[Avodah] Targumim from Sinai

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 11:59:29PM -0700, Simon Montagu wrote:
: RSBA reminded me in an Areivim thread that the Targumim are from
: Sinai. This surprised me at first, because my memory was that at most
: they are described as "beRuahh hakodesh", but I was wrong: the Taz on
: SA OH 285 SK 2 explicitly says "hatargum yesh lo ma`ala she-nittan
: besinai".

: I have a number of questions on this.
...
: 2) How can this be reconciled with the gemara in Megilla? I can
: imagine one possibility: the targum was given as part of TBSP and
: Onkelos was the first to write it down. IMHO this fits well with the
: phrasing "amaro mipi RE veRY", but does anyone say so?

Aside from my questioning the assumption that a reconciliation /must/
exist...

The Rosh on RH pereq 4 (near the end), as one example, writes "And also,
it was their custom spread across most of Israel until the words of the
Ri"tz Ga'os reached them and some of the west returned to our minhag.
Accordin to this minhag, I place my heart in something and in me is
fulfilled that which raboseinu said -- 'anything to which BD nosenim
libam, in the end they will succeed. As it says 'halakhah leMosheh
miSinai'' ... And I didn't understand these things [speaking of the
structure of RH Mussar and the teqi'os within] were said to Moshe
miSinai..."

Another example -- did the Maharil's claim that certain tunes were miSinai
really mean he thought that we're davening to a nusach written by HQBH?

IIRC, we catch Chazal speaking of a din derabbanan as being miSinai, but
that I couldn't yet find.


Less contoversially, Aramaic doesn't always mean Aramaic. Aramaic
was their language for secular discourse, and stands in for all such
languages. Mal'akhim don't speak English any more than Aramaic -- rather,
the maamar chazal is saying that they don't listen to divrei chol. And
when saying Qaddish, we so to speak fool them into thinking this tefillah
isn't a davar shemiqdushah.

Just raising the issue when we discuss the relationship between Adam
haRishon or Ezra and Aramit.

Notice that it's at the end of nevu'ah that Ezra is "given the Torah
in Aramit". Kesav Ivris -- of saying apart (me'eiver) is replaced with
kesav Ashuris -- of osher. After galus Bavel, the Torah was more within
the world than before.

I didn't invest the time to hunt this up, because less extraordinary
claims should require less evidence. I was urged off-list, though, not
to write that HLmS doesn't always mean it dates back to Moshe without
first finding the Rosh.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Today is the 43rd day, which is
micha at aishdas.org        6 weeks and 1 day in/toward the omer.
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