Targum Neofiti 1: Exodus/Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Exodus (Aramaic Bible) By Robert Hayward and Michael Maher Michael Glazier, 1994, 250 pages ISBN-10: 0814654770 ISBN-13: 978-0814654774

Reviewed by Israel Drazin - July 22, 2010

This is book 2 of the 19 book Michael Glazier series offering an English translation 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 were composed by different translators with different agendas during the first millennium for Jews who no longer understood biblical Hebrew. This volume contains an English translation of two of the Targums with explanatory notes.

The Targum translators did not always translate literally. They made many changes in their writings for over a dozen reasons. These included alterations to clarify Scripture, to offer readers a more elevated portrayal of Israelite ancestors, to remove some but not all portrayals of God having human features and performing human-like actions, and to clarify some, but not all biblical metaphors and other figures of speech.

The Neofiti and Pseudo-Jonathan Targums, but not the Onkelos Targum, swerved sometimes radically from offering a literal translation. The translators felt an obligation, as did the writers of the Midrashim and Talmuds, to offer their readers more than what is literally in the Torah. They spice their translations with theology, sermons, and imaginative elaborations on what they suppose happened even though the details are not in the biblical text. The following are some examples appearing in these two Targums to the book of Exodus.

• Satan is not mentioned in Exodus, but these Targums introduce him. While Moses is on Mount Sinai for forty days to receive the Ten Commandments, Satan misleads the Israelites by telling them that Moses is dead. They panic, accept his report, and say: Moses "may have been consumed in a destructive fire from before the Lord on the mountain. We do not know what befell him." So thinking, they built the golden calf to lead them (Exodus 32:1).
• When Moses descends from Sinai, he sees Satan dancing among the Israelites who are worshiping the calf (32:19).
• Aaron, Moses' brother defends the worshippers. He says that the people are good, but "the evil inclination (Satan) led them astray" (32:22).
• Aaron justifies his own involvement by explaining that he never intended to build a golden calf. He threw gold into the fire just to melt it, but "Satan entered it, and the image of this calf emerged from it" (32:24).

• Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Genesis, by Michael Maher.
  Aramaic Bible - Translated, with Apparatus and Notes.
  
  
• The Targum Onqelos to Exodus, by Bernard Grossfeld.
  Aramaic Bible - Translated, with Apparatus and Notes.