Babylon and of Palestine, the Aramaean language could not but have maintained itself among the latter, and have been moreover restored again to its purity through the influence of the emigrations from Babylon, had it at any time begun to be in Palestine too much corrupted by the introduction of Hellenisms.

3. The proper names of persons, which are given in the New Testament and in Josephus, are mostly Aramaean. We need only refer to the frequent names compounded with the Aramaean Bar (son); as Bar Tolmai, Bar Jesu, Bar Timai, Bar Abba, etc. all of which sufficiently betray their Aramaean origin. The significant surnames also, which certain persons bore on account of their moral or corporeal character, as Boanerges, Barnabas, Cephas, Chagiras, etc. are Aramaean; and these certainly would not have been given to them, had they not been common at that period in the language of the country. This is also true of most of the significant geographical names; among which the most frequent are those compounded with Beth (2), Caphar (2), and En (1), on which one needs only to consult the index of Relandi Palaestina.

4. In this age, if not earlier, the Aramaean Targums were in general use in the synagogues of Palestine and among the learned. Probably also several of the Targums which are still extant, as those of Onkelos and Jonathan, and many fragments incorporated into later paraphrases, already existed at that time in their present form and language; although none of the Targums now extant, in an existence of so many centuries, have remained free from later interpolations.

The full and detailed proof of this position, which is very generally and confidently denied since the doubts raised against it by Morin, would demand a treatise of its own, and would here be out of place. We will therefore at present limit ourselves to some general remarks on the early existence of the Targums, and on the total or partial identity of several of the Aramaean paraphrases still extant, with those that existed in that age.

a) However contradictory the Jewish traditions* respecting the age and the authors of the Targums may be, yet they all agree in this, that the Targums were prepared a long time before the birth of Christ, for the benefit of the Jews who returned

* Wolfiii Biblioth. Heb. Tom. II. p. 1143 seq. Waltoni Prolegom. XII. §9, 10. A. Pfeifferi Exercit. II. de Targumin, in ej. Opp. philolog. Ultraj. 1704. p. 862 seq.

from the Babylonish exile. This tradition has the greatest probability in its favour; for the ancient Hebrew was at that time as strange to the inhabitants of Palestine, as the old German language of the eleventh or twelfth centuries to the Germans of the present day [or the language of Chaucer to the present race of Englishmen]; and it was therefore unavoidably necessary, that for the public readers in the synagogues, and for the unlearned Jews generally, who might wish to read the holy writings of their nation, there should be aids prepared in the language of the country, of which they might avail themselves in the reading of the Scriptures.

b) The language in the Targums of Jonathan and Onkelos,the latter of whom, according to the very probable Jewish tradition,* critically revised the older Targum of Ezra, and rejected the interpolations which had crept into it, just as Origen did the Alexandrine, and Jerome the old Latin version,-is entirely such as we should be entitled to expect it in the age before Christ. It is indeed not entirely pure, and is somewhat more disfigured by Hellenisms, Persisms, and other barbarisms, than the language in Daniel and Ezra ; but is by far less intermixed with foreign words than the Gemara, (which was composed some centuries afterwards,) and other later writings. The same is true of many fragments of older Targums, which have been incorporated in paraphrases compiled in later times, and are easily distinguished by their purer style. Does not this condition and character of the language authorize us to refer several of the existing Targums, either wholly or in part, to an age when the Aramaean language had not become so degenerate as it was after the destruction of Jerusalem ?

c) The Alexandrine version seems to have been made, not from the original Hebrew text, but from ancient Aramaean Targums, which lie at the foundation of the later ones. The frequent striking correspondence of the Seventy with the readings, interpolations, and allegorical interpretations of the Targums that are still extant, and of which it cannot be asserted that they have been interpolated from the Greek; and the assertion of Philo, that the Old Testament was written in the Chaldee language,† by which he unquestionably meant the Chaldee-Baby

* Pfeiffer, 1. c. p. 864.

+ De Vita Mosis, lib. II. p. 657. ed. Frekft. zo лadαιov (not noшτον) ἐγράφησαν οἱ νόμοι γλώσση Χαλδαική, ‘anciently our laws were written in the Chaldee tongue.' Comp. p. 658. C. p. 659. D. No. II.

43

lonish paraphrases at that time in circulation, render this conjecture in fact very probable. It could also not be expected of the Jews, that they would confide the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament, which they esteemed so holy, to the profane hands of the Egyptians, either in an exact transcript or in a version made directly from the original. Moreover the addition to the book of Job, found in the Alexandrine version and also mentioned by Origen, speaks expressly of an ancient Aramaean Targum (Bißios Zugiann), from which the Greek translation, which differs so much from the Hebrew, must have been made; since the Greek also harmonizes, in respect to several interpolations and explanations of words, even with the later and still existing Targum; as I have ascertained by a careful examination of both versions. More minute and complete investigations in respect to this relation of the Septuagint to the Targums-on which subject, so far as I know, we have as yet had nothing-will hereafter, as we may hope, throw a clearer light upon this point, and in this way restore to the criticism and hermeneutics of the Old Testament, which have hitherto been so long dependent on the version of the Seventy, their long lost independence.

d) Christ himself, as he uttered when dying on the cross, Matt. 27: 46, the words taken from Ps. 22: 2, àì, ýìì, laμà oaßayvavi; employed the Aramaean language of the Targum, in which he had probably often read the Psalms; which, on account of the frequent use of them by the Jews, must already have been early translated into the language of the country. But whether these words were borrowed by Christ out of a Targum now lost, or out of one still extant, we must leave undecided, since there are no grounds by which we can determine this question. The only variation in the present Targum from the Greek words as quoted by Christ, is instead of lauά; but this may have arisen from later copyists, who were ever prone to exchange synonymous words.-The apostles also, after the example of their Lord, availed themselves of the Targums current in Palestine. Origen at least sought for the passages quoted by them from the Old Testament and which are cited neither according to the Hebrew nor the Seventy, in the Jewish apocryphal books; and the mode of explaining the Old Testa

* Origenes, Proleg. in Cantic. Cant. Illud tamen palam est, multa vel ab apostolis vel ab evangelistis exempla esse prolata et N. T. inserta, quae in his Scripturis, quas canonicas habemus, nun

ment which the apostles often follow, so similar to that of the Targums, may be most naturally referred to this source.

e) Josephus in like manner, in his Jewish Antiquities, which work, as he assures us, was drawn from the holy writings of his nation, among which also the Targums were reckoned, harmonizes in many passages where he forsakes both the Hebrew and the Seventy, in respect to single readings and additions, with the Targums that are still extant. The instances already known* might doubtless be greatly increased, were any one to institute throughout a comparison of Josephus with the Targums; and such an investigation would perhaps confirm my conjecture, that Josephus, in the composition of his history, had chiefly before him the Targums, and next to them the Septuagint; but the Hebrew text very seldom.-Whether Philo, in whose writings much occurs that bears a great resemblance to the style of the Targums, did not in like manner make use of ancient or of still existing Targums, is a question, which perhaps has never yet been raised, and the consideration of which I must leave to those who are alike familiar with the spirit and the contents of the Targums.

f) The silence observed by the earliest Christian fathers respecting these Targums, cannot be surprising. In the first centuries of the Christian era, it must have been a matter of moment to the Jews, to hold them concealed from the learned among the Christians, who might have made great use of many an interpretation of the Old Testament prophecies in the Targums, to support their own theory of the Messiah; and the Targums belong unquestionably to the Jewish apocryphal books, of which the earlier fathers not unfrequently speak. Further, the costliness also of the Targums, which were mostly purchased

quam legimus, in apocryphis tamen inveniuntur, et evidenter ex ipsis ostenduntur esse assumta.' Comp. also Jerome on Eph. c. 5.

* Michaelis Orient. Biblioth. Th. V. 1773. p. 227, 239, 240, 249. † J. A. Fabricii Codex pseudepigraphus N. T. Vol. I. Ed. 2. Hamb. 1722. p. 1088. [See the note on p. 338.]

Elias Levita, in the preface to his Meturgeman, says, that before the invention of printing, there were scarcely one or two copies of the Targum on the Prophets and Hagiographa in one province () or in one climate (p). This assertion however is exaggerated; for even among the MSS. of the O. T. compared by Kennicott and De Rossi, and written before the end of the 15th

only for the synagogues, and the unacquaintance of the fathers with the Aramaean language,-in which even the learned Jerome must have made as little progress as in Hebrew, since in translating and explaining the Old Testament he was almost always compelled to call in the aid of Jews,-may probably have contributed not a little to cause them to remain so unknown among the Christians. That however the Jews did not entirely withhold from the Christians the explanations given in the Targums of dark passages in the Old Testament, we know from the commentaries of Jerome, in which interpretations of this kind are to be met with, entirely of the same character with those that occur in the printed Targums.*

5. It is an unquestionable fact, that Jesus, whose sphere of action lay chiefly among the common people,-who were less corrupted than the higher classes, and for that reason more susceptible for purer moral and religious instruction; out of whom also he chose his most intimate friends and disciples, avdown árgáμμaroi nai idiotai, Acts 4: 13,-employed in his teaching and on other occasions the Aramaean language. Several fragments of his language which are given in the original,† the Aramaean colouring which is every where visible in the translations of his discourses by the evangelists, and the relation of Paul, that

century, there is a very considerable number that have these Targums side by side.

Comp. the author's Exercitatt. in Ecclesiast. 11: 7—12: 7. Gött. 1794. p. 16 seq. where he has quoted an example of this mode of interpretation.

+ Matt. 27:46. Mark 15:34. 5:41. 7: 34. Why some words of the original should be retained in just these passages of the Greek Gospels, which every where else give the discourses and declarations of Jesus only in Greek, can only be accounted for conjecturally. In the first two passages they seem to have been left, because they serve to explain a circumstance immediately following, viz. that some of the bystanders understood Jesus to have called upon Elias. In the other two passages, the retaining of the original words seems to have been rather accidental than designed; just as in the Alexandrine version, where sometimes a Hebrew word is retained without any ground, and probably merely through inattention; e. g. Judg. 13: 5 Natio. v. 8 Adavait. Having once obtained a place in the Greek Gospels, these untranslated words were of course, on this very account, spared by later criticism. [On the subject of the language of Jesus, see the ariticle of Hug. ED.]