duica (Lips. 1820); Mayhaum, Die A ntkrnpomorphten und Anihropopathien bei Onkelos, etc. (Breslau, 1870); Ge'iger, .Judische Zeitschrift, 1871, p. 85-104; nDTlS "lib, or a commentary on Onkelos by Dr. Adler in the edition of the Pentateuch with ten commentaries (Wilna, 1874); and the literature given in the art. Onkelos in this Cyclopadia.
HI. Jonathan ben-Uzziel 07i the Prophets, i. e. Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets, stands next in time and im- portance to Onkelos.
1. Authorship and Sources. — As to Jonathan himself, we read in the Talmud — (1.) " Eighty disciples had Hil- lel the elder, thirty of wliom were worthy that the She- chinah [Divine Majesty] should rest upon them, as it did upon Closes our Lord; peace be upon him. Thirty of them were worthy that the sini should stand still at their bidding, as it did at that of Joshua ben -Nun. Twenty were of intermediate worth. The greatest of them all was Jonathan bcn-Uzziel, the least R. Joohanan ben-Zachai; and it was said of R. Jochanan ben-Zachai that he left not [ uninvestigated] the Bible, the Mishna, the Gemara, the Halachalis, the Haggadahs, the subtle- ties of the law, and the subtleties of the Sopherim . . . ; the easy things and the ilifficult things [from the most awfid divine mysteries to the common popular prov- erbs]. . . . If this is said of the least of them, what is to be said of the greatest, i.e. Jonathan ben-Uzziel?" {Baba Bathra, 134 a; comp. Sukkah, 28 a). ('5.) A sec- ond passage, referring more especially to our present sub- ject, reads as follows: "The Targum of Onkelos was made by Onkelos the Proselyte from the mouth of R. Eliezer and R. Jchoshua, and that of the prophets by Jonathan ben-Uzziel from the mouth of Haggai, Zech- ariah, and Malachi. And in that hour was the land of Israel shaken three hundred parasangs. . . . And a voice was heard, saying, 'Who is this who has revealed my secrets unto the sons of man?' Up rose Jonathan ben- Uzziel and said, ' It is I who have revealed thy secrets to the Sons of man. . . . But it is known and revealed before thee that not for my honor have I done it, nor for the honor of my father's house, Init for thine honor, that the ilisputes may cease in Israel.' . . . And he fur- ther desired to reveal the Targum to the Ilagiographa, when a voice was heard, 'Enough.' And why? Be- cause the ilay of the Messiah is revealed therein" {Me- ffillah, 3 a).
There is some exaggeration in this dcscri|ition of Jonathan's paraphrase, but it only shows the high es- teem in which it stood. Fabulous as the whole may appear, yet there is no doubt as to the high antiquity of this paraphrase. Many doubts were raised as to the authorship of this Targum. Some, who would not deny the existence of Jonathan, hesitate to believe that he had any share in the Targum commonly ascribed to him. It has also been suggested by Luzzato and Gei- ger th&t'''' Jonathan is the same with the Greek Theodo- tion, and that the Babylonians gave this name to the paraphrase — especially as thej- were acquainted with that of Jonathan ben-Uzziel — to indicate that the Tar- gum was after the manner of Theodolion, like the re- puted origin of the name Onkelos in connection with the Greek Akilas or Aqnila." But this more ingenious than true suggestion has no support, and needs no refutation. It has also been suggested bj' most of the modern critics that because this Targum is never once quoted as the Targum of Jonathan, but is invariably in- troduced with the formula ~D1^ "l Cj"ini:n2, "as R. Joseph interprets," that not Jonathan, but R.Joseph, is the author of this Targum; and tills supposition is based upon the fact that the. Talmud relates that this R. Joseph, in his latter years, occupied himself chiefly with the Targum when he had become blind. This re- lation of the Talmud, and perhaps the fact that Jona- than's Targum, which was called, by way of abbrevia-
TARGUM
208
TARGUM
tion, "^r, i. e. 1^131'' C15"in, made Joseph the author of this Targum, since "^H may also mean vDT^ CIJIP, or something else, and the real Targum is now quoted under Josepli's name. That Jonathan's Targum was realh' extant before the time of K. Joseph we see from McgUhth, 3 a, where on Zech. xii, 12 K. Joseph remarks, " Without the Targum to this passage, we could not understand it;" but when the writer of the art. " Targum" in Smith's J)ict. of the Bible remarks, "Twice even it is quoted in Joseph's name, and with the addition, 'Without the Targum to this verse (due to him ), we could not understand it,'" he only betrays his carelessness as to the Talmudic sentence. After all, we do not see why we should not rely upon the Talmudic notice concerning Jonathan equally as much as upon that concerning R. Joseph. The language con- cerning the former, we admit, is a little hyperbolical, but this does not exclude the truth of the matter. Besides, there is nothing to militate against Jonathan having written a Targum on the prophets ; and even the ex- pression that this Targum was made " from the mouth of Haggai, Zechariah, and Jlalachi" is not so absurd as the writer of the art. "Targum'" in Kitto's Ci/cloprndia would suppose, for if it means anything, it means this, that the explanation of Jonathan contains the transmit- ted exposition in the spirit of Hillel, and, as Zunz re- marks {Gottesd. Vorh'df/e, p. 332), ''Jonathan's Targum on the prophets, as a result of studies which were in- strumental in forming fixed national opinidus, proves that a considerable time before it was customary to ex- plain the contents of the prophetical books, by means of Targumical prelections or otherwise, to the public. Nay, he commends the teachers for — even in evil times — teaching the law in the synagogues at the head of the congregations" (Targ. on Judg. v, 2, 9). From the New Test, we know that Moses and the prophets were read in the sjMiagogues, and, deducting all hyperbolical language, there is no reason for doubting tlie high an- tiquity of this Targum. The text is rendered, in the same manner as by Onkelos, free from all one-sided and polemical considerations, which the Jews since the 2d century followed. Many passages are referred to the Messiah, even such as do not rightly belong to him, so that no polemical tendency against Christians ap- pears in the version. The following is a list of them : 1 Sam. ii, 10 ; 2 Sam. xxiii, 3 ; 1 Kings iv, 33 ; Isa. iv, 2; ix, 6; x, 27; xi, 1, 6; xv, 2; xvi, 1-5; xxviii, 5; xlii, 1; xliii, 10; xlv, 1; lii, 13; liii, 10; Jer. xxiii, 5; xxx, 21; xxxiii, 13, 15; Hos. iii, 5; xiv, 8; Mic. iv, 8; v, 2. 18; Zech. iii, 8; iv, 7; vi, 12; x,4.