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The Passover of Egypt in Septuagint and Targum of Exodus 12

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The Passover of Egypt in Septuagint and Targum of Exodus 12 Chapter 2 The Passover of Egypt in Septuagint and Targum of Exodus 12 C.T.R. Hayward In a recent publication, Jan Joosten has explored in some detail the phenom- enon of Targumisms in the Septuagint, concluding that there are good grounds for arguing that the ancient scholars who translated the Books of Moses into Greek had at their disposal Aramaic renderings of certain Hebrew words and phrases; that these same Aramaic versions of Hebrew words and phrases were, at the time of the translators, already regarded as traditional; and that the translators made use of them directly or indirectly as the need arose.1 1 Passover One of the first instances of this phenomenon he records in his essay is the use in lxx Exod 12:11 of the word πάσχα, which is employed by the translators This Greek form .פסח ,to represent the Hebrew noun designating the Passover the Aramaic noun, in its emphatic ,פסחא of the word is evidently indebted to A few verses later, at Exod 12:19, the .פסח state, cognate with the Hebrew noun 1 See Jan Joosten, “Des targumismes dans la Septante ?,” in The Targums in the Light of Traditions of the Second Temple Period, ed. Thierry Legrand and Jan Joosten, JSJSup 167 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 54–71, and his earlier article “On Aramaicizing Renderings in the Septuagint,” in Hamlet on a Hill. Semitic and Greek Studies Presented to Professor T. Muraoka on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Martin F.J. Baasten and Wido van Peursen, OLA 118 (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 587–600. Editions of primary texts used here are as follows. For lxx Exodus, John W. Wevers, Exodus, Septuaginta: Vetus Testamentum Graecum Auctoritate Academiae Scientiarum Gottingensis editum II.1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991); Targum Onqelos (= Tg. Onq.), Alexander Sperber, The Bible in Aramaic I. The Pentateuch according to Targum Onkelos (Leiden: Brill, 1959); Targum Neofiti (= Tg. Neof.), Alejandro Díez Macho, Neophyti 1 Tomo II Éxodo (Madrid-Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1970); Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (= Tg. Ps.-J.), Ernest G. Clarke, with Walter E. Aufrecht, J.C. Hurd and F. Spitzer, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan of the Pentateuch: Text and Concordance (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1984); and Fragment Targums preserved in MSS Paris 110 and Vatican 440 (= Frg. Tg.), Michael L. Klein, The Fragment-Targums of the Pentateuch according to their Extant Sources, 2 vols. (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1980). Translations are mine. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004416727_004 38 Hayward resident“) גר Greek translators have put as translation equivalent of Hebrew in the sense גיורא alien”) the word γ(ε)ιώρας, which stands for the Aramaic term of “proselyte” or “convert to Judaism,” a specialised sense which this Aramaic word had acquired by the time the lxx translators set to work.2 For Jews resi- dent in Egypt at the time when the Torah was translated into Greek, Exodus 12 would naturally have special and weighty significance, since this chapter de- picts the “Passover of Egypt,” whereby God protects the Jews from the final plague He intends to bring on Israel’s Egyptian oppressors, the destruction of Egypt’s first-born sons.3 It is therefore of some moment that Aramaic informs the lxx translators not only in the matter of these two nouns, but almost certainly also in their which is fundamental to the chapter as פסח interpretation of the Hebrew verb a whole.4 Some years ago, Sebastian Brock noted how lxx Exod 12:13 had trans- ופסחתי עליכם ,lated the Lord’s promise to Moses that he would “pass over” Israel with the words καὶ σκεπάσω ὑμᾶς, “and I shall protect you,” a translation rep- ואפסח ואגן resented also by Targum Neofiti of this same verse with the words and I shall pass over and protect you by means of my Memra.”5“ ,במימרי עליכון More will be said about this verse presently; but it is of interest to note at once -and has then pro פסח that Tg. Neof.’s translation has preserved the verbal root ceeded to define it further as signifying the protection or defence of Israel. The Targum thus offers what is in effect a double translation of the verb. The verb occurs again in the Hebrew base text at 12:23 and 27, and Tg. Neof. uses פסח these opportunities to reinforce its translation of 12:13 by reiterating that the Lord will “pass over and protect” Israel. Tg. Neof.’s translation of these verses 2 See Joosten, “Des targumismes,” 59–60, for discussion of this Aramaic terminology as a “so- ciolect” of Alexandrian Jewry in Ptolemaic times, and his analysis of the historical develop- .”.as a specifically Jewish technical term for “convert גיורא ment of the Aramaic word 3 The events surrounding the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt were frequently the targets of anti-Semitic comments by Egyptians writing in Greek, the most famous of whom was the historiographer Manetho: for the relationship of his writings to lxx, see the valuable com- ments of Tessa Rajak, Translation and Survival: The Greek Bible of the Ancient Jewish Diaspora (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 262–64. 4 On the languages known to and used by Jews in Egypt in the Ptolemaic period, see Rajak, Translation and Survival, 143–152, who questions a number of scholarly assumptions about the desuetude of Hebrew, and notes the likely survival of some knowledge of Aramaic in Alexandria (152, n. 88 and literature there cited). 5 See Sebastian P. Brock, “An Early Interpretation of pāsah: ‘aggēn in the Palestinian Targum,” in Interpreting the Hebrew Bible: Essays in Honour of E.I.J. Rosenthal, ed. John A. Emerton and Stefan C. Reif (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 27–34. The glosses of Tg. Neof. record two variants: “and I shall pass over” is glossed by “and he shall spare,” which recalls the renderings of Tg. Onq. and Tg. Ps.-J.; while “and protect you by means of My Memra” is given as “and My Memra shall protect.”..
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