Onkelos on the Torah: Understanding the Bible Text

Onkelos on the Torah: Understanding the Bible Text, 5 vols., eds. Israel Drazin and Stanley M. Wagner (Jerusalem/New York: Gefen, 2011). Reviewed by Raymond Apple. Targum Onkelos has long awaited a full translation into English. Israel Drazin and Stanley M. Wagner have now filled the gap by means of five handsomely produced volumes published by Gefen. Other literary classics--the Bible, Mishnah, Babylonian Talmud, Midrash Rabbah and Zohar--were rendered into English decades ago. However, several desiderata remained, including the Targum of Onkelos. There is a theory that the Soncino Press declined to translate the Shulhan Arukh for fear that it might make every ignoramus a posek (halakhic decisor), but why they did not turn their attention to Targum Onkelos is not known, especially in view of the rabbinic dictum that everyone should study the Targum on the weekly Torah portion (TB Berakhot 8a-b). As a major classical text, the Targum made the Pentateuch morashah kehillat Ya'akov--an inheritance of the Congregation of Jacob (Deut. 33:4) for Aramaic-speaking readers who knew little Hebrew, a problem already recognized in the Book of Nehemiah (13:24; cf. TB Megillah 3a and Rashi to Megillah 21b). An English version of Onkelos was planned to accompany the translation of Rashi prepared by A. M. Silbermann and M. Rosenbaum (in association with Blashki and Joseph) in the 1920s and 30s, but the project was not realized. Ktav Publishers issued volumes on Onkelos some years ago, but the present work is in a class of its own. It is probably the most solid and comprehensive edition of the Targum ever published and will rehabilitate Onkelos for the modern age. Apart from the general introduction to the series, each volume has the Torah text in Hebrew, the Targum in Aramaic, an English translation of the Targum, a page-by-page commentary, an appendix with additional notes, a section of Onkelos highlights and discussion points, and the Hebrew text of the haftarot with a translation of their Aramaic Targumim. The English is elegant and it is delightful to come across a Torah work that is not written in yeshivish. The font, layout and binding are attractive, and the books are a pleasure to handle. Although the Targum is attributed to Onkelos, his identity--if, indeed, he existed--remains a mystery, despite the best efforts of the authors and other Targumists. Tradition (TB Meg. 3a, etc.) maintains that he was a proselyte, the son of a wealthy heathen from Asia Minor, and surrounded his name with legends that made the Targum seem romantic, regardless of its contents. Folk tradition identified him with Aquilas, the second-century translator of the Pentateuch into Greek. It asserted that the name Onkelos was an attempt to render Aquila (Akilas) into Hebrew (despite the orthographical problem of replacing ayin with aleph), and believed that Aquila sought to demonstrate his Jewish loyalty by producing an Aramaic Hummash in addition to his Greek translation (Genesis Rabbah 70:5). In TJ Megillah 71c, the rabbis eulogistically applied to Aquila the verse, You are finer than all (other) people (Ps. 45:3), although the reference is probably to his translation into Greek fine language). It is possible that when the Aramaic translation became widely known, it was colloquially spoken of as possessing the Aquila/Onkelos style. The editors touch on these legends, but stick to scholarship. They separate the Aquila and Onkelos translations and conclude that little can be said with certainty about who produced the Targum that tradition associated with Onkelos. Since it uses tannaitic midrashim redacted about 400 CE, they posit that the work could not have come from an earlier date. They see in it the literary-philosophical stance of Rabbi Yishmael as against that of Rabbi Akiva (the contrast between the Yishmael and Akiva principles of interpretation is well spelled out in the introduction to the Exodus volume). …