Section I: On the Chaldaic Version of the Old Testament
Section I: On the Chaldaic Version of the Old Testament
§ 505. In our treatise De method. stud. theolog., part 2, sect. 1, c. 3, we said that there exists a triple Targum: (1) The Babylonian, whose author is Jonathan, son of Uziel, pupil of Hillel and fellow student of Simeon the Just. He translated the Old Testament into Chaldaic a hundred years before the destruction of the second temple, that is, forty-two years before Christ’s birth.
** (Jonathan actually translated the entire corpus of the Old Testament, according to Galatinus, but his work is extant only in the earlier and later prophets, that is, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets.) **
(2) The Targum Onkelos, whose author is Onkelos, pupil of Rabbi Eliezer the Great, nephew of the Emperor Titus on the side of Titus’s sister, who wrote his own paraphrase after Jonathan, almost a hundred years after the destruction of the second temple.
** Some think (and Bellarmine is among them) that an Adam wrote the Onkelos. Galatinus, however, makes a distinction and notes that the Jews claim that he was the son of the Emperor Titus’s sister and became a proselyte. There is also a witness that he translated the entire Old Testament, though nothing but the Pentateuch is extant. The rest they attribute both to Aquila and to some blind man named Joseph, who, the learned complain, were too interested in Jewish fables. **
(3) The Jerusalem Targum, later than the others, having the place of a commentary rather then of a paraphrase. If those things are true that Reuchlin writes—De verb. mirif., bk. 1, c. 13: “At the time of the ancient philosophers, the Holy Scripture of the Hebrews began to be held in such honor and such great and frequent respect among the Babylonians to the point that they provided for it to be translated from its own language into Chaldaic,” and this around the fifty-sixth Olympiad, that is, at the time of Thales, who, as Otto Frisingensis says, lived at the time of Isaiah (bk. 2, c. 5)—then it is necessary for another Chaldaic translation to have existed, older than all three Targumim that are extant today. (Cf. Helvicus, Tractat. de Chaldaic. paraphr., c. 2, p. 12, where he proves that many Targumim once existed.)
§ 506. The Jews assign great significance to this Chaldaic version. Consequently, it is written in the book Bava Bathra that “at the time that Jonathan was busy with this translation, if a fly or some flying insect had flown over him or his paper, they were burned up by divine fire without any harm to him or to his paper.” Also, that “the angels flew down from heaven to listen when he gave his attention to his studies.” In the book Sukkah, f. 28, they even give the Targumim the same authority as the Hebrew text, and no Jew dares contradict them. The Talmudists write, Juchasin reporting, f. 45: “Jonathan received his targumic doctrine from the prophets Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi; but Onkelos received his from Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Jehoshua, who themselves received it from the prophets.” Also: “When Jonathan was interpreting Scripture, all Palestine was shaken by an earthquake, and a voice from heaven cried out: ‘Who is this who is revealing My secrets to the sons of men?’ Jonathan replied: ‘It is I who am doing it, but not for my glory nor for that of my father, but for Your glory.’ “In the book Megillah, c. 1, they are not afraid even to declare that “Moses first received the Chaldaic paraphrase on Mount Sinai and handed it down to the elders and prophets. After it had been buried in oblivion during the Babylonian captivity, those paraphrasts again called it back into the light.”
We, on the other hand, however useful we claim it is, connect the Chaldaic translation to the Hebrew text both because of the authority that it commands among the Jews, against whom it could be set forth strongly, and because of the perspicuity of its exposition in many passages; for wherever in the Hebrew truth Christ is discussed with a veiled name, there in the Chaldaic paraphrase the word “Messiah” is almost always used expressly. Nevertheless we deny that the Chaldaic paraphrase is authentic or that we must make it the equivalent of the Hebrew text. This is because: (1) It is a translation, thus it is not authentic.
(2) In the more obscure passages, it has been in large part conflated from the Greek Septuagint translation, according to Munsterus (preface to Jonas quadriling.).
(3) It contains some Jewish fables and corruptions. In Num. 21:18 it gives the story about the well that the Hebrews imagine descended “with the children of Israel to the torrents and from the torrents ascended with them to the hills and from the hills again descended to the valleys.” This rabbinic fable originated from an incorrect interpretation of this passage.
(4) In some places it departs from the sources of truth, that is, from the Hebrew text. In Gen. 4:23 it says, “Lamech did not slay a man.” (Franciscus Junius responds that we must take this interrogatively, so that 
is understood as placed for 
, “is it not?” Schindlerus lists examples of this meaning in his Lexicon, p. 929. Helvicus responds: “Onkelos does not simply deny that Lamech slew a man. Instead, he denies it in a delimited manner, namely, that he did not slay him in such a way as to bring punishment or destruction upon himself and his posterity,” which is also how Jonathan interprets it.)
Lev. 10:6 and 21:[10]: “Do not let the hair grow on your heads.” The Hebrew has the contrary: “Do not shave your heads.” (Some respond that in Hebrew the word is 
which means “to make free, to allow free,” whence it is placed here as an uncovering of the head, Num. 5:18, and interpreters commonly explain it in this sense. Lev. 10:6: “regarding the uncovering of the head and the removal of hair.” There are some who explain the word here on the basis of the traditions of the Hebrews concerning an excess of hair: “Do not let your hair become excessive or grow too long,” because it once was the custom of those who mourned to let their hair grow and to abstain from shaving as a sign of grief, and they went about with their hair unkempt, something they say the chief priest was not allowed to do.)
In Num. 23:9, where the Hebrew text reads “the people will dwell alone,” the Chaldaic has rendered it: “Lo, the people will possess the age,” for they are awaiting that age when they would rule. In Deut. 4:28 and 28:64, where Scripture foretells that “the Hebrews will serve other gods,” the Chaldaic translation turns this sin from the Hebrews to the Gentiles. (See more about the Targumim in Fagius, preface to Chald. paraphr. pentat., which he himself translated; Neander, Erotem. sanct. linguae, p. 408; and Helvicus, loc. cit.)