Studies In The Targum To The Twelve Prophets

This volume is concerned with the origin and development of the Targum to the Prophets, focusing for this purpose upon the Twelve Prophets (from Nahum to Malachi). A wide-ranging introductory chapter sets current research in context by surveying almost two centuries of Targumic study. It is argued that the evidence in the extant text for a Second Commonwealth phase in the Targum's history is meagre and that, in particular, the Qumran Habakkuk pesher is not dependent upon the Targum to Habakkuk. Other issues discussed are the Hebrew Vorlage of the Targum, incipit formulae, 'Additional Targum' and the standard Targum, the haggadah in the Targum to Zechariah 3 in the light of a (so-called) Eastern Aramaic linguistic element, Targum and Peshiṭta, land and divine presence, and the final redaction of the Targum.

Although the term "minor prophets" is a familiar one in English Bible translations, it is not a felicitous one, since it applies as much to Hosea as to Haggai and to Amos as to Obadiah. The Targum offers no such pecking order. Nuggets of importance are as likely to be found in a Targumized "minor" prophet as a "major" one. Included in this volume are the books of Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. The authors' apparatus in the introduction provides the translational characteristics, theology, life-setting, text and versions, language, rabbinic citations and parallels, dating, manuscripts, and bibliography. A series of indices is also included.

The bilingual (Aramaic-Hebrew) concordance to the Targum of the Prophets is the product of an international project based in the Theological University of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, Kampen (ThUK) and supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). With this publication a major research tool becomes available to those engaged in Biblical and Jewish Studies. For the first time meaningful quotations from the Targum and the Masoretic Hebrew text of the Bible are set out in parallel so that the user of the concordance can study the translation technique of the Targum in much greater detail than was hitherto possible. The concordance opens up Targum Jonathan to scholars in various fields. It is an indispensable tool not only for research in the fields of textual criticism and the history of interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, but also for the study of early Judaism, the New Testament and patristics.To facilitate consultation on the basis of the Hebrew, every concordance per book contains a Hebrew-Aramaic index. The final volume will contain additions and corrections, a cumulative Aramaic-Hebrew index, as well as an English-Aramaic index.

This remarkable survey introduces critical knowledge and insights that have emerged over the past forty years, including targum manuscripts discovered this century and targums known in Aramaic but only recently translated into English. Prolific scholars Flesher and Chilton guide readers in understanding the development of the targums; their relationship to the Hebrew Bible; their dates, language, and place in the history of Christianity and Judaism; and their theologies and methods of interpretation.

In The Book of the Twelve: Composition, Reception, and Interpretation, an international group of biblical scholars discuss different aspects of the formation, interpretation, and reception of the Book of the Twelve as a literary unity.