Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Aramaic Targums'

The quest for the historical Jesus can be advanced by a consideration of disagreement scenarios recorded in the gospels. Such “conflicts” afford the opportunity not only to analyse the positions of the protagonists, but by comparing them, to better appreciate their relative stances. ¶ One area of disagreement that has remained largely unexplored is that between Jesus and the Pharisees over the “kingdom of God”. Indeed, “kingdom of God” formed the very foundation of Jesus’ preaching and thus ought to be the place where fundamental disagreements are to be found. As Luke 17:20-21 represents the only passage in the Gospels where the Pharisees show any interest in the kingdom of God, it forms the central hub of the thesis around which an account of the disparate beliefs of Jesus and the Pharisees on the kingdom of God is constructed. ¶ The main thesis is this. Luke 17:20-21 can best be explained, at the level of the Pharisees and Jesus, as betraying a fundamental disagreement, not in the identity of the kingdom of God, which they both regarded as primarily the Divine Royal Presence, i.e. God himself as king, but in the location of that kingdom. The Pharisees located the kingdom in the here-and-now, Jesus located it in heaven. Conversely, at later stages in the formation of the pericope, the pre-Lukan community identified the kingdom as the Holy Spirit located in individuals with faith in Jesus and the redactor identified the kingdom as Jesus, located both in the Historical Jesus and the Jesus now in heaven. ¶ Chapter 1, after the usual preliminary remarks, presents an analysis of Luke 17:20-21 as a chreia, a literary form ideally suited as the basis on which to compare the beliefs of the Pharisees and Jesus. The work of three scholars vital to the development of the main thesis is then reviewed and evaluated. By way of background, a portrait of the Pharisees is then presented, highlighting in particular, issues that will be of importance in later chapters. Finally, a section on the Aramaic Targums suggests that some targum traditions may be traced back prior to AD 70 and that these reflect the influence and beliefs of first century Palestinian Pharisees. ¶ Chapters 2 and 3 are a consideration of every instance of the explicit mention of God as king (or his kingship) and the Divine Kingdom respectively, in contemporary and earlier Jewish Palestinian literature and in Luke-Acts. A model of the kingdom of God is developed in these chapters that will be applied to Luke 17:20-21 in the next chapter. ¶ Chapter 4 presents a detailed exegesis of Luke 17:20-21, taking into account scholarship on the pericope since the last monograph (an unpublished dissertation of 1962) on the chreia. It offers a composition history of the pericope and measures previous exegesis against the view of the kingdom of God as developed in chapters 2 and 3. ¶ Chapter 5 presents a summary of the work that relates directly to Luke 17:20-21, some implications arising from the findings and, several possible avenues for future research.

Biblical languages and time mix well. The former allow access to ancient times when our ancestors, we are told, spoke to God face–to–face. This interaction took place supposedly in the languages in which we receive the literary account of the interaction. This thesis aims to reconnect our modern languages to Targum Aramaic. With the use of two complementary linguistic methods, that of text–linguistics (Harald Weinrich) and the functional sentence perspective of the Prague school (FSP), it seeks to answer key questions about Aramaic syntax and word order. In Targum 1Samuel, the text examined here, connection with the reader is established through a flow of narrative, which represents the sequence of events as they happened, which is sometimes substituted with comment. This comment represents the narrator’s notes, clarifications, or it simply tells or re–tells the events in the form of a report rather than narrative. These authorial interventions accompany the narration. Weinrich described these two realities, and connected them with morphological tenses in modern languages, which use tenses like past simple our past perfect for narrative, but comment by employing present, present perfect, and future. Comment and narrative tenses are exhibited by the indirect speech of narrative genre in most modern languages. The Aramaic and the Biblical Hebrew underlying 1Samuel, being Semitic Languages, do not display that morphological diversity in terms of tense; consequently, modern readers have tended to read them simply as narrative, ignoring comment. This is evident in most translations and interpretations of these texts into modern languages. Where indirect speech occurs in either Aramaic or Hebrew, such translations and interpretations assume that the text merely narrates, and accordingly they restrict themselves to using past simple and continuous, and past perfect and continuous tenses, and their equivalents in modern languages. This thesis ascertains that comment in Targum 1Samuel is closely bound up with word order and the limited number of tenses in Aramaic. Interpreting these together gives us back our narrator and his notes, clarifications, or reports.

The first point of departure for the present thesis is the observation that the Aramaic translation of Job found at Qumran (11Q10) sits uncomfortably in the genre of the ‘classical’ targum despite the original editors’ classification of the text as ‘11QtargumJob’. The second stimulus for the study arises from the author’s review of scholarly discussion on 11Q10 in which its comparison with the Targum and Syriac versions of Job has been either anecdotal or extremely limited in scope. In light of the obvious relationship between these two observations, and in the hope that the investigation of the latter will shed light on the former, the author attempts to take up the question of the classification of the Qumran text through a synoptic comparison of 11Q10 with the Targum and Syriac versions. Moving beyond static definitions of literalness, questions of dating and dependence of the Syriac on the targum tradition, the author makes use of recent work in Targumic and Syriac studies which has attempted to come to grips with issues of genre through an assessment of modes of representation and the formal treatment of the Hebrew text. Having noted that preliminary investigations of the relationship between these Aramaic versions have been limited to a study of addition and substitution, the present investigation attempts to assess the respective translators’ attitudes toward the Hebrew text through an analysis of omission and transposition. Following on from these investigations, the Aramaic versions’ treatment of that smallest of Hebrew lexemes - the waw conjunction - is analysed as a further index by which the attitudes of the various translators toward their Hebrew source may be assessed. Having investigated the attitude of the respective translator to their source text, the author locates his findings both within the context of the Qumran translation’s classification as targum and, more broadly, within the study of the Aramaic versions. The author concludes that, in terms of its representation of the Hebrew text, the Aramaic translation from Qumran shares certain fundamental features with the Peshitta of Job rather than with its nominal cousin, the Rabbinic Targum of Job.

This synoptic analysis of verses from Job chapters 37-39 in 11Q10, the Peshitta version (PJob) and the rabbinic targum (RJob) aims to identify the translators’ methods for handling the Hebrew text (HT) and to assess the apparent skills and knowledge brought by them to their task. Additionally, the study engages with recent discussion which challenges the nature of 11Q10 as targum. To this end, PJob and RJob provide accepted models of ‘translation’ and ‘targum’ alongside which to assess 11Q10. The following translation methods are identified, described, compared and contrasted in the three versions: selection,extension, alternative translation, expansion, substitution, adjustment of the consonantal HT, adjustment of the Hebrew word order or division, omission, and conjecture. PJob is confirmed as an attempt to transpose the difficult Hebrew of Job into Syriac. RJob is confirmed as a conservative translation with clear underpinnings in allusion to scripture and to rabbinic traditions attested elsewhere. Significant observations are made regarding an interpretative quality in 11Q10, and new light is cast on its richness and subtlety as an allusive translation. It is proposed that the translation displays deep knowledge of scripture and skill in applying this knowledge. It is further proposed that careful comparison with methods which have been identified in Onqelos is warranted. 11Q10 is identified as an important early witness to scripturally-based motifs which are also found in other intertestamental and rabbinic sources. It is argued that 11Q10’s nature suggests that its purpose was not simply to translate but to understand and subtly explicate the HT, and that it was intended for use alongside it, not as a replacement. The study refutes the categorization of 11Q10 as ‘translation’ rather than ‘targum’, and agrees with its orginal editors that its value lies in its unique witness to the early nature of targum.

La tesis es una edición de la versión aramea -Targum- del libro bíblico del profeta Oseas a partir del manuscrito OR. 1474 de la British Library de Londres. Contiene también la edición de los fragmentos babilónicos EB 54 (TGOS 2,15-23), EB 16 (TGOS 10,1-11,4) y KB 7 (TGOS 14,2-3). El aparato de variantes colaciona los siguientes textos: Ms. OR. 2211 de la British Library (edición de A. Sperber), Codex Reuchlinianus de la Badische Landesbibliothek de Karlsruhe, Codex Urbinati 1 de la Biblioteca Vaticana, Ms. 7 de la Montefiore Library de Londres, Ms. Villa-Amil 4 de A. de Zamora de la Biblioteca de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Ms. M-3 de A. de Zamora de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Salamanca, 1 Biblia Rabínica de Venecia (1515-17), 2 Biblia Rabínica de Venecia (1524-25), Biblia Políglota de Amberes (1568-72). La tesis contiene una traducción catalana critica del Targum de Oseas, y establece las concordancias del texto arameo a partir del manuscrito OR. 1474 de Londres, que es el texto base de esta edición. El capitulo introductorio analiza los siguientes aspectos del Targum de Oseas: aspectos generales (el Targum Jonatan de los Profetas, Sitz Im Leben, fecha y lugar de origen, historia de la investigación), metodología, lengua, doctrina, traducciones y paralelos del Targum de Oseas.

Asfår Asāṭīr, le « Livre des Légendes », est une réécriture araméenne du Pentateuque samaritain basée sur le targum, centrée sur Adam, Noé, Abraham et Moïse, et conclue par deux apocalypses. Sa langue est un précieux témoin de l’araméen samaritain tardif des Xè-XIè s. Ses nombreuses traditions haggadiques proviennent d’anciennes sources samaritaines, ou sont liées à la littérature juive et aux Histoires musulmanes des Prophètes ; elles révèlent un état encore fluctuant de la religion samaritaine. Beaucoup furent reçues comme canoniques par les Samaritains, qui attribuèrent l’œuvre, anonyme, à Moïse. Cette étude se propose d’établir une édition critique du texte araméen et une traduction tenant compte de ses commentaires arabes et hébreux, afin de rendre cette œuvre accessible à tout chercheur français ou européen
Asfår Asāṭīr, the "Book of Legends", is an Aramaic rewriting of the Samaritan Pentateuch focused on Adam, Noah, Abraham and Moses, and whose framework is the Targum; it ends with two Apocalypses. Its language is a rare witness of Late Samaritan Aramaic, in the 10th and 11th centuries. The text brings together traditions from ancient Samaritan sources, or related to Jewish literature and to Muslim stories of the Prophets. It shows that Samaritan religion was still in flux in the early Middle Age. Many of its haggadic traditions became canonical among Samaritans who attributed this text to Moses.This study proposes to establish a critical edition of the Aramaic text and to provide a translation taking into account its Arabic and Hebrew commentaries, so as to make this work accessible to all French or European researchers

This dissertation seeks to find Christ in the Old Testament by examining the targumic passages in which Memra, Shekinah, or Yeqara occur as God's agent or manifestation. Chapter 1 demonstrates that scholars view the Memra, Shekinah, and Yeqara as agents for God or manifestations of God even though many scholars reject the notion of Christological implications found in the New Testament appropriation of these terms and concepts. Chapter 2 discusses the close connection between the targumic Memra, Shekinah, and Yeqara and the New Testament by citing clear instances where the New Testament authors appropriated targumic terms and concepts to speak of Jesus. By using targumic terms and concepts, the New Testament authors provided an exegetical method for finding Christ in the Old Testament through Targum. Chapter 3 examines the occurrences of Memra, presenting examples of passages that certainly refer to Christ, do not refer to Christ, and probably refer to Christ. In this chapter, the Memra refers to Christ or probably refers to Christ when the Memra functions as God's agent, carrying out God's work in the world. Chapter 4 investigates the occurrences of Shekinah and Yeqara, but under the influence of the New Testament, nearly all of the occurrences of Shekinah, and most occurrences of Yeqara refer to Jesus. Shekinah and Yeqara are delineated into categories of occurrences that refer to God's manifestation and God's manifestation with agency. Even though most occurrences of Shekinah and Yeqara refer to Christ, some occurrences of Yeqara are a literal translation of the Hebrew and do not refer to Jesus. Chapter 5 concludes the dissertation by tying several themes together to show the consistency and validity of finding Christ in the Old Testament through Aramaic terms and concepts. This dissertation argues that when the Memra, Shekinah, or Yeqara appear as God's agent(s) or as manifestations of God, one may find Christ in those Old Testament passages. One may find Christ in these passages because the New Testament authors present Jesus as the premier agent and manifestation of God using targumic terms and concepts.

D.Litt. et Phil.
This thesis combines Targum studies with Judaic studies. First, secondary sources were examined and independent research was done to ascertain the historical process that took place in the compilation of extant Pentateuchal Targums (Fragment Targum [Recension P, MS Paris 110], Neofiti 1, Onqelos and Pseudo-Jonathan). Second, a framework for evaluating Jewish exegetical practices within the age of formative Judaism was established with the scrutiny of midrashic texts on Genesis 1: 26-27. Third, individual targumic renderings of Genesis 1: 26-27 were compared with the Hebrew Masoretic text and each other and then juxtaposed with midrashic literature dating from the age of formative Judaism. Last, the outcome of the second and third step was correlated with findings regarding the historical process that took place in the compilation of the Targums, as established in step one. The findings of the summative stage were also juxtaposed with the linguistic characterizations of the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon Project (CAL) of Michael Sokoloff and his colleagues.The thesis can report the following findings: (1) Within the age of formative Judaism pharisaic sages and priest sages assimilated into a new group of Jewish leadership known as ‘rabbis’. Under the direction of these scholars, Pentateuchal Targums were collectively and purposefully redacted for use in liturgical, educational or halakhic contexts. This finding counters the alternative view that priestly groups remained distinct from rabbinic circles until the fourth century C.E. and that priests alone were responsible for the compilation of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. (2) The analysis of midrashic literature revealed different modes of exegesis used by Tannaim and Amoraim, thus providing information on the time and context wherein midrashic passages were compiled. When midrashic passages were then juxtaposed with individual renderings of Genesis 1: 26-27, it became possible to obtain more specific information on the dating and purpose for which extant Pentateuchal Targums were compiled. (3) The comparison of targumic renderings of Genesis 1: 26-27 with the Hebrew Masoretic Text and each other challenges the assumption that all extant Targums were compiled for the Synagogue. In Fragment Targum and Neofiti 1, haggadic rendering goes together with the popular Aramaic dialect used in Synagogue services, while the use of Standard Literary Aramaic employed in the context of halakhic decision-making characterizes the literal rendering of Targum Onqelos. The use of different dialects in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (PJ) in conjunction with an expansive rendering of Genesis 1: 26-27, which concurs with rhetorical arguments of Palestinian Amoraim in the Palestinian Talmud and Genesis Rabbah, may be an indication that PJ was used for educational purposes.

The quest for the historical Jesus can be advanced by a consideration of disagreement scenarios recorded in the gospels. Such “conflicts” afford the opportunity not only to analyse the positions of the protagonists, but by comparing them, to better appreciate their relative stances. One area of disagreement that has remained largely unexplored is that between Jesus and the Pharisees over the “kingdom of God”. Indeed, “kingdom of God” formed the very foundation of Jesus’ preaching and thus ought to be the place where fundamental disagreements are to be found. As Luke 17:20-21 represents the only passage in the Gospels where the Pharisees show any interest in the kingdom of God, it forms the central hub of the thesis around which an account of the disparate beliefs of Jesus and the Pharisees on the kingdom of God is constructed. The main thesis is this. Luke 17:20-21 can best be explained, at the level of the Pharisees and Jesus, as betraying a fundamental disagreement, not in the identity of the kingdom of God, which they both regarded as primarily the Divine Royal Presence, i.e. God himself as king, but in the location of that kingdom. The Pharisees located the kingdom in the here-and-now, Jesus located it in heaven. Conversely, at later stages in the formation of the pericope, the pre-Lukan community identified the kingdom as the Holy Spirit located in individuals with faith in Jesus and the redactor identified the kingdom as Jesus, located both in the Historical Jesus and the Jesus now in heaven. Chapter 1, after the usual preliminary remarks, presents an analysis of Luke 17:20-21 as a chreia, a literary form ideally suited as the basis on which to compare the beliefs of the Pharisees and Jesus. The work of three scholars vital to the development of the main thesis is then reviewed and evaluated. By way of background, a portrait of the Pharisees is then presented, highlighting in particular, issues that will be of importance in later chapters. Finally, a section on the Aramaic Targums suggests that some targum traditions may be traced back prior to AD 70 and that these reflect the influence and beliefs of first century Palestinian Pharisees. Chapters 2 and 3 are a consideration of every instance of the explicit mention of God as king (or his kingship) and the Divine Kingdom respectively, in contemporary and earlier Jewish Palestinian literature and in Luke-Acts. A model of the kingdom of God is developed in these chapters that will be applied to Luke 17:20-21 in the next chapter. Chapter 4 presents a detailed exegesis of Luke 17:20-21, taking into account scholarship on the pericope since the last monograph (an unpublished dissertation of 1962) on the chreia. It offers a composition history of the pericope and measures previous exegesis against the view of the kingdom of God as developed in chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 5 presents a summary of the work that relates directly to Luke 17:20-21, some implications arising from the findings and, several possible avenues for future research.

An investigation of the Beatitudes of Matthew: Between oral tradition and Greek text investigates the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew. It starts with the Greek text as it is known today and works backwards to uncover the different stages of tradition. Each beatitude is reconstructed in both Hebrew and Aramaic in order to ascertain the oral tradition which gave rise to the Greek text and, ultimately, to suggest a theoretical rendering of the original words of Jesus. The results indicate that the original Beatitudes were given in Aramaic. They were subsequently translated into Hebrew and it is this Hebrew version which is the antecedent for the Greek text (which itself underwent successive modifications) known today. The value of the results of this investigation is a more accurate understanding of the words of Jesus, having obvious implications for Bible translations and commentaries. The results further give a glimpse into how the Beatitudes were understood at the different stages of tradition and assess their modern interpretation in the light of their history.
Thesis (DLitt (Ancient Languages))--University of Pretoria, 2006.
Ancient Languages
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1 SUMMARY: Magie, mystika a liturgie: židovská tradice v amuletech pozdní antiky Magic, Mysticism and Liturgy: Jewish Tradition in Amulets of Late Antiquity Marek Vinklát This dissertation thesis focuses on a phenomenon of Aramaic magic bowl, or Aramaic incantation bowls, amulets originating in Mesopotamia of Late Antiquity. It is a first Czech monograph on this topic and also a bold attempt to translate texts of these already published bowls to the Czech language. After the introduction, which elucidates the means of selection and translation of sixteen presented bowls, author discusses the history of research on these peculiar amulets. Many past and modern scholars are presented here with their theories, attitudes and publications. A special part of this second chapter is dedicated to the problem of black antiquities market and illegal trade with Aramaic magic bowls. The first chapter is dealing with a possible connection of bowls and Hekhalot literature, which is also briefly introduced and described. Author analyzes and translates five Aramaic magic bowls and compares their preciously unique content with relevant macroforms of Hekhalot literature. As was stated by another scholars, the Aramaic magic bowls were written by people, who knew the Hekhalot literature and, possibly, were cherishing it. Next...