Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

"Is Hebrew a Dead Language" seems to ask the question in the
wrong way. So I've changed the thread name

vayyixtov Washburn
>Three Targumim were found at Qumran, so at least somebody was using them for 
>a century
or more before the destruction of Jerusalem.  There were several other
items in Aramaic
found in the caves, as well.>

The word 'them' may cover over the reality with generalities.
what are these "Them"? It turns out that Qumran testifies to an
absence of targum in their community, and presumably from those
joining the community. and as David mentions, this is not because
they had anything against Aramaic. They have quite a few Aramaic
texts. But their Bible was primarily Hebrew, and understood in
Hebrew, with a secondary access to -- Greek Bible.

Before Qumran we had three interesting stories about targumim. And all were
focussed on Job for some reason.
1. The LXX mentioned that they used the 'Aramaic history' when translatiing 
Job.
2. Two stories about Gamliel and a targum to Job exist (tShabb. 13:2, yShabb
15c and other references not at hand)

so what do we find at Qumran? Two copies of Aramaic Job, and a snippet from
Lev 16 that may or may not refer to a targum of the whole book. And the long
Job targum shows features of having been imported from the East.

So Qumran was willing to use Aramaic Bible when available, though from
manuscript evidence they appeared to use the Hebrew Bible (plus some Greek).
They apparently did not have access to a written targum of the whole
Bible or even
of the Tora.
And it appears that a targum of Job circulated in antiquity that was
popular all over the Jewish world, with two copies turning up in our Qumran
mss. there was good reason for this world-wide popularity of a Job targum.
The Hebrew text has singular dialectical difficulties.

-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth AT gmail.com
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