Aramaic targums and daily religious life

Tyumen State University Herald. Humanities Research. Humanitates


Release:

2023, Vol. 9. № 2 (34)

Title: 
Aramaic targums and daily religious life


For citation: Sidorenko N. V. (2023). Aramaic targums and daily religious life. Tyumen State University Herald. Humanities Research. Humanitates, 9 (2), 6–25. https://doi.org/10.21684/2411-197X-2023-9-2-6-25

About the author:

Natalia V. Sidorenko, Postgraduate student, Faculty of Philology, Saint Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia; nat.vlad.sidorenko@gmail.com; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8382-291X

Abstract:

The connection between the written Targums, which are translations of Sacred Scripture into Aramaic, and the oral Targums used in synagogues is not well understood. Rabbinical tradition suggests that the Targums were written to make Scripture understandable to ordinary people during synagogue readings. However, the article argues that the Targums were also associated with various aspects of daily religious life, reflecting the ideas and realities of the 4th–5th c. CE when they were created. We discuss discrepancies between written rules and real-life practices, individual and communal study of Targums, their place in translation and commentary traditions, and traces of oral speech in their language. We also explore their use in protective spells inscribed on “magic cups.” Finally, we draw typological parallels between Targumic texts and Church Slavonic liturgical language in the early 20th c., both designed to preserve sacred languages in worship.

References:

Alekseev, A. A. (2002). The first Russian translation of the New Testament printed in 1823. In L. N. Smirnov (Ed.). The Role of Bible Translations in the Formation and Development of Slavic Literary Languages (pp. 7–38). Institut slavjanovedenija RAN. [In Russian]

The Bible. (1876). Books of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments (The Synodal Translation).

Kraveckij, A. G. (Foreword, Ed., Publ.) (1998). Holy Council of the Orthodox Russian Church. From the materials of the Department on worship, preaching and the temple. Bogoslovskie Trudy, 34, 201–388. [In Russian]

Pletneva, A. A., & Kraveckij, A. G. (2001). History of the Church Slavonic language in Russia (late 19th–20th c.). Yazyki russkoy kul’tury. [In Russian]

Fedotov, G. P. (1938). Slavonic or Russian language in worship. Put’, (57), 3–28. [In Russian]

Fomicheva, S. V., & Bitner, K. A. (2022). Targums. In Orthodox Encyclopedia (Vol. LXVII, pp. 456–470). Pravoslavnaya entsiklopediya. [In Russian]

Chizhevskiy, I. L. (1881). Church Record Keeping. Tipo-litografiya Okruzhnogo shtaba. [In Russian]

Chistovich, I. A. (1899). The History of the Translation of the Bible into Russian. Tipografiya Stasyulevicha. [In Russian]

Alexander, Ph. S. (1989). The Aramaic Version of the Song of Songs. Documents, études et répertoires de l’Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes Année, (42), 119–131.

Edwards, Th. (2007). Exegesis in the Targum of Psalms: The Old, the New, and the Rewritten. Gorgias Press.

Fine, S. (2002). ‘Their Faces Shine with the Brightness of the Firmament’. Study Houses and Synagogues in the Targumim to the Pentateuch. In F. W Knobloch (Ed.). Biblical Translation in Context Bethesda (pp. 63–92). University Press of Maryland.

Flesher, P., Chilton, B. (2011). The Targums. A Critical Introduction. Brill.

Fraade, S. (1992). Rabbinic Views on the Practice of Targum, and Multilingualism in the Jewish Galilee of the Third-Sixth Centuries. In L. Levine (Ed.). The Galilee in Late Antiquity (pp. 253–286). Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Grohmann, M. (2005). ‘The Word is very near to you!’ (Deut 30:14). Reader-Oriented Intertextuality in Jewish and Christian Hermeneutics. Old Testament Essays, (18), 240–252.

Joosten, J. (2016). How Old is the Targumic Tradition? Traces of the Jewish Targum in the Second Temple Period, and Vice Versa. In A. P. Otero & P. T. Morales. (Eds.). The Text of the Hebrew Bible and Its Editions. Studies in Celebration of the Fifth Centennial of the Complutensian Polyglot (pp. 143–159). Brill.

Kahle, P. (1948). Das zur Zeit Jesu in Palästina gesprochene Aramäisch. Theologische Rundschau, 17 (3), 201–216.

Kaufman, S. A. (1973). Unique Magic Bowl from Nippur. Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 32, 140–143.

Kaufman, S. A. (1985). On Methodology in the Study of the Targums and their Chronology. Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 23, 117–124.

Kutscher, E. Y. (1960). Das zur Zeit Jesu gesprochene Aramäisch. Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 51, 46–54.

Lasair, S. (2009). Theorizing in the absence of a theory: the case of the Aramaic Targums to the Pentateuch. TranscUlturAl, 1 (2), 81–92.

McNamara, M. (1966). The New Testament and the Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch. Pontifical Biblical Institute.

McNamara, M. (1992). Targum Neofiti 1: Genesis. Translated, with Apparatus and Notes (ArBib IA). Liturgical Press.

Müller-Kessler C. (2001). The earliest evidence for Targum Onqelos from Babylonia and the question of its dialect and origin. Journal for the Aramaic Bible, 3, 181–198.

Osawa, K. (2011/12). Jannes and Jambres: The Role and Meaning of Their Traditions in Judaism. Sonderdruck Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge, 37, 55–73.

Ribera, J. (1994). The Targum: From Translation to Interpretation. In D. R. G. Beattie & M. McNamara. (Eds.). The Aramaic Bible. Targums in Their Historical Context (pp. 218–225). Sheffield Academic Press.

Samely, A. (2007). Forms of Rabbinic Literature and Thought: An Introduction. Oxford UP.

Sefaria.org. (n. d.) A Living Library of Torah Texts Online. Retrieved May 21, 2023 from https://www.sefaria.org/texts

Shaked, Sh. (2013). Aramaic Bowl Spells. In Jewish Babylonian Aramaic Bowls (Vol. 1). Brill.

Smelik, W. (1999). The Rabbinic reception of early Bible translations as Holy Writings and Oral Torah. Journal for the Aramaic Bible, 1, 249–272.

Smelik, W. (2007). Code-switching: the Public Reading of the Bible in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. In L. Morenz & S. Schorch (Eds.). Was ist ein Text? Alttestamentliche, ägyptologische und altorientalistische Perspektiven (pp. 123–151). Walter de Gruyter.

Waller, D. (2020). ‘I Descended to the Depths of the Earth’: A Rhetorical Poetics of the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic Incantation Bowls. Dis. University of Groningen.

Wilcox, M. (1994). The Aramaic background of the New Testament. In D. R. G. Beattie, & M. McNamara (Eds.). The Aramaic Bible. Targums in Their Historical Context (pp. 362–378). Sheffield Academic Press.