Midrash Tanḥuma. Volume III. Numbers and Deuteronomy (review)

This is the third volume of John Townsend's annotated translation of the Midrash Tanḥuma, which tops off his long-awaited project of the first complete English translation of a Tanḥuma midrash. The object of his translation is the edition of Midrash Tanḥuma by Solomon Buber (Vilna 1885), called "Tanḥuma Buber" after its first editor. Tanḥuma Buber differs substantially from the other, so-called printed Tanḥuma. The first part of the latter (Genesis-Exodus) has been translated by Samuel Berman.¹ For the books Leviticus-Numbers-Deuteronomy, the two versions of the Tanḥuma are essentially alike, apart from some additional sections in the "printed" Tanḥuma. For Genesis-Exodus, however, the "printed" Tanḥuma and Tanḥuma Buber are two different recensions of Midrash Tanḥuma (or Yelammedenu), rather than simply two different editions. According to Marc Bregman, Tanḥuma Buber is a Western recension of the Tanḥuma, edited during the early Middle Ages in the Western Roman Empire, probably in northern Italy.² Townsend, however (Midrash Tanḥuma, vol. 1, p. xii), rather assumes that this recension might have originated in southern Italy.

Townsend's translation is rendered in beautiful English which makes it easier to read than the Hebrew original, even for those who read Hebrew, which features the typical medieval pure (that is, not mixed up with much Aramaic) but rather childish Hebrew. I would have appreciated it equally well, though, if the English had retained some of the limpidness of the original Hebrew.

The following remarks may not bear on the author but on the editor/publisher, depending on who made these decisions. The text could have looked friendlier than it does now. The capitalization of quotes from the Hebrew Bible results in a rather nervous textual image. I would have preferred italics for quotes, which allows for a smoother page layout. Moreover, the use of a variety of brackets in the translated text, some copying Buber's brackets, some indicating Townsend's own additions or alternative readings, are disturbing, even for the reader with a scientific interest. Some pages are almost entirely covered with capital text and full of brackets (see, for example, pp. 37, 38). The choice between respect for the reader and the target-language, versus the source and its language, is one of the most difficult aspects of midrash translation. Townsend has made a wise choice by letting his translation show what he did with his source. However, I think the use of angle brackets (<>), which indicate "additions from the translator" (1:xiv), could have been minimized; moreover, the abounding ellipses <...> could have done without angle brackets before and after.

Townsend's notes are brief and mainly contain references to other sources and text-critical issues, but explanatory notes are not absent. However, I would have preferred to see no more than the strictly necessary explanatory information in the text and the rest in footnotes. As, for example, where the text has a reference to the seventeenth of Tamuz (p. 62), it reads between parentheses (indicating a "parenthetical explanation from the translator," 1:xix) that this is "around July"; and of the ninth of Av that this is "around August." Such explanations could as well have been saved for the footnotes as they are not indispensable in the text and disturb smooth reading.

For the biblical quotes Townsend uses his own translation rather than an existing published translation, which is the only reasonable option in midrash translation. Midrash often plays on words in the biblical text, which forces the translator to come up with an English rendering that respects the Hebrew text and at the same time allows the reader to grasp the hermeneutics at play...