A Key-Word-in-Context Concordance to Targum Neofiti: A Guide to the Complete Palestinian Aramaic Text of the Torah.

AuthorFassberg, Steven E.

The concordance to Targum Neofiti is the second volume published by the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon Project. The need for such a concordance has long been felt in the study of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, and the volume under discussion addresses that need admirably. The concordance will become an indispensable research tool.

Targum Neofiti is one of several Palestinian Targumic traditions. It is closer in language and text to the Cairo Genizah fragments of Palestinian Targum (published by P. Kahle and more recently by M. L. Klein) and to the Fragment Targums than it is to Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, which was heavily influenced by Targum Onqelos. Targum Neofiti is a sixteenth-century manuscript replete with marginal and interlinear notes. Alejandro Diez Macho, who discovered the manuscript in the Vatican library in 1956 and subsequently published an edition of it (Neophyti 1: Targum Palestinense MS de la Biblioteca Vaticana, vols. 1-6 [Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1968-1979]), argued that the language of the Targum reflected the spoken Palestinian Aramaic dialect of the pre-Christian period. Most scholars, however, have been more cautious in their appraisal of its language.

The Vatican manuscript that contains Targum Neofiti can by no means be considered a good manuscript, as demonstrated by many scholars, particularly A. Tal ("Ms. Neophyti 1: The Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch; Observations on the Artistry of a Scribe," IOS 4 [1974]: 31-43). There is abundant evidence that copyists frequently changed the original Palestinian Aramaic of the Targum to conform to the language of Targum Onqelos, Babylonian Talmudic Aramaic, and Biblical Aramaic, with which they were more familiar. Moreover, many Hebraisms have entered the text. The language of Targum Neofiti has been described in two grammars, one by B. Barry Levy ("The Language of Neophyti 1: A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of the Palestinian Targum,' Ph.D. diss., New York Univ., 1974) and the other by D. M. Golomb (A Grammar of Targum Neofiti, HSM 34 [Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985]). These two grammars along with M. Sokoloff's A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic [= DJPA] (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan Univ. Press, 1990), which was based on, among other corpora, Targum Neofiti, were until now the main reference works on the Targum.

The present volume is a KWIC (Key-Word-in-Context) concordance that has been prepared by computer. It enables the reader...

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