The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

410 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
synagogues, the groups exercising control over this semi-official
interpretation could also exercise it in the Greek synagogues, there
would be no confusion of the sacred text and its interpretation, and
explanation would be given to those Aramaic speakers who were not
at home in in the language of the Greek Torah—especially the stilted
literalist or archaic Greek which must have pertained. Note that
Eusebius speaks of Procopius (about 286) as a reader and interpreter
from Greek into Aramaic in the church at Sythopolis (= Bet Shan). 19
If Zahn is correct in saying that the peasants needed such an
interpretation in Christian worship, it is not inconceivable that they
were similarly catered for in synagogal worship at a slightly earlier
period.
This is as yet only a hypothesis. A complementary hypothesis supposes
that in some contexts in Palestine (and we think particularly in
terms of the liturgies attended by Greek-speaking pilgrims to
Jerusalem) the Greek text did in fact function as a translation of the
Hebrew text which occupied a central place in the liturgy. This helps
to explain the revisions undertaken. The notion that there may have
been Greek Targums' is still mentioned occasionally in the literature,
but it is a shadowy wraith. 20 Does it suppose that the activity of
making a Targum is distinct from that of providing an authoritative
translation of a text as found in the Septuagint? The difference is not
clear. Salvesen finishes her study of Symmachus in the Pentateuch by
saying that the work combined the best biblical Greek style,
remarkable clarity, a high degree of accuracy regarding the Hebrew
text, and the rabbinic exegesis of his day: it might be described as a
Greek Targum, or Tannaitic Septuagint. 21
In part the problem is related to the use of the verb onn in the
Jerusalem Talmud (Meg. 1.9). Silverstone argues that used by itself
19. Mart Pal. (the Syriac version, ed. Cureton, p. 4) cited in S. Lieberman,
Greek in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Life, and Manners of Jewish Palestine in
the II-IV Centuries C.E. (New York: Philipp Feldheim, 1965), pp. 2 n. 5, 6
:Kin im pas rftra «rn;n KODEQI
;Kin anno K'CHK'? tnv wi"? wirw ROSBDI Kin Kin tmp rranp
20. G. Vermes in The Cambridge History of the Bible (ed. P.R. Ackroyd and
C.F. Evans; Cambridge, 1970), I, p. 201.
21. A. Salvesen, Symmachus in the Pentateuch (Journal of Semitic Studies
Monograph 15; Manchester, 1991), p. 297.