EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2017/18
REPORT
Targum Studies in London, IOTS 2018
The International Meeting of the IOTS at University College London, July 9-12, 2018, featured 25 papers and 4 keynote speakers. It was organised by the IOTS and the Institute of Jewish Studies (IJS) at UCL, with generous funding from sev-eral anonymous donors and the EAJS. Many of the attendees considered the meeting one of the best they had attended in years. The following report states the original abstract and event rationale for the IJS summer conference, a summary of the sessions, an outline of key themes and issues emerging from it, and a description of plans for the associated output.
Event abstract
The 9th meeting of the International Organization of Tar-gumic Studies will focus on two closely related aspects of Targumic Literature which have become increasingly topi-cal:
1. the Aramaic dialects of the Targums within their Late Antique environment and
2. the development of targumic literature within its wider interpretative milieu.
These aspects will be addressed in two topics each:
*Local influences on the dialect of Onqelos/Jonathan;
*The provenance and integrity of the dialect of the Late Targums;
*The relation between targumic and classical rabbinic ex-egesis;
*The signs of non-rabbinic, late rabbinic or local environ-ments in the Targums.
Event rationale
The Aramaic language of the Targums continues to be dis-cussed in the context of language change and language con-tact. The meeting will consider the following key questions:
*Local influences on the literary dialect of Onqelos and Jonathan: long considered to represent a direct develop-ment of Middle Aramaic, and sometimes held to reflect little to no signs of any specific provenance (Western, Eastern, Central Aramaic), in recent years detailed stud-ies identified ambiguous indications of the dialect in which these Targums are written, more specifically spec-imens of local linguistic influence, which warrant the re-opening of the question about these Targums’ dialect and provenance.
*The literary dialects of Targums to the Writings are now-adays grouped together as Late Jewish Literary Aramaic (LJLA). While this dialect is considered to be a learned, written dialect divested from a vernacular basis, its prov-enance is as yet unclear. In recent years a considerable Syriac influence has been argued, as has a late, possibly European provenance for some of the Targums to the Writings. The study of syntax and exegesis may shed fur-ther light on the provenance and integrity of LJLA.
The second focal point concerns the correlation between the Targums as specimens of interpretation and the wider inter-pretative Jewish milieu. The Targums have usually been con-sidered as part of the Jewish rabbinic textual and exegetical culture, despite serious questions about the exact position of the Targums within their Jewish context:
*How does targumic exegesis relate to its rabbinic paral-lels? To what extent is targumic exegesis paralleled in midrashic literature, and what are the differences in terms of context, presentation, and narrative arc? The mere observation of parallels does not analyse the rela-tionship at a level that is profound enough to be meaning-ful.
*Does targumic exegesis reflect signs of a non-rabbinic, late rabbinic or specific local environment? In spite of the
close connection between targumic and rabbinic exege-sis, and the origin of the Targums in the rabbinic milieu has been called into doubt without settling the issue. Questions have always lingered about the precise rela-tionship between the Targums and the rabbinic milieu, whether in Roman Palestine, Babylonia or local Jewish communities elsewhere.
Visit to the British Library
Monday afternoon the lecturers attended a ‘show-and-tell’ by Dr Ilana Tahan, who showcased some of the most im-portant Hebrew and particularly Aramaic manuscripts in the collection of the British Library. Highlights included the only extant manuscript of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (which fea-tured heavily during the conference), a Yemenite manu-script of the Targum to the Prophets, one of the famous Pe-shitta manuscripts, and much more. There was a lively dis-cussion of these manuscripts.
Summary of the papers
The Keynote papers elaborated on four highly different and yet related fields of Targum Studies: the way Targum relates to Jewish scriptural interpretation, the typology of Jewish Aramaic dialects, the study of the Targumim in the early modern period, and the archaeoacoustics of the early syna-gogues. These were interspersed by many lectures, which will be more briefly touched upon below.
Prof. Robert Hayward delivered the first keynote: ‘Recon-sidering Targum Jonathan Malachi 1:11’. In an intricate, con-textual analysis of this Targum, he demonstrated in detail not only how this verse posed serious difficulties for ancient Jewish exegetes, as it appears to contradict the command-ment that sacrifice be offered in one place only, but also how it solved this conundrum. At the same time, the way this verse and its motifs are treated in early rabbinic literature shows some subtle differences in exegetical choices, most notably the aspect of prayer, which appears not to have been introduced before the Tanhuma other than in the Targum—the passage in the Babylonian Talmud that discusses this
verse, in b. Men. 110a, sidesteps the issue of prayer by a ref-erence to Torah study. Yet the church father Justin suggests that Mal. 1:11 was associated with prayer by the mid-second century CE already.
This lecture was followed by three sessions. The first ses-sion focused on the typological, linguistic and literary con-nections between Targum and other, contemporary litera-tures: Bärry Hartog (University of Groningen) on ‘Pesher and Targum: Revisiting an Old Issue’, who argued that the similarities and dissimilarities from an exegetical perspec-tive should not obscure the fact that both are the scholarly products of an intellectual elite, and both more mainstream than sectarian. In the Q & A session there was a lively debate on the use of scribal techniques, although the authors of both corpora did not identify themselves as scribes. Srecko Koralija (University of Cambridge) spoke about ‘Targum and Peshitta: The Lexeme špr’, arguing that there is a real desid-eratum for a corpus-based lexicon which does not make too close connections between the targumic and syriac employ-ments. In the Q & A Koralija questioned the interdependence between Targum and Peshitta, as it does not do justice to the different interpretative techniques and lexical meanings of lexemes shared by the two dialects of these texts. In the next lecture, David Shepherd returned to the Dead Sea Scrolls, asking the question ‘What’s ‘Targumic’ about the Genesis Apocryphon? Reflections on 1Q20 as an Aramaic version’. The Genesis Apocryphon has literary features which have long been compared to those of targumic literature, some-times in part. Yet the features of GenAp that have been used as arguments for a comparison to the Targums do not follow the targumic practice, in keeping with the other Aramaic fragments from Qumran.
The second session dwelt on the late Aramaic transla-tions. The first two lectures, by Leeor Gottlieb, ‘Is Pseudo-Jonathan a European Targum?’ and Gavin McDowell, ‘The Date and Provenance of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: The Evi-dence of Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer’ startingly converged on very similar, well sustained, and highly innovative argu-ments. Both argued for a provenance in South Italy, and both related the Targum to the 12th century author of Sekhel Tov, written in 1139 CE by R. Menachem ben Solomon. Gottlieb also related the Targum to his work Even Bochan, which dis-plays remarkably close parallels with TgPsJ. He further
pointed out that there is clear knowledge of the Islamic em-pire, but at the same time no familiarity with the geography of Israel. McDowell pointed out that PRE does not display any knowledge of TgPsJ, while the latter uses sources that use PRE. TgPsJ also used the longer recension of the Chroni-cle of Moses. Altogether, the evidence points to a medieval redactor with an antiquarian mentality far beyond the end of the first millennium, and more precisely with an Italian provenance. The Q&A to both lectures were extremely lively, with a general acceptance of the main hypotheses posited by both speakers, but also questions about the nature of the di-alect (LJLA) when it is pushed so close to the composition of the Zohar. The final paper in this session was delivered by Abraham J. Berkovitz, ‘The Late Antique Contexts of Targum Psalms’. In this lecture, the Targum of Psalms was set against the backdrop of late ancient rabbinic literature, selecting and developing late antique sources, joined with traditions from rabbinic literature. The Targum may be the product of the end of a long late antique process of rabbinization.
The third session was opened by Nahum Ben-Yehuda with ‘Textile and Garment Terminology in the Targumim’. In a presentation that was as detailed as it was instructive and clear, the audience was treated to the practice and terminol-ogy of weaving with warp and loom, with a profound discus-sion of the various technical terms used and the practice to which they refer. Matthew Morgenstern presented a survey of ‘Newly Discovered Lexemes in Mandaic’, which included a presentation of the available sources and their vicissitudes, with dates ranging from the 4th century CE (the earliest in-cantation bowls) to manuscripts of the premodern period. While his research will lead to a vastly improved and far more critical lexicon of Mandaic, we were treated to a selec-tion of new Mandaic lexemes. Margaretha Folmer explored ‘The Translation of Biblical Hebrew אל in Targum Onqelos: the Complementation of Verbs of Motion and Verbs of Say-ing’. Among the meanings of the BH preposition, the mean-ing ‘to’ (direction) is the most frequent. In Onqelos, the com-pound preposition לות is used with verbs of motion when the motion is directed towards a person, while ל is used wherever the motion is directed towards a location (with some noted exceptions). The same distinction exists in Old Aramaic and in Official Aramaic.
The second keynote was delivered by Steven Fassberg on the topic of ‘Jewish Palestinian Aramaic: Typology, Geogra-phy, and Chronology’. His presentation carefully delineated the various strata of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, including Samaritan Aramaic and Christian Palestinian Aramaic for comparative purposes. From the dialects of the Palestinian Targums (for which an exact date is impossible to give), yo that of the Talmud Yerushalmi and the Midrashim, up to and including Late Jewish Literary Aramaic. It was noted that CPA and SamA also could be shown to belong to different pe-riods, of which the later phases were 10-13th and 10-11th c. respectively. In fact, late Samaritan Hebrew is of a hybrid na-ture (from the 13th c. onwards). The development of the di-alects did not stop when Aramaic was no longer a spoken language, and LJLA features within the later period of Pales-tinian Aramaic dialects. Lots of specific dialect features were brought into the limelight. In the Q&A the influence of copy-ists was noted, leading to sporadic fluctuations, as was the possibility of conscious scribal choices for the borrowing of elements belonging to a distinct dialect, for example Babylo-nian Aramaic.
The fourth session was opened by Shai Heijmans with an insightful paper on the western pronunciation of the Tar-gum, ‘The segol in Targum Jonathan according to MS Reuch-lin’. Although there is indeed ample reason to distrust (some of) the Western vocalisation in the manuscript tradition, but there is an argument to be made that the pronunciation re-flected in other Western manuscripts does in fact represent a tradition that is genuinely Western. Portions of the text were recited in the synagogue during the medieval period, while the manuscripts were provided with cantillation signs, also suggesting their continued use in liturgical reading. The lecture focused on the occurrence of the segol in Codex Reuchlinianus 3, a vowel which has no base in the Babylo-nian tradition and is accordingly unique to the Western pro-nunciation. The Q&A to the paper dwelled on many aspects of this study, including the date for this pronunciation tradi-tion. The next paper was delivered by Dmytro Tsolin, ‘Com-pound Verbal Forms in Aramaic Dialects of the Targums: Discourse Aspects’. These compound verbal forms are widely used in Jewish Aramaic dialects and occur both in translations and non-translational parts of the corpus. The
question is, whether there are any tense-aspect-modal dif-ferences between these compound verbal forms and non-compound verbs. This paper analysed the compound forms in terms of discourse (narrative, prophecy, speech) and in connection with their positions in comment / narrative, rec-orded / anticipatory, foreground / background-clauses. The third paper was delivered by Alinda Damsma on ‘The Ara-maic of the Zohar: The status quaestionis’. She gave a com-manding overview of scholarship on Zoharic Aramaic which could not have been more timely in the wake of the renewed discussion on LJLA during this very conference. She pro-posed that the language of the Zohar can be considered a type of Late Jewish Literary Aramaic, as it bears striking sim-ilarities to the language of the Tosefta-Targums written in that dialect. She is currently conducting a research project on the language of the Zohar which will culminate in the pub-lication of a much-needed reference grammar of this im-portant form of Aramaic.
The fifth session opened with a paper by Michael Langlois about ‘New Aramaic Divination Texts in Light of the Tar-gums’. Among all these important ostraca, recently discov-ered at Maresha and to be published by Ester Eshel and Mi-chael Langlois, some 137 can be classified as divination texts. However, many of them are notoriously hard to decipher, as demonstrated. The paper went into some detail about the decipherment but also the parallels with targumic literature. The next paper by Miriam Kahana addressed an often over-looked topic, namely ‘Targum Jonathan to the Prophets and the Masoretic Cantillations’. She contrasted Targum with masoretic cantillations, each of which present a different way of dividing the verse, something which frequently gives a different meaning. She demonstrated the Targum’s prefer-ence for a subordinate structure, even when translating par-atactic clauses. In addition, she showed a lack of correlation between cantillations and Targum in ambiguous verses. De-spite the general correlation between the Targum and the cantillation signs, there are notable distinctions between the two. The last paper was delivered by Willem Smelik, ‘Tar-gum Toledot Yeshu’, a study of a new Aramaic fragment of the Toledot Yeshu. This fragment preserves the start of the narrative, but it is presented as a Targum Yerushalmi to Isa. 66.17. Both the narrative and the dialect show up many pe-culiarities. Despite some notable linguistic errors, the dialect
also displays signs of a genuine albeit late dialect. The narra-tive preserves the birth narrative and other motifs, and most importantly, it fully overlaps with the Harkavy fragment published in 1875.
In the sixth session, Dineke Houtman, ‘What’s in a Name: The Translation of Toponyms in Targum Isaiah’, pays close attention to the rendering of geographical and ethnical names. Generally, these remain unaltered, but not always, and these exceptions merit further analysis. The Targum identifies unknown ancient tribes and place names with con-temporary ones, for one, which has the effect of making the Bible more accessible. Sometimes the translator obviously did not know exactly which place or people was meant and chose a quite general translation. And finally, some topo-nyms received a symbolic interpretation. Gary Rendsburg followed this up with a study of ‘Targumic Parallels to Vari-ant Readings of the Book of Samuel amongst the Cairo Geni-zah Manuscripts’. As a pilot project, he read each and every-one of the more than 650 manuscript fragments of the book of Samuel found in the Cairo Genizah. He presented a sam-pling of the variant readings he recorded, in comparison with the evidence from Qumran, the Septuagint, Targum, Pe-shitta and Vulgate. The third lecture was delivered by Jo-hanna Tanja, ‘Tosefta Targums in Targum Samuel’. The Tosefta Targums are not found in the extant Babylonian tex-tual witnesses of the Targum and more of these Tosefta Tar-gums seem to have been preserved in the European manu-scripts and editions and several were attested in specific ge-ographic areas only. The fact that these additions are at-tested in specific geocultural zones raises questions on the specific milieu of transmission. The Tosefta Targums are not attested in the same way, as they can be attached to different verses in the Targum text. Moreover, not all known Tosefta Targums are attested in all manuscripts.
The seventh session was devoted to Aramaic poetry, opened by Moshe Bernstein, ‘An Aramaic Poem for Purim, but It’s Not About Purim!’ This paper addressed the first poem for Purim in the collection that Yahalom and Sokoloff published, although, unlike the other poems in this section, it does not dwell in particular on the Scroll of Esther or on Purim. Instead, it presents a survey of historical attacks on the Jews, culminating in the salvation of the Jews on Purim.
In the second contribution to this session, Laura Lieber ad-dressed the soundscapes of Late Antiquity in ‘Refrains and Acclamations: The Congregational Dynamic within JPA Po-etry’. This study of participation in ritual assumed that the Jews in this period would have been familiar with the wide-spread practice of acclamation, possessing a performative literacy. The variety of refrain structures in this literature is a good place to begin the study the intersection of acclama-tion structures and JPA poetry. Michael Rand spoke about ‘The Use of Aramaic in Classical (Byzantine-era) Palestinian Piyyut, and Beyond’, pointing out that Aramaic does some-times appear in classical piyyut, but there is no transparent pattern to predict when it does or does not appear. However, piyyut is a form of versified prayer, and since the language of prayer is predominantly Hebrew the absence of Aramaic can be explained more generally. The JPA poetry is not piy-yut. Finally, Eliav Grossman explored one of the possible contexts for the JPA poetry in his paper ‘Observations on the Relationship between JPA Poetry and Targumic Expansions’. He pointed out that several themes and images which seem to be specific to JPA poetry in fact also appear in Targumic expansions, sometimes in almost identical formulations.
Philip Alexander delivered the third keynote lecture, ‘The Study of the Targumim in the Early Modern Period, with par-ticular reference to Codex Neofiti and Pseudo-Jonathan to the Torah’. There is still no history of the textual transmis-sion of many targumic texts, especially between Late Antiq-uity and the invention of the printing press. There are some references to targumic manuscripts, not all of them cur-rently known (Azariah de Rossi saw two copies of TgPsJ, only one of which is known today, assuming it is identical with the one housed in the British Library). The Targum was a book that could be creatively transmitted, whereas we only have snapshots of its transmission. We do know that copies of Onqelos and Jonathan were brought back to Israel in the Geonic period, and that Onqelos was dominant, representing the Bible of the (Jewish) Aramaic world. Hence quotations of the Torah in Aramaic that are embedded within Targum Writings often use Targum Onqelos. There is, therefore, a need for regional studies of the manuscripts (Yemenite, Egyptian, Western, etc) and the function of the Targums, which would have differed by the area. Further details fol-lowed about established representatives of these areas. It
was pointed out that the ancient form of the text cannot be disentangled from its subsequent reception, with the open-ing of Targum Neofiti being a case in point (a Qabbalistic Tar-gum of Genesis 1?). The lecture was followed by a lively Q&A session about various aspects of textual transmission and the later reception of the Targums.
The eight session was opened by Craig Morrison, ‘Abra-ham and the Fires of Gehenna in the Palestinian Targums and the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16,19-31)’. This paper focused on the way early Christian and Jew-ish interpreters ascribed sometimes lengthy speeches to Abraham as an eschatological figure, by which means they express the theological interests of their particular commu-nities. Abraham is a tortured soul, wondering whether he’ll make the grade for beatific afterlife. Both traditions illumi-nate each other and extend the traditions of Abraham, and the targumic Abraham shares some characteristics with the Lukan one. Chris Brady analysed the translation of Lam. 1.15 in ‘“The Lord Has Trodden as in a Wine Press,” A Note Re-garding TgLam 1:15 and Isa. 63:3’. He made clear how sev-eral verses are brought into dialogue in this analysis, includ-ing Ezek. 36, and how the interpretation focuses on Edom, the colour and the wine-press. Finally, Eveline van Staaldu-ine-Sulman spoke about ‘The Reception of the Tenth Com-mandment’. The interpretation of the tenth commandment, which teaches not to be covetous, varies over the course of the centuries. Targum Neofiti and Pseudo-Jonathan add at least two points to the whole discussion, namely one con-cerning individual and joint responsibility to fulfil this com-mandment and one concerning the punishment or conse-quence in cases this commandment is violated. In the Q&A session, attention was drawn to the maginalia in Codex Neofiti, some of which features halakhic annotations, while others are similar in style to TgPsJ.
The fourth keynote lecture, and the final paper of the con-ference, was delivered by Paul V.M. Flesher: ‘Where did the Scripture Reader and the Scripture Translator Stand in An-cient Galilean Synagogues?’ In this archaeoacoustic study of the Galilean synagogues, the potential use of an object and the possible positioning of the reciter and the interpreter were discussed on the basis of the floor-plan of these syna-gogues. The difference between a raised bimah and an apse for the way a voice carries was discussed in detail. It