The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

404 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
Alexandria on official instigation served in Alexandrian liturgy as
replacement for the Hebrew text. Martin Hengel reflects a consensus
when he says that in Ptolemaic Egypt 'Jewish worship, the spiritual
centre of the Jewish community, was probably held in Greek from the
first half of the third century onwards'. 9 In the synagogues of
Alexandria, the Septuagint of the Torah replaced the Hebrew, and did
not function, as the contemporary Aramaic Targums seems to have
done, in conjunction with it. The authority accorded the Septuagint, of
the Torah at least, was that of an authoritative text, and not simply
that of a translation that refers to such a text, and expresses more or
less well what is in that original. This would seem to be confirmed by
the researches of Charles Perrot on the reading of the Bible in the
synagogue, and in the Hellenistic diaspora, and has also been accepted
by Marguerite Had in her introduction to the French translation of
the Septuagint of Genesis. 10 I also note with these authors the possible
coincidence of the divisions of the book of Genesis in Philo's questions
on Genesis, and the longest paraphrases in the Targum which correspond
more or less to the Sedarim as adopted in Jewish tradition.
Perhaps this indicates that the same system of reading in sections was
developing in Alexandria as in Palestine. 11
E.J. Bickermann follows earlier scholars of Judaism when he says
that the custom of reading the law in public within a cycle of lessons is
not attested before the middle of the second century CE. 12 However, in
the first place, it should be noted that the attestation does not suggest
that at this time the practice described was an innovation. Secondly, it
is to be supposed that even if the precise arrangement in a triennial
cycle dates from the second century, the Torah as such was read in
sections before that.
News of the use of Greek translation spread easily to Palestinian
9. M. Hengel, Jews, Greeks, and Barbarians (London: SCM Press, 1980),
pp. 93-94.
10. C. Perrot, La Lecture de la Bible dans la synagogue (Hildesheim, 1973) and
'La Lecture de la Bible dans la Diaspora helle'nistique', in Etudes sur le juda'isme
hellenistique (LD 119; ACFEB; Paris, 1984), pp. 109-32. M. Harl, La Bible
d'Alexandrie: La Genese (Paris: Cerf, 1986), pp. 33-43.
11. Harl, La Genese, p. 36.
12. E.J. Bickermann, The Jews in the Greek Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1988), p. 102.