Medieval Hebrew Bibles and Aramaic Translations

Medieval Hebrew Bibles and Aramaic translation

Medieval Hebrew Bibles often contain not only the hebrew text of (parts of) the Bible but also other texts as targum and medieval commentaries.

This presentation will focus on the Medieval Bibles from Sephardic, Ashkenazic and Italian provenance containing (parts of) the Targum. This means that only continuous targum texts will be discussed and liturgical texts like haftarot collections, mahzorim and sidurrim will not be taken into account.

In Targum studies it is common to distinguish between Targum Onkelos, Targum Jonathan and the Targum to the Writings given the different nature of their translation and their status. After a short summary of the possible function of targums in medieval European Jewish communities, I will present and discuss the occurence of Targums Onkelos, Jonathan and the Targum to the Writings in the extant Medieval Hebrew Bibles.

A comparison will be made with the Targum fragments from the Cairo Genizah and the extant Babylonian Targum texts as to see if the targum is represented likewise in these older sources.