[Avodah] Targumim from Sinai

[T613K at aol.com]

From: Zev Sero <zev at sero.name>
> I would like further  clarification on this point, too, but this is
> what I think it  means:  not that the actual Aramaic words used by
> Onkelos were  given on Sinai together with the Torah [who even spoke
> Aramaic back  then? [--TK]

Everybody.  At least, everybody who was educated, or  who engaged in
international trade.  It was the English of its  day.


>  Why would Hebrew-speaking Israelites need a  translation in a 
> language they did not even speak?]

Rashi  Devarim 1:5

-- 
Zev  Sero                      
 
 
 
>>>>>
 
Rashi there says Moshe explained the Torah in 70 languages, but does that  
mean that Aramaic rather than Hebrew was the spoken language of B'Y?  That  
is a stretch.  They were redeemed from Egypt because they didn't change  
their distinctive clothing, their names or their language -- shelo shinu es  
leshonam.  Now you want to tell me that the language they clung to in Egypt  
and never changed was actually Aramaic, the lingua franca of the ancient 
Middle  East?   I'm not buying that.
 
And if he translated the Torah into 70 languages how come we have the  
Targum in only one of those 70?
 
Anyway that Rashi is just a medrash, which has no bearing on the literal  
truth of any other medrash.  It has no bearing on the question of whether  
the Aramaic Targum is word for word what Moshe said when he translated the 
Torah  into Aramaic (even if you take that Rashi about the 70 languages  
literally).  BTW when Moshe translated the Torah into English, did he  
prophetically utter the future words of the ArtScroll Chumash or did  he foreshadow the 
Soncino?
 
--Toby Katz
===========
 
 
 
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