Solomon Marcus Schiller-Szinessy

“ They introduce, as occasion serves, not merely the whole of the oral tradition handed down to their time, and the necessary references to, and interpretations of, the various laws to be found in the Pentateuch and the other sacred writings, but exhibit also, though only in a fragmentary manner, an almost complete cycle of the profane sciences as current orally and known to them by books composed by Jews and Gentiles. ”

“ As regards the complete Targum on the Prophets, no mistake can be greater than to believe that Rab Yoseph, a teacher of the 3d and 4th centuries, and head of the academy of Pumbaditha (see Rabbah) , was the author of this Targum in whole or in part. This mistake has its origin in the repeated phrase of the Babylonian Talmud, נרמתרכסרניוםף ("as Rab Yoseph targumizes") ; but then a similar phrase exists with regard to Rab Shesheth, נרמתרכסרניוםף ("as Rab Shesheth [24] targumizes") . And in like manner the expression נרמתרכסרניוםף ("as we targumize") is of frequent occurrence. ”

“ And, while a Babylonian Jew coming to Palestine might find it convenient to translate his Hebrew name into Evangelus, this good Greek name was enough to suggest in after times that he was of heathen origin and so to facilitate the confusion with Aquila. The idiom of the Targum Onḳelos, which is held to be Palestinian with some Babylonian features, points to Babylonia as the country of its final redactor, if to Palestine as its source. It must be remembered that Hillel and other great fountains of Palestinian learning were of Babylonian origin. ”

“ Origin.—Although none of the Targums now in our hands are as old as the Septuagint (q.v.) , the public use of Targums on Sabbaths, festivals, &c., is very ancient, and indeed their language was for several hundreds of years the sole one understood by the majority of the Jews in Palestine and Babylonia. How the Hebrew people of Judæa came so entirely to unlearn their own Hebrew tongue as to stand in need of an Aramaic translation of their Scriptures need not be dwelt on here (see vol. xi. p and vol. xxi. p) . ”

“ The greater part of the Tosaphoth in the Babylonian Talmud are indirectly also by Rabbenu Tham; and he is virtually the first Tosaphist. It is true that his father, his brother Rashbam (q.v.) , and his uncle Rabbenu Yehudah b. Nathan had written Tosaphoth before him, and that this kind of literary activity lasted to within the first quarter of the 14th century. Still, most and the best of the Tosaphoth now in our hands rest on Rabbenu Tham and his school. ”

“ Rabbi Shemaryah was sold at Alexandria, and was redeemed by the Jews, and great was their astonishment when they recognized in him a most able Talmudist. He became the head of the Cairo community, and one of the most successful Jewish Talmud teachers Egypt ever had. Rabbi Ḥusshiel was taken to Kairwan, in Africa. There the Jews redeemed him; and when his great learning was found out he was named the spiritual head of the Jews in that place. ”

“ A similar error is made with respect to the editor or editors of the Babylonian Talmud, whose names are given as Rab Asshi (see Bab) (ob. 427) and Rabina (ob. 550) , and who lived still much earlier than the last teachers mentioned in that Talmud (8th century) . But it ought to be remembered that when the ancients speak of editors of books of such a mixed character as the Mishnah, the Zohar, both Talmuds, &c., they mean the person or persons who gave the first impulse to the collection or redaction of such books. ”

“ According to the Babylonian Talmud, Megil., 3a, "Onḳelos (son of Calonicus, Gitt.,56b, or of Calonymus, Ab. Zar., 11a) , the proselyte, composed the Targum on the Pentateuch (אמרז) out of the mouth of R. Eli'ezer and R. Yehoshua'," who taught in the 1st and 2d centuries. In the Jerusalem Talmud, Meg., i. 9, the same thing is related on the same authorities, and almost in the same words, of the proselyte Aquila (Akylas) of Pontus, whose Greek version of the Bible was much used by Greek-speaking Jews down to the time of Justinian {Nov., cxlvi. cap. 1) . ”

“ The view now accepted by most critics is that the word Onḳelos is a Babylonian corruption of Akylas, but that the name “Targum Onḳelos” originally meant no more than “Targum in the style of Aqiiila,” i.e., bearing to the freer Palestinian Targums a similar relation to that of Aquila’s version to the Septuagint. [17] On this view there never was a real person called Onḳelos. But how Akylas (ץק׳לם ; in Ber. Rab. i. middle, אק׳לזם or ק׳ל׳ן, i.e., ק׳לץ) could be corrupted into Onḳelos has not been satisfactorily explained ”

“ Whilst his friend and fellow-pupil Rab (q.v.; they both attended the lectures of the principal editor of the Mishnah) excelled in the other parts of the Jewish law, Shemuel was pre-eminent in the civil law. On account of this he is repeatedly called in the Talmud both "Shapur" (like his master) and "Aryokh" (lion, king, teacher) . To him is due the legal principle that " the law of the civil government is the law,"i.e.", that except in religious matters the Jew must submit to the laws of his country (T. B., Baha Bathra, 54b) . ”

“ Rabbenu Tham had, like his grandfather Rashi, six teachers:— (1) his own father, (2) his brother Ribam, (3) his brother Rashbam, (4) Rabbenu Ya'akob b. Shimshon, [5] (5) his grandfather Rashi, [6] and (6) Rabbenu Yoseph Tob-ʕElem the younger. [7] Rabbenu Tham had at least five children. [8] The names of three of his sons were Yoseph, [9] Yiṣḥaḳ, [10] and Shelomoh. [11] Rabbenu Tham was unquestionably among Jews the foremost man of his age. ”

“ I. As regards the Law (Pentateuch) . ⁠ (1) The private person called to the Law (which chiefly contains halakhic [7] matter) read one verse of it, which the official methurgeman or turgeman (translator) immediately paraphrased; (2) whilst the reader of the Law was not allowed to take his eye off the written scroll, the .methurgeman was forbidden, not merely to read out of a written Targum, but even to look into the sacred text; [8] (3) each of these had to wait till the other had quite finished the reading and translation respectively ”

“ Rashi takes the quotation from Baba meṣiʕ'a to signify the concrete Babylonian Talmud, which, however, is impossible. ↑ See T. B., Ḳiddushin, leaf 40b: "Is theory (ותלמור) greater or practice (ותלמור ) greater? . . . They all answered, Theory is greater because it leads to practice." Talmud, as will have been seen, is here given as synonymous with Limmud. ”

“ As regards his teachers we know four, three of whom he attended, whilst he studied and digested the works of the fourth so well that, though personally unknown to one another, they may be justly called master and disciple. His first teacher was his own father; his second teacher, from whom Rabbenu Nathan no doubt obtained his thorough knowledge of Babylonian habits, was R. Maṣliah of Sicily, who had been a hearer of the greatest "gaon" of Pumbaditha ”

“ Buxtorf’s emendations founded on the diction of the Biblical Targum (as suggested in the Methurgeman) are a gross mistake, inasmuch as they lack the criticism of history; (8) printers’ mistakes, increasing in every new edition, have all but ruined the text. The remedies for this corruption are:— (1) good Targum MSS. in private hands and public libraries, notably in Italy, Germany, and England; (2) Targum MSS., according to the Babylonico-Assyrian system of punctuation, chiefly preserved in South Arabia, Russia, and England ”

“ It can be shown that many laws and sayings supposed to be of the 2d, 3d, and 4th centuries of the Christian era are actually of pre-Christian times, and, indeed, certain explanations, figures of speech, &c., had been, so to say, floating in the air for centuries. ”

“ There is in existence an approximately good treatise on them (see Variæ Lectiones, vols. i. and viii.) . We will only name three of the entire editions:— (1) the editio princeps, Venice, 1520–23, [27] —which, though disfigured by numerous misprints, was not mutilated by the censor; (2) the edition of Basel (1578–81) , which omits ʕAbodah Zarah altogether, and has a cheering (?) notice in Latin; [28] (3) the latest edition, now printing at Vilna, with old commentaries hitherto unpublished. ”

“ TALMUD signifies— (1) "study of and instruction in anything (whether by any one else or by oneself) ": [1] (2) "learning acquired" [2] (3) "style, system": [3] as such it is synonymous with Mishnah in its fifth signification, vol. xvi. p. 503; (4) "theory," in contradistinction to "practice," [4] — synonymous with Midrash in its fourth signification, vol. xvi. p. 285; (5) such interpretation of the Mosaic law as is apparent on the surface thereof and does not necessitate any further disquisition; [5] (6) Boroitho, or the non-canonical Mishnah ”

“ For not only was he the greatest Talmudist after his maternal grandfather’s death, hut he also added reading wide and varied to a stupendous memory and a marvellous power of combination, such, as appeared only again in the last century in the persons of R. Yehonathan Eybenschütz (ob. 1764) and R. Yeḥezkel Landau (ob. 1793) . ”

“ The doctors of both recensions, although they primarily discuss the correctness of the text and meaning of the Mishnah, and what should be the right legal decision according to it, do not confine themselves to this. ”

“ Yisḥak (T. B., Gittin, 31b, Rashi, catchword ותל) , husband of the learned and accomplished Yaltha, the daughter of the resh galutha (T. B., Ḥullin,leaf 109b) , &c. ↑ Amora may also mean an interpreter. The great teachers of the first five centuries had generally a man (or several men) at their side, who to the learning requisite to translate the master’s teaching given in Hebrew, and dilate on it in Aramaic, added a Stentor’s voice, and could by fascinating speech command the attention of the audience. ”

“ Rabbenu Tham died in 1171; see Rashi’s Siddur, ii. (formerly Luzzatto’s, then Halberstam’s, and now the property of the master of St John’s College, Cambridge) , leaf 48a}}
2. Rabbenu Ya'aḳob of Orleans, rabbi of London (?) . He is often quoted in the Tosaphoth (both on the Pentateuch and on the Babylonian Talmud) . No independent works of his, however, are extant. He was killed at London in the tumult on the coronation day of Richard Cœur-de-Lion (September 3, 1189; Schiller-Szinessy, Catal., i. p. 117) . (s. m. s.-s.) ”

“ Z., 11a, and for Aquila’s connexion with Hadrian, T. Y., Hag., ii. 1; Shem. Rab., xxx.; Epiphanius, De Mens. Et Pond., xiv. sq. ) . From these facts some (see H. Adler, Nethinah lagger, in the Vilna Pent,, 1874, Introd.) still argue that Onḳelos is but another name for Aquila, and that the Greek translator also wrote our Targum. This view was long ago refuted by R. 'Azaryah de’ Rossi, [16] and is quite untenable. It is incredible that Aquila or any other Greek could have had the mastery of Aramaic and of traditional lore as well as of Hebrew which the Targum displays ”

“ Yehiel’s {'}Arukh, s.v. פלסיא "Yerushalmi Targum" presupposes at least one other. ↑ The Targum on the Five Megilloth has all one character, and is therefore wholly Yerushalmi. ↑ The Targum itself repeatedly quotes another Targum. ↑ See Rashi on T. B., Megillah, leaf 13b, catchword זכה. We have still two Targums on Esther. It ought to be mentioned here that in the post-Talmudic Massekheth Sopherim, xiii. 6, an Aramaic translation of Esther iii, 1 is given with the introductory words: תרנם ׳וסף רכ ("Rab Yoseph targumized") . ”

“ The latter were carried off by Napoleon I. to Paris in 1809, but in 1815 were returned to Vienna. ↑ Various writers assert that there exist many books containing Latin translations of various treatises of the Babylonian Talmud. Upon examination these books turn out to contain either a translation only of Mishnic treatises with or without excerpta from, and with or without scholia on, Gemara, or disputations which introduce small pieces of Gemara. ”

“ He is also cited by name in the Palestinian Pireḳe de-R. Eli'ezer, xxxviii. ↑ Bibliography of the Targum אזנקלזם— (A) There are very fine MSS. of this Targum at Parma, Oxford, Cambridge (Dd. 11, 26, Add. 446, 1053) , the British Museum, Kissingen (Rabbin Bamberger) , &c. ⁠ (B) A Massoreth on our Targum by an anonymous author, who must have lived in or before the 12th century, has been published— (1) by Luzzatto (Oṣar Neḥmad, iv.) ; (2) by Adler (Vilna edition of the Pentateuch of 1874) ; and (3) by Berliner (with a German translation, &c., Leipsic, 1877, 8vo) . ”

“ There are two commentaries on this Targum in Hebrew:— (1) by .R. David b. Ya'akob (Prague, 1609, 4to) ; (2) by R. Mordekhai b. Naphtali (Amsterdam, 1671-77, fol.) . ↑ See our Targum on Gen. xxi. 21, where Mohammed's first wife (Khadīdja) and their youngest daughter (Fatima) are mentioned by name. ↑ Bibliography.— (A) There certainly exists, somewhere in Italy, a MS. of this Targum, although the owner is at present unknown. (B) This Targum appeared for the first time in the Pentateuch edition of Venice (1590-91, 8vo) . ”

“ Within the last twenty-five years, however, fresh impulse has been given to these studies, not merely among Jews but also among Christians.
(s. m. s.-s.)
↑ Compare Mishnah, Peah, i, 1 ותלמור תורק בבר לסס ("and the studying of the Law balances them all") ; Aboth, iv. 13, ותלמור תורק בבר לסס (" be circumspect as regards instruction") . ↑ See Perek Rabbi Meir, 6, ותלמור תורק בבר לסס (" whose heart is not arrogant on account of his learning") ; cf, T. B., Pesaḥim, leaf 49a; ותלמור תורק בבר לסס ("his learning becomes forgotten by him") . ”