The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

330 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
that his approach to that tradition was highly eclectic. He was, however,
no mere compiler: his work is not a pastiche. His use of the
tradition was controlled by a highly detailed and coherent reading of
the Hebrew, and he chose only those elements of the tradition which
were congruent with, or could be adapted to, that reading. He rigorously
applied to the tradition the discipline of the biblical text. It is
a failure to stress this point that fatally flaws Churgin's and Melamed's
handling of Targum Shir ha-Shirim. In their passion for parallels they
have failed to respect the integrity of the text and to read it in its own
terms.
I would like to consider briefly the coherence and discipline of the
targumist's reading of the biblical text at both the micro- and the
macro-levels. To illustrate his micro-analysis we shall look at his rendering
of Song 7.3.
Micro-Analysis
MT: Your navel is a round goblet,
Wherein mixed wine is not wanting;
Your belly is a heap of wheat,
Fenced round by roses.
TARGUM: The Head of your College, through whose merit all the world
is sustained, just as the foetus is sustained from the navel in the entrails of
its mother, shines forth with [a knowledge of] the Law like the disc of the
moon, when he comes to pronounce pure or impure, innocent or guilty,
and the words of the Law never fail [to flow] from his mouth, just as the
waters of the great river which issues from Eden, never fail. Seventy
sages surround him, like a round threshing-floor, and their treasuries are
full of the holy tithes, votive and free-will offerings, which Ezra the
priest, Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, and Mordechai Bilshan, the Men
of the Great Assembly, who are compared to roses, ordained for their
benefit, so that they might be enabled to engage in the study of the Law
day and night.
1. It was a common rabbinic view that the 'navel' here alludes to the
Sanhedrin, which is so-called (a) because it sustained Israel as an
umbilical cord sustains a foetus, (b) because it sat in a circle, and
(c) because it met in Jerusalem, the 'navel' of the earth. The targumist
typically nuances the tradition: he notes that the biblical text speaks
both of the 'navel' and of the 'belly'. The former he identifies with the
Head of the College, the latter with the body of the Sages. This