Aramaic and Bible Interpretations

Wednesday, January 8, 2025 at 8pm
Aramaic and Bible Interpretations

Edward Cook – Catholic University of America

The Aramaic translations (targums) of the Hebrew Bible provide a fascinating window into the history of Jewish Bible interpretation.  Since the targums were not created to be “the Bible” for any community, they were free to explicate the text by providing expansions and commentary from tradition and midrash.  A case study of the targums to Genesis 22 (the Binding of Isaac), for example, exhibits many of these characteristics.

The first targums had appeared by the end of the first century B.C.E., and became more widespread and even indispensable by the mid-first century C.E. as by then most Judeans no longer spoke or read Hebrew; Aramaic was their vernacular. Targums were not recognized as authoritative by Jewish religious leaders. Targums were later cited in the Babylonian Talmud, and today some editions of the Tanakh, those which include commentaries, still print the targum alongside the text.

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