Updating Biblical Narratives in Greek and Aramaic Translation

Ancient Jewish translators inherited biblical narratives whose geographical references, monetary units, and social customs could be unfamiliar to the communities for whom they translated. They regularly adapted these details to the circumstances of their own audiences, allowing the archaic setting of a narrative to take on features of a much later world. In the Aramaic translation of Kings, people return to cities where the Hebrew tells them to return to tents, and a payment of gold receives the name of a Roman coin.^[1]

Contemporization describes the adaptation of an earlier text to the geographical, social, or religious circumstances of a later audience. The practice can involve identifying an ancient location by a later name, explaining an archaic expression, or extending a commandment to religious practices familiar to the audience. The events still belong to the biblical past, but some of the details through which they are understood belong to the translator's present.^[2]

The Greek Septuagint translation and the Aramaic Targums both preserve this kind of adaptation. The Septuagint, often abbreviated LXX, is the collection of ancient Greek translations of biblical books, begun with the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, in the centuries before Christianity. The Targums are Jewish translations into Aramaic, a language closely connected to Hebrew, whose surviving forms preserve interpretations from different periods. Neither collection came from a single translator applying one rule to every passage, and even an expansive Targum can follow the Hebrew closely for long stretches.^[3][4]

An anachronism occurs when a detail belongs to a different time from the setting in which it appears. Naming Roman coins in a story about an Israelite prophet creates an anachronistic account, even if the coin name makes the payment easier for a later listener to imagine. A new place name works somewhat differently: it can tell readers where an earlier event happened without claiming that the inhabitants of that earlier world used the same name. Contemporization includes both kinds of change, so its examples need not all be equally anachronistic.^[5][6]

For Jewish communities living among Greek speakers, some adaptations also reflect Hellenization, the influence of Greek language and culture. A Hellenized description of an Egyptian place or a religious ceremony uses Greek cultural language to make it recognizable. That does not necessarily imply approval of Greek religious practices, since a translation can use familiar Greek language to condemn them.^[7]

The need for explanation extended beyond readers who knew no Hebrew. Aramaic translations also circulated among people who could read it, and in synagogue practice the Hebrew reading and its Aramaic interpretation could be heard alongside one another. Interpretation was incorporated into the translated passage itself, allowing the explanation to accompany the public reading of the Hebrew text.^[8][9]

Identifying a particular change still requires care, especially in the Greek tradition, because a translator might have worked from a Hebrew text different from the one preserved in the Masoretic tradition, the main source behind many modern translations. Not every difference between the Greek and that Hebrew tradition results from a translator's decision to adapt the narrative. Place names provide a useful beginning because the later identification can often be seen directly in the translated account.^[10]

The reunion of Joseph and Jacob in Genesis 46 provides a geographical example of contemporization, since the Hebrew and Greek narratives locate their meeting through different place names. Jacob has arrived in Egypt with his family, and Joseph travels to meet him in the region identified in Hebrew as Goshen. The Greek translation identifies the destination as Heroonpolis in the land of Ramesses.

Heroonpolis is a Greek name for a place in the eastern Nile Delta, and its appearance here belongs to the Greek translation's tendency to update geographical information. The translator names a destination that readers in Greek-speaking Egypt would likely recognize more readily than Goshen alone. The larger designation, the land of Ramesses, helps locate the meeting within Egypt.^[1]

The substitution goes beyond representing a Hebrew name in Greek letters. Joseph and Jacob also receive Greek forms of their names, but Heroonpolis is a geographical identification supplied in place of Goshen. The translator identifies this place with the location in the older narrative and repeats its name when Joseph travels out to meet his father. The repetition makes the identification part of the story's geography.^[2]

The geographical adaptation leaves the sequence of the reunion intact, including Joseph's preparation of his chariot, his embrace of Israel, and his weeping. By incorporating the identification into the account of Joseph's journey, the translation supplies the geographical explanation as part of the narrative rather than requiring a separate comment on the location of Goshen.

There is a limit to what the new name establishes. The precise identification of Goshen, Heroonpolis, and other ancient sites in this part of Egypt has been disputed, although the proposed locations fall within the same broad area of the eastern Delta. The Greek rendering records an ancient attempt to connect the biblical account to known geography; it does not settle every question about the location of the meeting.^[3]

That distinction also explains the kind of anachronism involved. The name comes from a later Greek geographical world, but the narrative does not have Jacob call the place Heroonpolis in conversation. It is the narrator's identification of the destination, intended to locate an earlier event for later readers. The Greek account can therefore bring the past closer to its audience while preserving the earlier setting of the family's journey.^[4]

An audience familiar with the later name would likely hear the passage as a recognizable account of a journey through Egypt, rather than as an interruption requiring a separate geographical explanation. In the Greek translation of Isaiah, the problem becomes more complicated because entire lists of ancient places need to be understood, and the translator draws on other biblical passages to explain them.^[5]

The Assyrian king's boast in Isaiah depends on a list of places his armies have overcome, with each name making the next conquest sound inevitable. In the Hebrew account he compares one city with another, including Hamath and Arpad, before placing Samaria alongside Damascus. The Greek translation turns that compact list into a more explanatory account of conquered territory.

In the Greek translation, the Assyrian king names Arabia in place of Hamath and adds an explanation involving Babylon, Chalanne, and a tower. These changes have been connected with the translator's effort to make the old geographical references intelligible to his audience. He draws on names and associations available elsewhere in the Greek Bible, so that the inherited list acquires geographical associations more accessible to his readers.^[1]

The connection with Genesis is particularly useful here. The Greek translation of Genesis names Babylon and Chalanne together in the account of Nimrod's kingdom, while the account in the following chapter describes the tower in the same broad geographical setting. The Greek translation of Isaiah gathers those associations into the Assyrian boast, where they explain the territory the speaker claims to have taken.^[2]

The translator's familiarity with other biblical books is part of the adaptation. A new geographical explanation need not come entirely from experience outside scripture, since another translated passage can supply the names through which an older reference is understood. Contemporization and the reuse of earlier texts can work together within the same sentence.^[3]

The name Arabia appears again in the next chapter, this time within a promise that scattered members of Israel will return. Hamath occurs in the Hebrew list of places from which they will be reclaimed, while the Greek list ends with Arabia. The same substitution therefore occurs in a threat concerning foreign conquest and in a promise concerning the return of God's people.^[4]

These identifications should not be read as precise statements that the ancient cities and the later regions were geographically identical. They show how the translator understood and explained the inherited names. His readers encounter a Hellenized account of the biblical world, where familiar names take precedence over preserving each old name unchanged.^[5][6]

The geographical changes also leave the passages available for renewed use: the king still boasts of conquest, and the promise still gathers people from distant lands. The geographical adaptations make the scope of conquest and return more recognizable, while other passages in the Greek translation of Isaiah apply comparable adaptations to the religious practices under criticism. A feast offered to foreign gods provides the next example.^[7]

Isaiah's criticism of forbidden worship includes a meal prepared for divine powers associated with fortune and destiny. The people have abandoned God's holy mountain, yet they continue to set out food and drink for other recipients. The Greek translation preserves the accusation while describing those recipients in language familiar from the religious world of its later readers.

The names behind the Hebrew passage are Gad and Meni, represented in this English translation by Fortune and Destiny. The Greek account instead connects the power translated here as a demon with Fortune, whose Greek name is Tyche. This pairing has been understood as an adaptation to worship in the Hellenistic world, where Greek language and culture had spread after Alexander the Great. In that setting, Daimon and Tyche were recognizable divine powers associated with the course of human life.^[1][2]

The English translations make the change less immediately obvious than a comparison of the names would. Fortune already appears on the Hebrew side as an explanation of Gad, while Fortune on the Greek side represents Tyche in the second part of the sentence. Reading only the English could suggest that one familiar name has simply been retained. The proposed contemporization concerns the Greek pairing as a whole and the religious associations it would likely have carried for its audience.^[3]

For readers familiar with these Hellenistic divine figures, the table and drink offering prepared for powers associated with human fortune would likely recall religious practices around them. The translation connects the earlier prophetic warning with worship in the later Greek world.^[4]

The identification with particular Greek divine figures remains an interpretation of the rendering, rather than a complete description of a ceremony supplied by Isaiah. The Greek sentence names the recipients and the offerings, but gives no city, festival, or named group of participants. Its connection to Hellenistic religious life is more defensible than an attempt to identify the precise occasion the translator had in mind.^[5]

The next verse also keeps the direction of the passage clear. The people who seek favor from these powers are threatened with death because they have refused God's call, so the use of Greek religious language carries a condemnation. A Hellenized description of worship can serve a Jewish argument against participation in that worship.

The Greek translation of Deuteronomy also connects an earlier commandment with later religious life by including a warning about initiation, a practice familiar in the Greek world.^[6]

The Greek translation of Deuteronomy expands a prohibition into two parallel statements, introducing religious language without a separate counterpart in the surviving Hebrew text. The Hebrew passage addresses men and women through descriptions associated with religious service and conventionally translated here as sacred prostitution. The Greek text first prohibits prostitution and then adds a second pair of religious designations, including an initiated man.

Greek Septuagint, Deuteronomy 23:18 in the Brenton translation (translated excerpt): "There shall not be a harlot of the daughters of Israel, and there shall not be a fornicator of the sons of Israel; there shall not be an idolatress of the daughters of Israel, and there shall not be an initiated person of the sons of Israel."^[1]

The additional language appears in the Greek counterpart of this verse, numbered 23:18 in the Brenton translation quoted here and 23:17 in some other English editions. The Hebrew numbering is also 23:18, while the English Hebrew Bible translation uses 23:17. Its reference to someone initiated has long been connected with Greek mysteries, religious rites into which participants were admitted through initiation. On that understanding, a commandment delivered by Moses also addresses participation in a form of worship familiar to later Greek-speaking Jews.^[2][3]

The expansion is visible even though its history is difficult to reconstruct. One Hebrew prohibition is represented by two Greek prohibitions, both arranged around the women and men of Israel. The second may preserve another translation of the same Hebrew expression that was subsequently retained alongside the first. It is therefore possible to identify an expanded Greek text without assuming that its first translator freely invented an entirely new commandment.^[4]

The religious setting also needs to be described carefully. The Greek term applied to the woman has been understood in more than one way, including as a reference to a sorceress or to someone involved in initiation; the Brenton translation uses idolatress. There is no secure basis for turning the whole passage into a description of sexual rites practiced in Greek mysteries. The earlier Hebrew expressions and the later Greek expressions pose separate questions, and the English phrase sacred prostitution cannot settle either one by itself.^[5]

An early Jewish reader shows that the connection with initiation was nevertheless available in antiquity. Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish writer of the first century CE, attributes to Moses a prohibition against participation in mysteries when discussing the commandments. His discussion plausibly refers to this Greek passage, although he does not reproduce its language exactly. By his time, Mosaic instruction could be read as addressing the religious choices of Jews living in a Greek cultural setting.^[6]

The example shows why Hellenization need not imply religious accommodation. Greek expressions could make a prohibition more immediately applicable to a Hellenized audience while prohibiting participation in other forms of worship. Identifying the target specifically as the rites of Dionysus goes beyond what the language establishes, but an association with Greek initiation is a plausible part of the passage's ancient interpretation.^[7]

The surviving Greek text therefore puts later religious language into Moses' instruction even though the stages by which that language entered the translation remain uncertain. The Aramaic Targums contain more everyday adaptations, where descriptions of settlement, dining, and payment reflect the social conventions of later audiences.^[8]

When the northern tribes reject Rehoboam's rule in 1 Kings, their declaration of independence ends with a call for Israel to return to its tents. The Aramaic translation tells the people to return to their cities instead, putting a familiar kind of settlement into a speech that still announces the breakup of Solomon's kingdom.

The Aramaic passage belongs to Targum Jonathan, the collection of translations of the biblical books known in Jewish tradition as the Prophets, which includes Kings. Its rendering of tents as cities occurs repeatedly, and has been connected with the settled life familiar to its later audience. The political action remains the same, but the place to which people return is expressed through the language of that audience's own communities.^[1][2]

The Hebrew phrase should not be taken to mean that everyone in the kingdom actually lived in a tent. It could function as an inherited expression for returning home, and the English translation already uses homes at the end of the verse. The Targum's cities make the intended destination more explicit, replacing the inherited expression with language appropriate to the settled communities familiar to its audience.^[3]

The same change occurs in a very different setting at the end of the temple celebrations under Solomon. There the people leave with gratitude and happiness, and the Targum again uses cities for the Hebrew tents. The adaptation is therefore not limited to the rebellious speech under Rehoboam; it appears in descriptions of returning home whether the people are rejecting a king or celebrating with him.^[4][5]

Its recurrence in different stories suggests a consistent translation practice. An isolated substitution could seem tied to the needs of one story, but the same replacement across different accounts suggests a regular way of presenting biblical life. The translation supplies the expected meaning of the expression where it occurs, without interrupting the narrative to explain the history of the phrase.^[6]

Describing this change as contemporization does not imply that cities were unknown in the time of Solomon or Rehoboam. The adjustment concerns how an older description is expressed to later hearers, and in this case clarification and cultural adaptation are difficult to separate. The Targum brings the language closer to its audience without necessarily introducing a historically impossible settlement into the story.

Other everyday changes go further than replacing an inherited expression for home. When the same Aramaic translation describes people at a meal, it can change their posture, making biblical diners recline in a way associated with later dining customs.^[7]

A meal in the story of the old prophet at Bethel contains a small change between the Hebrew account and its Aramaic translation. The Hebrew describes the men sitting at the table when a message from God arrives. The Aramaic translation in Targum Jonathan describes them as reclining, a posture familiar from later Greek and Roman dining.^[1][2]

The translation describes the diners reclining with their bodies supported as they eat. In the Hellenistic and Roman periods that posture was part of the social setting of meals, and the Targum introduces it into an earlier biblical account.^[3]

The same adaptation appears in the account of the queen of Sheba's visit to Solomon. Among the things that impress her is the arrangement of the king's servants at his table. Where the Hebrew refers to their seating, the Targum describes their reclining, so the splendor of the royal household is presented through a dining custom familiar in the later world of the translation.^[4]

The distinction between sitting and reclining also mattered within Jewish practice. The Mishnah, a collection of rabbinic teaching compiled around the beginning of the third century CE, distinguishes people merely sitting together from those reclining together at a meal. In its discussion of blessings, sitting diners each say their own blessing, while reclining diners may have one person say it for them all. Posture can therefore describe the character of a shared meal as well as the position of someone's body.^[5]

The Targum does not add that rule about blessings to the story at Bethel, and the meal need not be identified as a particular Jewish ceremony. Reclining had become recognizable as a posture at meals in the later culture, and the translator uses it where the earlier account describes sitting. The change in posture reflects later dining culture without necessarily bringing every later rule about reclining into the passage.

This is a more substantial adjustment than replacing tents with cities, because the translated account presents the characters as doing something differently. It is an example of projecting a later custom into an earlier narrative, though it cannot establish that no one ever reclined at a meal before the Hellenistic period. The evidence is the repeated change from the particular posture named in the Hebrew to the one preferred in the Aramaic translation.^[6]

The adaptation is incorporated into the circumstances of the meal without interrupting the prophetic narrative. The message arrives while the diners are at the table, and the change in posture does not interrupt the sequence of events. The next everyday example makes the chronological distance more visible, since the name of a coin can belong to a period far later than the people carrying it.^[7]

Naaman sets out to seek healing from the prophet Elisha with a letter from his king and a large quantity of valuables. The account in 2 Kings names silver, gold, and changes of clothing, but the Aramaic translation makes the gold more specific by expressing it in denars. A coin name from the Roman world enters a story about a Syrian commander and an Israelite prophet of a much earlier period.^[1]

The English translation supplies shekels for the gold, while the Hebrew itself gives the quantity without naming a unit at that point. The Aramaic translation in Targum Jonathan supplies gold denars instead. The number remains six thousand, but the translator provides a familiar monetary designation where the older text leaves the unit unstated.^[2][3]

This is a direct anachronism in the description of Naaman's possessions. The designation makes the payment intelligible through a familiar monetary unit while attributing that later unit to a figure from the biblical past. The practical explanation and the chronological mismatch arise from the same small addition, without requiring any larger change to Naaman's journey or his purpose in visiting Elisha.

The same translation updates money elsewhere in Kings. When Elisha announces that food will become affordable at the gate of Samaria, the Hebrew prices flour and barley in shekels. The Aramaic rendering uses the name sela, a coin designation familiar in the later world, for the monetary shekel.^[4][5]

The distinction between money and weight is necessary here because a shekel began as a unit of weight and could later name a coin. The Targum does not replace every occurrence indiscriminately: when the Hebrew refers to a straightforward weight, it can retain the corresponding Aramaic term for that weight. Its treatment of money therefore reflects attention to the context in which the amount appears.^[6]

The substitution does not establish that the earlier weight of gold and the later coins had the same value. The examples establish that monetary names have changed; they do not supply the exchange rates or purchasing power needed to equate every amount across the periods concerned. The listener gains a recognizable kind of payment, while the original distinction between a weight of precious metal and a later coin can become less visible.

The two accounts also show the range of this everyday practice. A wealthy commander's gift and the price of food at a city gate concern very different transactions, but both can be narrated through later monetary language. The adaptation belongs to the description of ordinary life, and its usefulness did not depend on the translator preserving the precise economic conditions of the earlier setting.^[7]

Religious membership could be updated in a comparable way. A term that once described where a person lived could come to identify the religious community that person had joined, allowing a commandment about a resident foreigner to be heard as a commandment about a convert.^[8]

The Passover instructions in Exodus apply the prohibition on leaven to both the native population and foreigners living among them. Targum Onkelos, the Aramaic translation of the Torah that became standard in rabbinic tradition, describes the foreigner in this verse as a proselyte, meaning a person who has joined the Jewish religious community. The commandment has been expressed through a later category of membership.^[1][2]

The Hebrew term behind resident foreigner is ger, which describes a stranger or sojourner living among another people. In later Jewish usage the term acquired the meaning proselyte, and the Aramaic translation of this passage follows that later sense. Its two groups are therefore the convert and the person native to the land, both subject to the same Passover restriction.^[3]

The change also affects who is understood to fall under the commandment. Residence and conversion are different relationships to a community, even though one person might be described by both. A foreigner can live among a people without having joined its religion, while the word convert makes religious affiliation part of the description. The translation brings that later understanding of membership into the commandment.^[4]

Onkelos does not apply the later meaning everywhere, however, and Abraham's negotiation for a burial place provides a useful comparison. He describes himself to the people of the land as a foreign resident, and the Aramaic translation preserves the sense of a guest and sojourner. Calling Abraham a convert to the community from which he seeks land would give the wrong account of his position.

The contrast shows why a translation's recurring preference must still be examined in its particular setting. The later religious meaning is available to the translator, but the context can call for the older sense of someone residing among strangers. The practice is selective, rather than a mechanical replacement of every Hebrew occurrence with a term for a convert.^[5]

In the Passover commandment, the later category would likely help an audience recognize the people to whom the restriction applied within its own community. It also makes the community described in the commandment more closely resemble later Jewish communities. This is contemporization through a change in the meaning of a familiar term, rather than through an added place name or a new account of an event.^[6]

The example also explains why a translation that follows much of its source closely can still contain significant interpretation. One designation of a person can determine how the surrounding commandment is understood. In the Aramaic translation of the prophetic narratives, the names given to teachers and their followers make a similar adjustment to the relationships between biblical characters.^[7]

Elisha's cry when Elijah is taken from him describes their relationship through the language of family. He calls Elijah his father, even though the narrative presents Elijah as the prophet whom he follows. Targum Jonathan expresses that relationship through the language of a master or teacher, making the meaning of the address more explicit for its later audience.^[1][2]

The change belongs to a wider pattern in the Aramaic translation of Kings. The people called sons of the prophets in Hebrew become disciples of the prophets, and the young man who serves a prophet can likewise become his disciple. Family descriptions and accounts of service are thus interpreted through the relationships of teaching and learning familiar in later Jewish communities.^[3][4]

That explanation does not require treating the Hebrew sons of the prophets as a statement about biological parentage. The expression already names a group associated with the prophets, and the English translation describes its members as a prophetic guild. The Targum chooses disciples as its explanation of the relationship, bringing the group into the more specific language of instruction.

The treatment of Gehazi makes the preference particularly visible. In the Hebrew account he is Elisha's servant, while the Targum calls him a disciple. His pursuit of the payment Elisha has declined places Gehazi in conflict with his master, so the designation disciple does not imply approval of his conduct. It identifies Gehazi's connection to Elisha as that of a student to a teacher.^[5]

The same interest in instruction can change the designation of the prophets themselves. In the warning to Israel and Judah in 2 Kings 17, the Hebrew describes God speaking through "prophets" and "seers". The first part of the Aramaic verse instead describes the warning as coming through scribes and teachers, people who pass on and explain religious teaching.^[6][7]

The substitution fits the content of the warning because the people are being told to obey the commandments, but it is not a general removal of prophecy from the Targum. The translation usually retains the designation prophet, and the same verse uses it again later. Its occasional use of scribes and teachers brings a later form of religious authority into the account without erasing the older one.^[8]

Here the change is best understood as contemporization of a relationship or role, rather than proof that teaching and discipleship were absent from biblical society. The Targum gives the earlier figures a recognizable place within the world of instruction its hearers knew. A different kind of expansion names a particular person from later history, placing him directly within a blessing spoken by Moses.^[9]

Moses' final blessing on the tribe of Levi asks for its work to be accepted and its enemies to be defeated. In the Hebrew text, those enemies remain unnamed. One Aramaic translation supplies a particular priest whose opponents are to lose their power, bringing a figure from much later Jewish history into the blessing.

The Aramaic translation in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan names Yohanan the high priest in its rendering of the final phrase, asking that his enemies have no foot on which to stand. Yohanan is commonly identified here with John Hyrcanus, a high priest and ruler from the Hasmonean dynasty that governed Judea in the second century BCE. The blessing on Levi has therefore been directed toward the enemies of a named leader who lived centuries after the time in which the narrative places Moses.^[1][2]

Pseudo-Jonathan is an expansive Aramaic translation of the Torah, distinct from Targum Jonathan to the Prophets used in the examples from Kings. Its surviving form contains material from different periods, including traditions much earlier than its final compilation. A reference to an early historical figure must therefore be considered within a work whose contents were transmitted and developed over a long time.^[3][4]

The addition follows the subject of the biblical blessing closely enough to make its interpretation understandable. Levi's work includes religious instruction, incense, and sacrifice, and the prayer asks that those who attack him be unable to stand. Naming a later high priest gives that general request a specific historical application. The older blessing supplies the relationship between priestly service and hostile opponents, while the Targum identifies a later conflict to which it can be applied.^[5]

The expansion gives the blessing a specific historical application beyond the geographical identifications found in the Greek translations of Genesis and Isaiah. Yohanan is a new person introduced into the interpretation, and the prayer is explicitly directed toward the defeat of his enemies. Within the translated narrative, Moses' blessing reaches forward to a priest whom the audience could know from later history. The anachronism gives the blessing a specific application beyond its earlier setting.

The historical name does not, however, tell exactly when the addition was made. A favorable reference to John Hyrcanus might preserve an early interpretation, but later Jewish tradition also remembered Yohanan the high priest. His name could have been introduced or retained by people looking back on his career long after his death. The appearance of a ruler in a translation cannot by itself date the translation to that ruler's lifetime.^[6][7]

Explicit references of this kind are less common in the Targums than the adjustment of everyday language and religious practice. Their relative rarity makes them especially noticeable, but also makes them poor grounds for describing every Targum as a running commentary on political events. The next example is unusually extensive: the interpretation of Edom in Lamentations brings later empires into the promise that Jerusalem's suffering will end.^[8]

Near the end of Lamentations 4, the poem turns from the suffering of Zion, meaning Jerusalem and its people, to the people of Edom, warning that their opportunity to rejoice will not last. The cup of judgment will reach them as well, while Zion's punishment will come to an end. The Aramaic translation retains that reversal and gives its opposing communities names from a much later world.

The Aramaic translation in Targum Lamentations identifies Edom with Constantinople in the first verse and with Rome in the second, drawing on the widespread association of Edom with Rome in rabbinic interpretation. The earlier name remains meaningful, but it now identifies the power confronting the later Jewish community. The translation states the connection within the poem, so a listener is told which later cities occupy Edom's place.^[1][2]

This is a more extensive contemporization than a simple substitution of names. The Aramaic version adds the expectation that the Persians will attack, and it identifies the promised deliverance of Zion with the work of the King Messiah and Elijah. The Messiah is the expected deliverer, and Elijah appears here as a priestly figure participating in the release of the community. An earlier promise that punishment will end has become a description of how a later audience might expect that release to arrive.^[3][4]

The unfamiliar name Parkevi in the first verse reflects a textual complication rather than another biblical people named in the Hebrew poem. Some manuscripts read Persians at this point, while the text underlying this translation reads Parkevi. The following verse explicitly names the Persians, so the later imperial setting does not depend on resolving that first reading.^[5][6]

The conflict between the Byzantine Empire, centered on Constantinople, and the Sassanian Persian Empire in the early seventh century CE provides a plausible setting for this expectation of political upheaval and Jewish deliverance. The historical identification is not exact, however. The prediction about Rome in Italy does not fit neatly into that conflict, and the placement of Constantinople in Armenia adds a geographical difficulty. These details belong to the Targum's interpretation and should not be taken as accurate descriptions of the geography or the course of the war.^[7]

One possible explanation is that the passage was revised over time, with an earlier expectation about Rome adapted to a later conflict involving the eastern empire. That would make contemporization a process occurring within the history of the Aramaic translation itself, as inherited interpretations were made relevant again. The surviving passage does not permit certainty about that sequence, but it does show that a later political world has entered the biblical poem.^[8]

The promise still depends on the reversal announced in Lamentations: the community that has suffered will be released, and the people who rejoice over it will face judgment. The identification of Edom with later imperial powers gives that reversal a political application suited to the circumstances and expectations of its audience. In a synagogue reading, that explanation could be heard alongside the earlier Hebrew reading, preserving the older name Edom while making Rome and Constantinople explicit in the Aramaic interpretation.^[9]