The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

NORTON Jews, Greeks and the Hexapla of Origen 411
the verb always refers to an Aramaic translation. 22 When a Greek
translation is meant, the word mra 'into Greek' is added. This would
imply that the verb is then connected simply with the activity of
translation, and not with any specific quality of translation.
The notion that the Greek text should be revised to fit to the Hebrew
is related to the definitive choice of a Hebrew text, but perhaps also to
the reading of a Greek text as Targum / explanation in the Hebrew
synagogues or (unofficially) in the temple litergy. Was it, like the
Targum, delivered verse by verse following the reading of the Torah,
up to three verses in the Prophets (m. Meg. 4.4)? In one sense this
leads to the increased value given a particular Greek text among other
Greek texts because it is closer to the Hebrew, but in fact it is also a
lessening of the Old Greek's independent value as a text, and an
imposition of the proto-MT as a norm against which the Greek is
compared in second place. Note also that the fact that Aquila's
revision extended beyond the Torah is already a levelling of the status
of the original Septuagint Torah to that of the Greek translation of
other books.
A Multiplicity of Greek Textual Forms in Palestine
It is now increasingly clear that the Greek texts of which we speak in
the Torah and elsewhere did not exist in a unified textual recension.
Although in the case of the Torah and many other books, all seem to
be genetically descended from an original authoritative translation, it
is clear that there were many changes made in the course of transmission
of the Greek text, only a few of them extensive and unified
enough to be called recensions, editions or revisions. The confusion
multiplied. The situation must have been particularly chaotic in
Palestine where there was the greatest possibility of reference to, and
quantitative and qualitative contamination by, the Hebrew text.
This diversity of Greek texts in the hands of people for whom the
Hebrew text was difficult of access if not inaccessible, naturally made
for difficulties in a certain type of religious discussion which seeks to
understand or explain a text, or looks to the text for proof material
for a theological dispute which is centred on some other issue or
event. Further, within Judaism the multiplicity of text-types in Greek
22. A.E. Silverstone, Aquila and Onkelos (Manchester, 1931), pp. 57-60.