The Targum of Lamentations (Aramaic Bible 17B)

241 Pages·2007·2.39 MB·English

by  Kevin Cathcart

The Targum of Lamentations
The Aramaic Bible
• THE TARGUMS •
PROJECT DIRECTOR
Martin McNamara, M.S.C.
editors
Kevin Cathcart • Michael Maher, M.S.C.
Martin McNamara, M.S.C.
editorial consultants
Daniel J. Harringson, S.J. • Bernard Grossfeld
The Aramaic Bible
Volume 17B
The Targum of Lamentations
Translated, with a Critical Introduction,
Apparatus, and Notes
BY
Philip S. Alexander
A Michael Glazier Book
LITURGICAL PRESS
Collegeville, Minnesota
www.litpress.org
About the Translator
Philip Alexander is Professor of Post-Biblical Jewish Studies in the University of Manchester,
England, Co-Director of the University’s Centre for Jewish Studies, and a Fellow of the British
Academy. He is a former President of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.
A Michael Glazier Book published by Liturgical Press.
Logo design by Florence Bern.
© 2007 by Order of Saint Benedict, Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form, by print, microfilm, microfiche, mechanical recording, photocopying, translation, or by
any other means, known or yet unknown, for any purpose except brief quotations in reviews, without the previous
written permission of Liturgical Press, Saint John’s Abbey, P.O. Box 7500, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321-7500.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bible. O.T. Lamentations. English. Alexander. 2007.
The Targum of Lamentations / translated, with a critical introduction,
apparatus, and notes by Philip S. Alexander.
p. cm. — (The Aramaic Bible ; v. 17B)
“A Michael Glazier Book.”
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8146-5864-2
ISBN-10: 0-8146-5864-4
1. Bible. O.T. Lamentations. Aramaic—Translations into English. 2. Bible. O.T. Lamentations.
Aramaic—Criticism, Textual. I. Alexander, Philip S. II. Title.
BS1533.A44 2007
224'.3042—dc22 2007017616
CONTENTS
EDITORS’ FOREwORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
LIST OF ABBREvIATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
1. The Text of Targum Lamentations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2. The Language of Targum Lamentations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3. The Unity and Integrity of Targum Lamentations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4. The Theology of Targum Lamentations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5. Targum Lamentations and the Masoretic Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
6. Targum Lamentations in the History of Exegesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
7. Targum Lamentations and Jewish Liturgy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
8. The Provenance and Date of Targum Lamentations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
9. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
TRANSLATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
APPENDIx
Targum Lamentations in the Yemenite Recension:
Translation and Apparatus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
INDEx OF SCRIPTURAL AND OTHER ANCIENT REFERENCES . . . . . . . . 208
INDEx OF MODERN AUTHORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
GENERAL INDEx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

EDITORS’ FOREwORD
while any translation of the Scriptures may in Hebrew be called a Targum, the word is used
especially for a translation of a book of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic. Before the Christian
era Aramaic had in good part replaced Hebrew in Palestine as the vernacular of the Jews. It
continued as their vernacular for centuries later and remained in part as the language of the
schools after Aramaic itself had been replaced as the vernacular.
Rabbinic Judaism has transmitted Targums of all books of the Hebrew canon, with the
exception of Daniel and Ezra-Nehemiah, which are themselves partly in Aramaic. we also
have a translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch into the dialect of Samaritan Aramaic. From
the Qumran library we have sections of a Targum of Job and fragments of a Targum of Le-
viticus, chapter 16, facts which indicate that the Bible was being translated into Aramaic in
pre-Christian times.
Translations of books of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic for liturgical purposes must
have begun before the Christian era, even though none of the Targums transmitted to us by
Rabbinic Judaism can be shown to be that old and though some of them are demonstrably
compositions from later centuries.
In recent decades there has been increasing interest among scholars and a larger public
in these Targums. A noticeable lacuna, however, has been the absence of a modern English
translation of this body of writing. It is in marked contrast with most other bodies of Jewish
literature, for which there are good modern English translations, for instance the Apocrypha
and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, Josephus, Philo, the Mishnah, the Babylonian
Talmud and Midrashic literature, and more recently the Tosefta and Palestinian Talmud.
It is hoped that this present series will provide some remedy for this state of affairs.
The aim of the series is to translate all the traditionally-known Targums, that is those
transmitted by Rabbinic Judaism, into modern English idiom, while at the same time respecting
the particular and peculiar nature of what these Aramaic translations were originally intended
to be. A translator’s task is never an easy one. It is rendered doubly difficult when the text to
be rendered is itself a translation which is at times governed by an entire set of principles.
All the translations in this series have been specially commissioned. The translators have
made use of what they reckon as the best printed editions of the Aramaic Targum in question
or have themselves directly consulted the manuscripts.
The translation aims at giving a faithful rendering of the Aramaic. The introduction
to each Targum contains the necessary background information on the particular work. In
general, each Targum translation is accompanied by an apparatus and notes. The former is
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viii Editors’ Foreword
concerned mainly with such items as the variant readings in the Aramaic texts, the relation
of the English translation to the original, etc. The notes give what explanations the translator
thinks necessary or useful for this series.
Not all the Targums here translated are of the same kind. Targums were translated at dif-
ferent times, and most probably for varying purposes, and have more than one interpretative
approach to the Hebrew Bible. This diversity between the Targums themselves is reflected in
the translation and in the manner in which the accompanying explanatory material is presented.
However, a basic unity of presentation has been maintained. Targumic deviations from the
Hebrew text, whether by interpretation or paraphrase, are indicated by italics.
A point that needs to be stressed with regard to this translation of the Targums is that
by reason of the state of current targumic research, to a certain extent it must be regarded as
a provisional one. Despite the progress made, especially in recent decades, much work still
remains to be done in the field of targumic study. Not all the Targums are as yet available
in critical editions. And with regard to those that have been critically edited from known
manuscripts, in the case of the Targums of some books the variants between the manuscripts
themselves are such as to give rise to the question whether they have all descended from a
single common original.
Details regarding these points will be found in the various introductions and critical
notes.
It is recognized that a series such as this will have a broad readership. The Targums con-
stitute a valuable source of information for students of Jewish literature, particularly those
concerned with the history of interpretation, and also for students of the New Testament,
especially for those interested in its relationship to its Jewish origins. The Targums also con-
cern members of the general public who have an interest in the Jewish interpretation of the
Scriptures or in the Jewish background to the New Testament. For them the Targums should
be both interesting and enlightening.
By their translations, introductions, and critical notes, the contributors to this series have
rendered an immense service to the progress of targumic studies. It is hoped that the series,
provisional though it may be, will bring significantly nearer the day when the definitive trans-
lation of the Targums can be made.
Kevin Cathcart Martin McNamara, m.s.c. Michael Maher, m.s.c.
PREFACE
It is with an immense sense of relief that I conclude this study of the Targum of Lamentations,
which has occupied my attention on and off for over twenty years—ever since I published
my first thoughts on the subject in 1986. Though I have had plenty of time for my ideas to
mature and, given the brevity of the biblical book on which it is based, the present volume
might be considered full, I am still conscious of having at a number of points only scratched
the surface. A complete edition of the Targumic text that adequately presents both the west-
ern and the Yemenite recensions remains a desideratum, though we have competent editions
of the individual traditions. A comprehensive analysis of the Targum’s Aramaic dialect is
lacking, and the basic tools for such an analysis (concordances and a grammar based on the
manuscripts) do not exist. Lexically we are still not well off for this Targum. Time and again
we have to fall back on Jastrow, who at least had the courage to tackle all the vocabulary
in the text, even if his judgments are sometimes questionable. The Targum’s relationship to
Lamentations Rabba, and the place it held in the commemoration of the destruction of Jeru-
salem in late antiquity, would repay further investigation even after the present study. There
are, surely, several potential doctoral dissertations here!
Over the years I have come to the settled conviction that a text like this can be understood
only by putting it in the widest possible setting, and this is what I have tried to do. No aspect of
Judaism in late antiquity can be understood unless it is triangulated with what was happening
not only in the contemporary Jewish world but in the Christian and pagan worlds as well. I
refer not so much to political events as to developments in the intellectual, religious, literary,
and social spheres. The study of the Targum is hampered by too narrow a focus.
when I first began my work in the 1980s, Lamentations seemed to be languishing in a
backwater of biblical studies. In the past two decades it has moved sharply toward the center
of discussion and debate, its representation of the voice of suffering humanity uncannily
resonant in a world that sees daily on television and in the newspapers searing images of the
pitiless destruction of cities, the anguish of the wounded, the bereaved, the dispossessed, the
barbarism of “ethnic cleansing.” There has been a flood of recent studies on the book, of which
I would single out for special mention Todd Linafelt’s monograph Surviving Lamentations,
F.w. Dobbs-Allsopp’s commentary in the Interpretation series, and Nancy C. Lee’s Singers
of Lamentations. All this has enriched and complicated my own analysis of the Targum,
since the interpretation of the Targum is inextricably bound up with the interpretation of the
biblical book.
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