The Targum of Lamentations (review)

Targum Lamentations contains fewer than 2900 words across five chapters. Despite this brevity, Philip Alexander’s thoughtful and thorough study begins with 100 pages of introduction followed by 100 pages of translation and commentary. The volume’s centerpiece is, of course, the translation, on which the commentary and the introduction depend, and it accurately reflects the Aramaic’s meaning with a high degree of precision. Alexander has an ear not only for the Aramaic’s meaning but also for conveying that meaning in an English style that is literal while remaining clear and expressive. When nuances cannot be captured in the English, they appear in the notes.

Alexander translates Targum Lamentations’ Western recension, which provided the foundation for the later Yemenite recension, as recent scholarship has demonstrated. Unfortunately, he translates the unpublished manuscript Héb. 110 of Paris’ Bibliothèque Nationale. The best available Western text to use with Alexander’s translation is Urbinus Hebr. 1 from the Vatican Library, which appears in Christian Brady’s The Rabbinic Targum of Lamentations (Leiden, 2003), alongside Brady’s own translation. Sperber’s readily available text (in volume 4a of The Bible in Aramaic [Leiden, 1968]) should be avoided, since it constitutes an idiosyncratic combination of a Yemenite manuscript with selections from Bomberg’s second Rabbinic Bible.

The commentary constitutes a model of the tradition-history approach to the analysis of Jewish texts and takes up most of the book’s second half. Beginning with close attention to the lexical meaning of each word, Alexander then considers the interpretation conveyed through inner-scriptural exegesis (both in the Hebrew text and other Targums), which conveys nuances and connections of the Targum with the Hebrew Bible. Beyond that, Alexander’s remarks range across comparisons with rabbinic literature; the Dead Sea Scrolls; other ancient translations such as the Septuagint, Peshitta, and Vulgate; as well as medieval Jewish writers such as Saadya Gaon. Comparison with the rabbinic midrash Lamentations Rabbah rightly receives most attention.

The volume’s critical introduction fulfills the same purpose as it does in the other Aramaic Bible volumes. But rather than slavishly reiterate previous scholarship, Alexander pushes the envelope, bringing in not only the best of the past but also putting together well-argued and solidly founded new proposals. Although he readily addresses textual, dating, and linguistic matters, Alexander’s primary interests stand out in the explorations of the theological, liturgical, and literary character and context of Targum Lamentations; he believes, along with Brady, that it was composed as a single, unified work.The key theme that runs throughout these topics is that of the comparison between Targum Lamentations and Lamentations Rabbah.With regard to theology, Alexander finds the Targum emphasizes the destruction’s impact on the Temple and the priesthood, which leads to a focus on messianic expectations, whereas Lamentations Rabbah features God’s pathos over his treatment of Israel—a notion missing from the Targum. When Alexander studies the Targum in light of other translations, he finds links only in Saadya’s Tafsir. Comparing the Targum’s interpretations to those found in rabbinic, Christian, medieval and other Jewish writings, he finds that Lamentations Rabbah has by far the most overlap, yet he also sees that the difference between the two works rules out any clear dependence of one on the other. Given this situation, Alexander argues that the two works were composed in the same time period, speaking to the same issues but giving different responses. This supports Alexander’s dating of Targum Lamentations, in which he interprets the reference to Rome and Constantinople at 4:21–22 as indicating composition in the fourth or fifth century.

When Alexander broadens the analysis of primary sources to address Targum Lamentations’ role in Jewish liturgy, he provides an exciting reading of the social dynamics of the late rabbinic period. He sees Targum Lamentations as a rabbinic composition that aims to...