Texts in Conversation
In John 1, John the Baptist calls Jesus "the Lamb of God." In the Aramaic Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, Pharaoh dreams of a lamb that outweighs all of Egypt, and his magicians read it as a son to be born, since the Aramaic word can mean either "lamb" or "boy."
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
John 1:29
New Testament
28 These things happened in Bethany across the Jordan River where John was baptizing. 29 On the next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is the one about whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who is greater than I am, because he existed before me.’ 31 I did not recognize him, but I came baptizing with water so that he could be revealed to Israel.”
Pseudo Jonathan Exodus 1:15
Targum
14 And made their lives bitter with hard work in clay and bricks and in all kinds of work in the open country; with harshness they made them do all their work. 15 And Pharaoh said that while he slept, he saw in his dream that all the land of Egypt was placed on one balance of a weighing scale, and a lamb, the young of a ewe, on the other balance of the weighing scale; and the balance of the weighing scale on which the lamb was placed weighed down. Immediately he sent and summoned all the magicians of Egypt and told them his dream. Immediately Jannes and Jambres, the chief magicians, opened their mouths and said to Pharaoh: 'A son is to be born in the assembly of Israel, through whom all the land of Egypt is destined to be destroyed.' 16 Therefore Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, took counsel and said to the Jewish midwives—one of whom was named Shiphrah, she is Jochebed, and the other was named Puah, she is Miriam, her daughter.
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Notes and References
“... The Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan at Exod 1.15 explains why the Pharaoh sought to exterminate the Hebrew children. It reads: ‘And Pharaoh said that while he slept, he saw in his dream that all the land of Egypt was placed on one balance of a weighing-scale, and a lamb, the young (of a ewe) and in the other balance-scales; and the balance of the weighing-scales on which the lamb (was placed) weighed down’. Clearly, the lamb represents Moses, and the word used is [...]. There is other evidence too that similar stories were current by the end of the first century A.D. If, then, the Baptist had said (in Aramaic): ‘Behold the Lamb of God’, it would have been an easily comprehensible term to denote a great liberator, and was perhaps already used of Moses, as in the Targum just cited. So even if [...] did not evoke memories of the Servant in Second Isaiah, it may well have aroused memories of Moses in Exodus. ...”
McHugh, John F.
A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on John 1–4
(p. 133) T&T Clark International, 2009
* 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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