The date a text was written does not establish when its traditions began, since stories and interpretations may circulate for generations before they are recorded. Dating those traditions requires separate evidence, such as an earlier version in another source. The Aramaic translations of scripture known as the Targums are well-known examples of this, as they preserve traditions found centuries earlier in other texts.
Dating Copies and Written Texts
The surviving manuscripts of several Aramaic Targums were copied much later than the texts they preserve. The manuscript of Targum Neofiti was copied in 1504 or 1499, the Fragment Targum manuscripts come from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, and the fragments recovered from the Cairo Genizah were copied no earlier than about the seventh century.[1] These dates establish when the surviving copies were made, leaving the dates of their composition to be assessed through other evidence.[2]
The Aramaic dialects of the Targums provide broad chronological ranges, placing an early stage of Onkelos roughly between 50 and 150 CE and the Palestinian Targums probably no earlier than the late second century. Dialect offers little help in dating Pseudo-Jonathan, whose language is harder to assign to a particular period.[3] Even the proposed endpoints for the Palestinian Targums leave a window of some 250 years, too wide to identify a particular historical setting for their composition.[4]
Dating References and Later Additions
A reference to a historical event can establish the earliest possible date of a passage in its surviving form. The Aramaic Targum Pseudo-Jonathan mentions the six orders of the Mishnah, placing that reference no earlier than about 200 CE, and Constantinople, founded in the fourth century. These references do not establish when every part of the Targum was composed, because a passage may preserve an older interpretation or have been added to an existing text by a later copyist.[5]
In the Aramaic Targum Pseudo-Jonathan at Genesis 21:21, Ishmael marries a woman named Adisha and later one named Fatima. The names have been identified with Muhammad's wife and daughter, placing this form of the passage in the Islamic period, though the reference may be a later addition to the Targum.[6] Reciters and copyists could update a tradition's language and details, so evidence of an early origin does not exclude later additions.[7] Different traditions preserved within the same Targum may therefore require different dates.[8]
Early Evidence of Written Translation
The Qumran manuscripts provide early evidence of Aramaic biblical translation, including a Targum of Job copied around 50 CE whose language may place its composition around 150–100 BCE. An Aramaic fragment of Leviticus 16 from the same caves was copied in the second century BCE.[9] These manuscripts establish that written Aramaic translations existed at those dates, without establishing when the later Targums were composed. The age of a practice and the age of a particular text remain separate questions, even when both involve translating the same scriptures.
Earlier Evidence for Individual Traditions
An independently dated text can establish that a tradition preserved in a later work was already in circulation.[10] The Palestinian Targums retell the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22 so that Isaac asks his father to bind him well and accepts his part willingly. This interpretation appears under the name of the second-century Rabbi Akiba, while Isaac's willingness is already implied in the Jewish Antiquities of Josephus, 4 Maccabees, and the Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo-Philo.[11] Other passages on Isaac's binding in the same Targums assume that the Temple has already been destroyed, showing that the tradition continued to develop as it was retold.[12]
Want to learn more about this? Retelling the Akedah
Mark and Luke provide earlier parallels to traditions preserved in later Targums. The Aramaic Targum of Isaiah ends Isaiah 6:10 with forgiveness, where the Hebrew and the Greek Septuagint translation speak of healing, and Mark 4:12 likewise refers to forgiveness.[13]
The instruction in Luke 6:36 to be merciful as the Father is merciful has a close counterpart in the Aramaic Targum Pseudo-Jonathan at Leviticus 22:28. The parallel suggests that the later Targum preserves a tradition already attested in Luke, without establishing a first-century date for the Targum itself.[14]
What Early Parallels Can Establish
An early parallel establishes that a tradition existed by a particular date, without necessarily identifying when it began. Luke attests the saying about mercy by the late first century, but leaves open whether it was new or already generations old, so each tradition requires a separate assessment.[15] A parallel alone also cannot establish which text borrowed from the other, since a Targum might draw on a rabbinic text or a rabbinic text might draw on a Targum.[16]
Disputed attempts to date the Palestinian Targum from New Testament parallels discouraged further comparison with early Christian writings, even though the parallels need not imply direct dependence between written texts.[17] Dismissing a tradition because it survives in a late collection creates a different problem: an eleventh-century work such as Sefer ha-Yashar can preserve interpretations from before the second century.[18] The date of the collection establishes when those interpretations were recorded there, leaving their earlier history to be examined through comparison with other sources.
Pharaoh's Warning in Two Accounts
The Aramaic Targum Pseudo-Jonathan is generally dated after the rise of Islam, yet its account of Pharaoh's warning has a much earlier parallel.[19] At Exodus 1:15, before Pharaoh orders the Hebrew midwives to kill the male children, the Targum adds a dream in which a lamb outweighs all of Egypt on a scale. The magicians Jannes and Jambres interpret the dream as a warning that a son will be born in Israel through whom Egypt will be destroyed, details absent from the Hebrew text of Exodus.[20]
Josephus, writing near the end of the first century, describes an Egyptian sacred scribe warning Pharaoh that an Israelite child will bring down the Egyptian kingdom, prompting the king's decree against the children.[21] The Aramaic Targum Pseudo-Jonathan has a dream and two named magicians, while Josephus has a single scribe and no dream. These differences leave direct literary dependence uncertain, though both accounts may preserve an older tradition about the birth of Moses.[22]
In Josephus' time, the warning story may have circulated orally rather than in a written Targum.[23] The later account in the Aramaic Targum Pseudo-Jonathan may even preserve an older form of the story than the one Josephus records.[24] Josephus establishes that the warning story circulated by the late first century, but neither account establishes when the tradition began.