Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

My understanding is that Targumim was largely a Babylonian Jewish
initiative.

2010/1/22 Joel C. Salomon <joelcsalomon AT gmail.com>

> Something that might point to the era when Aramaic was more spoken in
> Judea than Hebrew is the development of the Targumim.  These were
> intended to be read along with the Hebrew text in the synagogue: the
> reader would read a verse (in Hebrew) and the meturgaman would translate
> it into Aramaic.  This was the custom during the Talmudic era; does
> anyone have data as to when this began?
>
> (Interestingly, the only Jewish communities I know of that preserved
> this practice are the Yemenites, whose traditions maintain that their
> ancestors did not follow Zerubavel or Ezra back to Israel but remained
> in place since the first Exile.)
>
> —Joel C. Salomon
> _______________________________________________
> b-hebrew mailing list
> b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
>