By Kevin J. Cathcart and Robert P. Gordon
Translated, with a Critical Introduction, Apparatus, and Notes
Michael Glazier, 1989, 259 pages
ISBN 0-89453-489-0
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The Targums of the Minor Prophets By Kevin J. Cathcart and Robert P. Gordon Translated, with a Critical Introduction, Apparatus, and Notes Michael Glazier, 1989, 259 pages ISBN 0-89453-489-0 |
Reviewed by Israel Drazin - July 28, 2010
My reviews of the two volumes Targum Neofiti 1: Genesis and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Genesis give information about this 19 volume series that presents an English translation of the Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible. This is volume 14 of the series. It renders the Aramaic translation of the twelve "minor prophets" into English and points out how the translators gave us a non-literal rendering and how they inserted their own views; views they felt their readers need to know. Reading their translations, we might feel that they should have made additional changes.
It should be noted that despite the current title "minor prophets," these prophets are not considered "minor" people or "minor" books by Jews and Christians. The term "minor" signifies that the writings are brief. The twelve volumes were collected into a single book because of their small size, but each prophet had his own message to his own audience, in his own particular time, and each spoke differently. The following are some examples of how one of these Aramaic translators altered and did not alter the prophets' messages.
The story of Jonah and the whale is one of the twelve. The translator adds information several times in the first three verses to emphasize that the word that came from the Lord to Jonah was a "prophecy." He disparages the behavior of the frightened sailors during the storm at sea; they didn't "cry out": "each man prayed to his idol, but they saw that it was useless." The biblical book has the name "Hebrew," which was what non-Israelites called Israelites, but the translator substituted the name used when he was writing, "Jew."
While rational Jewish and non-Jewish thinkers consider the episode of the fish swallowing Jonah and keeping him alive in its belly for three days a parable, the Aramaic translator renders this verse without any change. Similarly, while he changes virtually every other passage in Jonah in some way, he renders "And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it threw Jonah up on the dry land," without any change.
