Targum Neofiti 1: Leviticus - Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Leviticus (Aramaic Bible) By Martin McNamara and Robert Hayward Michael Glazier, 1994, 326 pages ISBN-10: 0814654789 ISBN-13: 978-0814654781

Reviewed by Israel Drazin - July 22, 2010

This is the third of the nineteen volumes Michael Glazier series offering an English translation with explanatory notes of the currently existing Targums. The word Targum means translation or explanation. The Targums are Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible. There are three complete Targums to the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses. These three Targums were composed by different translators with different agendas during the first millennium for Jews who no longer understood biblical Hebrew. This volume presents the Targums of Neofiti and Pseudo-Jonathan on the biblical book Leviticus. These translators did not render the book literally, but added many imaginative elaborations to educate their readers to their concept of Judaism, ideas that were frequently based on superstition.

Scholars generally recognize that the Hebrew Bible does not advocate the notion that people are born with the taint of original sin, an idea introduced by the fourth century Christian scholar Augustine, or that people have been infused by an evil inclination that sometimes controls them and seduces them or forces them to act improperly, or that there is an evil demon Satan whose function is to ruin people's lives on earth and after death.

However, while these notions are not biblical in origin, many Jews today as well as in ancient times have absorbed the views and are convinced that they are Jewish. In fact they site biblical verses that they are convinced support this view.

The notion of an evil inclination is found in these two translations. The following are several examples in this volume:

• Satan works in heaven against Israelite interests. He reminds God continually of the Israelites' sin when they worshipped the golden calf (Leviticus 9:2) and the sin of the sale of Joseph by his bothers (9:3). Readers should not confuse Satan in this Targum and current literature with the satan in the biblical book of Job. The latter satan simply means "adversary," which is the meaning of the Hebrew noun, and is not a description of an evil being. The adversary in the Job parable is an angel that had a discussion with God and offered a contrary view to God's idea that Job was a righteous man and would remain so even when afflicted with pain. Readers should also note that the Targum translators are unknowingly insulting the image of God. They are, in effect, suggesting that God can forget and needs reminders and that God can be persuaded by constant repetitions. They also adopted the view that is not Jewish that descendants can be punished for an ancestor's misdeed.
• The translators say that the Bible requires a goat as a sacrifice "because Satan is similar to it" (9:3).
• They suggest that people should "remove the evil inclination from your hearts, and immediately (apparently, miraculously) the glory of the divine presence will be revealed to you" (9:6).

• The Targum Onqelos to Leviticus and Numbers, by Bernard Grossfeld.
  Aramaic Bible, Vol 8 - Translated, with Apparatus, and Notes.
  
  
• The Targum Onqelos to Deuteronomy, by Bernard Grossfeld.
  The Aramaic Bible - Translated, with Apparatus, and Notes.