The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

414 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
occasion for further reflection. The discussion between translations
can only be fruitful where there is a possibility of reference to a text
taken as authority-bearing in the original language. It is not a discussion
between authority-bearing texts. I suggest that this fluid approach
to the translation equivalences found in the various columns of the
Hexapla in one sense devalued the Greek Old Testament as an authoritative
independent text, and reminded the reader/audience that this was
in fact a translation rather than with an inspired text. The semantic or
qualitative discussion between translations is only worthwhile where
the common language of debate and reflection is the translation
language. If on the other hand the whole discussion of interpretation
can stay within the original language of the text, the specific problems
posed by the different interpretations in a translation and its revisions
do not arise. This was most obvious in Palestine, where reference
could be made by at least some of the interlocutors to the Hebrew text.
In Alexandria the question did not arise to the same extent, or in the
same way, because of the difficulty of access to a text in the original
language. Here, the discussion was even more concerned with groups
who questioned the validity of the Old Testament as such, not between
groups who shared the books, and differed in their interpretation.
Neither had the Alexandrians any reason to accept that theirs was a
second-rate second-hand sacred text. It is no surprise that there was a
move to consecrate the act of translation and the translation itself and
to try to procure for it the same sort of respect for a fixed form that
the pre- and proto-Masoretic texts were enjoying in Palestine.
The Judaeo-Christian Polemic and the Compilation of the Hexapla
Origen's stated purpose, in so far as it can be determined, was not to
prepare a critical edition in our sense but to compare the texts in
common use by Jews and Christians, so that in discussions Christians
would know which texts were not accepted by their interlocutors. The
Judaeo-Christian polemic is often cited as the most relevant background
to Origen's enterprise in having the Hexapla prepared. The
issue in so far as it was polemic was quantitative. By his work, Origen
could have rendered a service not only to his Christian colleagues, but
also to those Hellenophone Jews who must have been as confused as
were the Christians about the pluses and minuses at stake. Even if
Aquila's Greek was preferred by the rabbinate, to what extent, when,