Targums and Translation in the History of Rabbinic Literature

TARGUMS AND TRANSLATION IN THE HISTORY OF RABBINIC LITERATURE

From the time of the earliest rabbinic document, the Mishnah, the rab- bis recognized the importance of translation.1 In Mishnah Sotah 7:5, they envision the closing act of the ceremony of Blessings and Curses on mounts Gerizim and Ebal, described in Deuteronomy 27–29, to be the erection of an altar upon which the Torah is written in seventy languages. Despite this emphatic elevation of written Torah translations, rabbinic writings do not paint a clear picture of how Targums were used or of their social and religious setting. In general, rabbinic texts speak of three arenas for the practice of Ara- maic translation: the synagogue service, teaching and study in a school, and private study. This observation does not reveal as much as we would like to know about the Targums. On the one hand, the preponderance of passages in rabbinic literature concerning translation focus on oral translation within the synagogue worship service. On the other hand, while several passages address questions concerning written Targums, most of them address halakhic matters that reveal little about practice and use. Despite this, we can glean significant information about Targums by examining rabbinic literature. No rabbinic-era text ever takes up Targums, translations, or the activ- ity of translating as a sustained topic of discussion, and therefore no broad description of targumic usage guides our understanding. Instead we find occasional remarks which require us to plumb beneath the surface for their assumed activities and expectations. These are few in total; across the Mishnah’s thousands of pericopae, for instance, just eight passages

1 In this chapter most translations of rabbinic literature were done by ourselves, usu- ally in conversation with the translations of Jacob Neusner. Scripture translations are from NRSV. Unless otherwise noted, the texts of rabbinic literature are from Bar Ilan’s Judaic Library, version 14. 286 THE TARGUMS: A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION mention Targums or translating. Similarly, the Tosefta contains twelve relevant passages, the Palestinian Talmud eighteen helpful pericopae, and the Babylonian Talmud only twenty-nine. Most of these passages appear in the tractate Megillah. Megillah’s nominal topic is the reading of the Esther Scroll (Hebrew, megillah) on the festival of Purim. This tractate also addresses matters concerning Torah scrolls, the reading of Scripture in synagogue services, the saying of prayers, and other topics relating to synagogues. In the Mishnah, six of the eight passages about Targums and translation appear in Megillah, rather than being scattered across its thirty-three tractates. Similar con- centration in tractate Megillah also appears in the Tosefta, the Yerush- almi, and the Bavli. Because of this dearth of information, many scholarly analyses of Tar- gums and translation lump together information from the Tannaitic and Amoraic periods, from Palestine and from Babylonia, and even from the later geonim. This approach may superficially present a fuller picture, but it destroys any chance of identifying differences between time periods and widely separated geographical areas. To counter this lack of differentiation, this chapter will take a chron- ological approach through the four major rabbinic halakhic texts: the Mishnah, composed about 200 in Palestine; the Tosefta, composed about 250 in Palestine; the Palestinian Talmud, composed around 400 in Pal- estine; and the Babylonian Talmud, composed about 600 in Babylonia.2 Along the way, this will be accompanied by brief forays into the Tannaitic and Amoraic midrashic texts. Seven issues in regard to Targums and translation arise in Rabbinic literature and may be considered chronologically. Six of these arise in the Mishnah and continue to be addressed in later halakhic texts. The first issue is the oral performance of Scripture translation—explicitly the translation of the Torah and the Prophets—in the synagogue service. This constitutes the predominant interest of the four halakhic texts from the Mishnah to the Babylonian Talmud when they discuss Targums and translation. The second issue is related to the first, that of the translation of the Megillah during the Purim celebration. The third issue provides guidelines about Scripture passages that may or may not be translated, or even read in Hebrew, while the fourth issue emphasizes questions of translation technique with regard to specific biblical passages, particularly as the matter applies to the synagogue services. The fifth issue explores the question of which languages the Scriptures may be translated into. The 2 The differentiation between Palestine and Babylonia has been importantly empha- sized by W. Smelik in his essay “Language, Context, and Translation.”