Aramaic (Jewish Literary / Targumic)Translation tradition (preserved in numerous medieval manuscripts and printed editions)

Targum Onkelos

Also called Targum Onqelos, Babylonian Targum to the Pentateuch.

Date
Composed 1st to 2nd century AD; standard form fixed by the 5th century AD
Tradition
Jewish Aramaic translation (Targum)
Type
Translation tradition (preserved in numerous medieval manuscripts and printed editions)
Material
Parchment manuscripts; later printed editions
Place of origin
Composed in Palestine; redacted and authorized in Babylonia
Current location
Preserved in many manuscripts; principal witness: British Library Or. 2363 and the Yemenite tradition
Text type
Aramaic targum (largely literal)
Extent
Complete Pentateuch in Aramaic translation
Books witnessed
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy
Scribal features
Attributed by tradition to Onkelos the proselyte, often identified with the Aquila who produced the Greek translation though this identification is debated; the most literal of the surviving targums on the Pentateuch; given semi-canonical status in Babylonian Judaism and read alongside the Hebrew Torah in synagogue (one verse Hebrew, one verse Aramaic); the standard targum cited throughout the Talmud

Reflection

By the time Jesus was born, Hebrew was a sacred language but no longer the everyday speech of the Jewish people. The exiles had returned from Babylon speaking Aramaic. For the Torah to be heard in the synagogue, it had to be translated as it was read. The targumim — the Aramaic translations — were born out of that pastoral necessity.

Targum Onkelos is the most important of them for the Pentateuch. The work was probably composed in Palestine in the first or second century AD and was redacted into its standard form by Jewish scholars in Babylonia by the fifth. Tradition names a proselyte called Onkelos as its author, sometimes identifying him with the Aquila who produced a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible around AD 130. Modern scholarship has not been able to confirm or deny that identification.

What is clear is the character of the translation. Onkelos is largely literal. He follows the Hebrew closely, but he smooths out anthropomorphisms — where the Hebrew says God's hand, Onkelos often says the power of God; where the Hebrew has God descending or seeing, Onkelos has the Memra (the Word) of God. Those substitutions tell us something about how Jewish theology in the late Second Temple and early rabbinic period thought about divine transcendence — and they form part of the conceptual background of John's prologue, where the Word who was with God and who was God becomes flesh.

For the believer today, Targum Onkelos is a witness to the care with which the Jewish people preserved Moses for a people who could no longer read him in Hebrew. The Pentateuch Jesus quoted was the Hebrew text behind Onkelos. The translation Onkelos made shows us the Torah in the language Jesus spoke. The Word the synagogue heard is the Word who came to dwell among us.

Why this manuscript matters

  • Aramaic Pentateuch
  • Babylonian Jewish tradition
  • synagogue use
  • literal translation