neofiti's 'I shall wait until
the days of my father's mourning approach' is ambiguous: it may imply, but does
not state, that Esau intended to murder his father, and the version of Gen. R. looks
like a further development of a targumic insight.
28. In Gen. 32.7, the interlinear gloss of Neofiti reads pwlmwsyn, and FTV has
gwbryn pwlmr byn, a mistake for pwlmrkyn. On the relationship of these renderings
to Gen. R., see D.M. Golomb, A Grammar of Targum Neofiti (Scholars Press,
1984), pp. 4-5.
29. Thus Ngl reads: 'And Jacob said when he saw them: Perhaps they are camps
of Esau my brother coming before me to kill me. . . '