Targum Hapeshittaʾ Letora Vehaparshanut Hayahudit Haqedumma. (The Peshitta Version of the Pentateuch and Early Jewish Exegesis.) (review)

Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 298 Reviews readers (as opposed to ideal or model readers or reading communities). With Wolfgang Iser, Tate sees the text as a potentially unified whole that a real reader actualizes by filling in its gaps. The whole (the "work") then somehow reveals "ultimate truth" or "ultimate reality." Another important (and conservative) conclusion of Tate's is that the ultimate site of a text's production is the author's individual consciousness. The textual product is filtered through social conventions, but it neither originates there nor is determined by them. This conclusion allows Tate to subsume ideological criticism to historical studies as the normative control over the reading process, and ultimately it allows him to steer his hermeneutics clear of the political and ethical implications of reading texts. It is consistent with his hermeneutics that feminist criticisms receive only five pages, deconstruction only four pages (he uses only one secondary interpreter of Derrida), and postcolonial readings receive no space at all. Tate has taken a consistent track and has stayed on it. His book is intended as an introductory one on the main issues of biblical interpretation, and he has explained them clearly. While in this reviewer's opinion Tate does not pull together all three interpretive worlds (who could do this?) in his new chapter on the Gospel of Mark, he provides an excellent springboard for a teacher of an introductory undergraduate or seminary class to discuss the main issues involved in the hermeneutical enterprise. Pedagogical contexts that see meaning as univocal and determinative will find Tate's book provocative, beneficial, and "liberal," while contexts that take the multiplicity of meaning as the norm will fmd it "conservative" and less helpful. Fred W. Burnett Anderson University Anderson, IN 46012 fburnett@kirk.anderson.edu TARGUM HAPESHITT~ LETORA VEHAPARSHANUT HAYAHUDIT HAQEDUMMA. (THE PESHITTA VERSION OF THE PENTATEUCH AND EARLY JEWISH EXEGESIS.) By Yeshayahu Maori. pp. 403. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1995. Cloth, $23.00. The relation of the Peshitta, the Syriac translation of the Bible, to early Jewish interpretations of the Pentateuch is the subject of this careful and meticulous study. It has long been observed that the Peshitta contains translations or paraphrases also found in the Targumim, the Jewish Aramaic translations, and other sources of Jewish exegesis. Specialists dis- Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 299 Reviews agree on how pervasive the Jewish influence is, the reasons for it, and the paths by which it reached the Syriac translators. Maori has set himself to unravel this complicated problem, at least for the Pentateuch. He clears the ground for this attempt by reviewing what previous scholars have said about the issue (chap. 1) and describing the text of the Peshitta (chap. 2) that he uses for comparison. He concludes that the degree of the influence of Jewish exegesis on the Peshitta does not vary by its textual witnesses. Maori is keenly aware of the importance of establishing proper criteria for discerning Jewish influence in the Peshitta. Accordingly, he devotes considerable space to describing the kinds of translational phenomena he excludes from consideration. Chapter 3 examines non-literal renderings in the Peshitta possibly not due to Jewish exegetical tradition. They may be due, Maori says, to the necessities of Syriac style. In some cases, the translator might have assimilated a verse to a parallel passage or even used a different Hebrew Vorlage. Maori is inclined to discount the last possibility, except in rare cases, and stipulates that the hypothesis of a variant text must be excluded when a deviation in the Peshitta can be explained straightforwardly as due to Jewish influence (p. 49). Maori also eliminates from consideration renderings similar to Jewish exegesis that the Syriac translator(s) might have reached independently (chap. 4). The surrounding context might favor a particular translation, or the thrust of a particular sentence might make a rare word clear to independent translators. One must also be aware of the Peshitta translator's independent knowledge of the surrounding culture, which, to some extent, he shared with the Jewish exegetes. (Thus, as Maori says, it is not strange if the Peshitta and Jewish sources render the unique word kar [Oen 31:34] with common Aramaic (abita, "[camel-]saddle...