Christ in The Old Testament

34 Pages 8488 Words

spiration for the Jewish way of life. Thus it was imperative to interpret the meaning of holy writ. The oral tradition, like the Targums, provided a more or less official interpretation of the meaning of Scripture . . . The Targums, like the oral law, contain a wealth of information concerning the way the Jewish interpreters of late antiquity understood the Scriptures . . .
. . . Most scholars agree that the practice of translating the Bible into Aramaic was an early custom. Certainly the large Jewish community that remained in Babylon after the decree of Cyrus (537 B.C.) would have eventually required a translation of the sacred literature into Aramaic. . . . The Targums were indeed an actualization of the Bible, and they often elucidate the ancient Jewish understanding of particular texts.
The earliest Targums known are those discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls. . . . It may well be that the Targums were preserved and transmitted as oral tradition long before they were committed to writing. Already the Mishnah and the Tosefta described ...