G. E. Post.
TARGET.— l.=ft mark to aim at; see Mark (vol. iii. p. 244). 2. = a shield; see BUCKLER and Shield.
TARGUM (c'j-iB * 'translation,' 'interpretation, cf. cj-ir3 Ezr 4'j. — The Targums are the transla- tions or paraphrases of the OT books made in the Aram, dialect, wliich superseded Hebrew as a spoken language among the Jewish population of Palestine and Babylon. The language of the Targums was formerly called Chaldee, but, while the incorrectness of this is universally recognized, no quite satisfactory designation has replaced it. The Targums w ere composed in Palestine ; their language is the Aramaic of Juda-a, a later repre- sentative of the Aramaic already found in Ezra and Daniel, t In the features that chiefly distin- guish Eastern and Western Aramaic it agrees with the old Pal. forms as against the dialect of the Bab. Talmud. Those Targums that were offici- ally recognized in the Bab. schools probably owe something to the infiuence of the Aramaic spoken by those who edited and copied them, while the influence of the Hebrew is seen in those transla- tions which exhibit least tendency to free com- position and paraphrase.!
Jewish tradition connects the origin of the Targums with the need for an intelligible trans- lation felt b\- those who no longer spoke or easily understood the Heb. language. The disuse of Ueb. as the vernacular of the Jews, before the en- croachments of Aramaic on all sides, was a very gradual process, and was probably not general much before the time of Christ. Several books or parts of books in the OT canon stand as proof that Heb. was written and read fully three cen- turies after the return from Babylon. The bilin- gual character of the books of fezra and Daniel (liowever it is to be explained) presupposes equal familiarity with both languages. Then the Semitic words which occur in the NT are, with few excep- tions, Aramaic. Probably the desire to pos-sesa explanations of the Heb. text in Aramaic made itself felt in some places earlier than in others. The first translations consisted of the oral explana- tions given along with the reailing of the Sabbath lessons in the sjTiagogue. These were made by a class or guild of interpreters called mct/iorge- manim (c':Dnirc), appointed for the i)urpose, but in no sense was their exposition regarded as official or 'authorized.' How far back tlie custom extended we cannot be certain. The Mishna (c. 200 A.D.) contains some rules made to regulate the practice.§ Thus the reading of the Law was to proceed verse by verse, first in Heb. by the reader, and then its Aram, equivalent by the mcthorginidn. In the reading of the lesson from the Prophets three verses at a time might be read, to be followed by their Aram, rendering. There is no mention here of reading out of written Targums, and elsewhere || the use of such writ- ings was forbidden, at least for the Law, in the Sabbath .service, but not the preparation and use of them by individuals for private studj' or .school instruction (see, further, art. Synagogue, p. 641''). There must therefore have been a time wlien the caprice of the mithorgiman contributed to the form of the translation, and in fact it is known that certain renderings which have found their way into the Targums were not approved. H Nevertlie- less, tlie general phraseology of the oral trans- lations would tend to become fixed by the custom of learning them, and by the recurring u.se of them in public. Thus we find in NT times trace3 of Aram, renderings of Heb. verses in books like
• Etymology unknown ; probably non-Semitic, t Noldeke, 00.il, 1872, p. 8281. ; Die SemitUchen Sprachtn 1899, p. 351.
I NoHeke, LU. Centralbl. 18T7, p. S04t., 1884, p. 1345 L Daltnan, Grammatik, p. 9, ZMe Wartt Jau, pp. 6«, 67.
ft Meg, iv. 4.
II JeruB. Mtg. Iv. 1.
S See passages enumerated in Dalman, QrvMnatdt, p. 24.
N
TAKGUM
TAKGUM
679
the Psalms.* The agreement of these vcith read- ings still found in Targunis, which we know were not reduced to their present form till long after, cannot be purely accidental. The tradition of the conliscation of a Targuni on Job in the 1st cent. A.D.t sliows that written Targunis existed then, though the use of them was not countenanced liy the authorities and guardians of the sacred text. Of the chanicter of these earliest attempts at translating the lleb. Scriptures into Aramaic we know notliing, as none of tiium have come down to us. All those in our liands are the products of a much later time, none perliaps older than the 4th or 5th cent. A.D. Like much else in Jewi-sb literature, these late productions were based upon older exegetic material, the origin of which lies far behind our lirst means of access to it. But it is no longer possible for us to separate the diti'erent strata and assign them to dill'erent ages of com- position. The examinations of them which have betn made in this direction do not yield asuflicient number of cases of distinctly older contents to enable us with conlidence to assign them to an early date, embedded as they are in documents admittedly late, of which they share the linguistic a.'xd other peculiarities.
The Targums now known to be extant are as follows : —