The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

CHILTON Aramaic and Targumic Antecedents of 'Justification' 397
removed—in most cases by some centuries—from the earliest
Christian Aramaic. In addition to the analysis of anomalies of language
within the Greek Testament, in which the Targumim have a
significant (but indirect) role to play, there is also the question of
anomalies of meaning: instances in which biblical citations, allusions,
or motifs appear outside a generally received, Septuagintal understanding
of the Bible. I have suggested elsewhere that the Targumim,
and especially Targum Jonathan, may explain why the Bible is so
construed. 53 But now that the present phase of Dr McNamara's project
is nearly completed, one might anticipate that students of the New
Testament will read the Targumim, much as they read the Fathers, the
Pseudepigrapha, the codices of Nag Hammadi, and the Stoics: not
because every phrase can be assumed to antedate Jesus and/or Paul,
but because they reflect indirectly what is otherwise a scantily attested
period. On the other hand, such an anticipation has been justifiable for
more than a century; perhaps, once again, scholars may find a way to
exclude the milieu of early Judaism in the alleged quest for historical
meaning.
53. Cf. A Galilean Rabbi and His Bible.