Texts in Conversation
The Aramaic translation of Genesis in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan follows a tradition found in the book of Jubilees that emphasizes public modesty, responding to the common behavior of Greco-Roman culture that practiced public nudity.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Jubilees 7:20
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
20 And in the twenty-eighth jubilee [1324-1372] Noah began to teach his grandsons the ordinances and commandments, and all the judgments that he knew, and he urged his sons to observe righteousness, and to cover the shame of their flesh, and to bless their Creator, and honor father and mother, and love their neighbor, and protect themselves from sexual immorality and impurity and all iniquity. 21 For because of these three things the flood came upon the earth, namely, because of the sexual immorality in which the Watchers against the commandments prescribed for them pursued sexual relations with human women, and married whichever women they chose: and they began the practice of impurity. 22 And they fathered sons, the Nephilim, and they were all unlike, and they devoured one another: and the Giants killed the Naphil, and the Naphil killed the Eljo, and the Eljo humanity, and one man another.
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Pseudo Jonathan Genesis 6:2
Targum
1 When the children of men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and beautiful daughters were born to them. 2 The sons of the great ones saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, that they painted their eyes and put on rouge, and walked about with naked flesh. They conceived lustful thoughts, and they took wives to themselves from among all who pleased them. 3 The Lord said in his Memra, 'None of the evil generations that are to arise (in the future) will be judged according to the order of judgment applied to the generation of the Flood, (that is) to be destroyed and wiped out from the world. Did I not put my holy spirit in them that they might perform good deeds? But behold, their deeds are evil. Behold, I gave them an extension of a hundred and twenty years that they might repent, but they have not done so.'
Date: 300–1200 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The concluding reference in passage A to the nudity of the Generation of the Flood, appears to be an adaptation of a much older tradition relating to the Antediluvians' immoral practices. One of the principal offences of the Generation of the Flood, according to R. Meir and R. Judah the Patriarch, was the public display of their nudity, (See particularly Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Genesis 6:2 (from its inclusion in a Targum, we may presume that this tradition presumably gained wide currency in Talmudic times) alluding, no doubt, to the practices of the Graeco-Roman world. In the following passage, this tradition, which may have its origins in pre-Christian times, (See Jubilees 7:20, where Noah is depicted as admonishing his children to avoid the practice of uncovering the flesh) is associated appropriately with Job 24:7 ..."
Irving Jacobs, The Midrashic Process: Tradition and Interpretation in Rabbinic Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 31.
* 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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