Texts in Conversation
The Hebrew version of Genesis 3:22 presents a statement that humans have become like one of the divine beings with similar knowledge. The Aramaic translation in Targum Onkelos avoids this idea by reinterpreting the language to mean that the human is now unique in the world.
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Genesis 3:22
Hebrew Bible
21 The Lord God made garments from skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not be allowed to stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God expelled him from the orchard in Eden to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken.
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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Onkelos Genesis 3:22
Targum
21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife vestments of honour upon the skin of their flesh, and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, Behold, man is become unique in the world by himself, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he stretch forth his hand and take also of the Tree of Life, and eat, and live for ever;... 23 and the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from where he had been created.
Date: 100-200 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The Bible has the anthropomorphic 'as one of us to know good and evil.' Onkelos treats kehchad, usually translated 'as one,' as 'unique.' The translator adds 'in the world' to explain where humans are unique. He treats, as does Saadiah, mimenu 'as us,' as if it were written memeno - referring only to humans: 'by (or, from] himself.' The two disconnect the word from what precedes it, and connect it to the following phrase. In essence, our targumist avoids an anthropomorphic scene where God might be speaking to others and saying that humans are like divine beings. Instead, the verse is telling us that humans are unique in that they have free will to choose between good and evil ..."
Drazin, Israel, and Stanley M. Wagner
Onkelos on the Torah, Genesis: Understanding the Bible Text
(p. 21) Gefen, 2006
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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