The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

CHILTON Aramaic and Targumic Antecedents of 'Justification' 381
few biblical references, where meanings shared between Paul and his
'Jewish precursors' are concerned. Methodological asymmetry is
manifest in the treatment.
Asymmetry of a different sort is evident in Campbell's paraphrase
of iXoxmipiov as 'supremely atoning sacrifice for sin'. 11 Initially, he
joins those who construe the meaning of the term in respect of general
propitiation, 12 rather than in respect of the rnsD on the ark of the
covenant. That is unexceptional: Manson's suggestion that Paul wrote
Romans under the specific influence of the festival of Yom Kippur,
and that itaxatfjpiov is to be read accordingly, is indeed speculative. 13
Having rejected Manson's reading of iXactf)piov, Campbell nonetheless
argues that 'Paul evokes the singular and supremely atoning
resonance of Yom Kippur, rather than the much more general, pagan
idea of propitiatory sacrifice which was repetitive'. 14 This argument is
only possible because a notion from the secondary literature,
Manson's suggestion, is supported, although the thesis within which
the suggestion is a corollary is rejected. The parts are rejected
individually, but the whole remains as a phantom. 15
11. Campbell, Rhetoric, pp. 107-13.
12. So A. Deissmann, Bible Studies (trans. A. Grievei; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,
1901), pp. 124-35.
13. Cf. 'IAAITHPION', JTS 46 (1945), pp. 1-10. David Hill's attempt to read
the letter in respect of Hanukkah represents a further abstraction of such speculation;
he argues that since Tabernacles, which was linked with Yom Kippur, was the
occasion of 2 Corinthians, another feast must have been the occasion of Romans, cf.
Greek Words and Hebrew Meanings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1967, pp. 43-47). As Campbell points out (Rhetoric, pp. 219-28, and cf. p. 109
n. 3), Hill's acceptance of an early dating of 4 Maccabees is credulous. Ulrich
Wilkens is perhaps the best representative of Manson's position, cf. Der Brief an die
Romer (Evangelisch-Katholischen Kommentar; Zurich: Benziger, 1978), p. 193.
Campbell supports C.E.B. Cranfield's more sober assessment; cf. The Epistle to the
Romans 2 (The International Critical Commentary; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986),
pp. 214, 215. Campbell also takes up Cranfield's view that the 3.21-26 represents
Paul's own prose (cf. Rhetoric, pp. 199, 200).
14. Cf. Campbell, Rhetoric, p. 131, within pp. 130-33.
15. I have argued that a similar failure of exegetical care has plagued discussion
of the 'Aqedah' in the New Testament; cf. The Aqedah: A Revised Tradition
History', CBQ 40 (1978), pp. 514-46 (written jointly with P.R. Davies); 'Isaac and
the Second Night: A Consideration', Bib 61 (1980), pp. 78-88, and Targumic
Approaches to the Gospels: Essays in the Mutual Definition of Judaism and
Christianity (Studies in Judaism; Lanham and London: University Press of America,