text · B0004
Targum Onkelos תרגום אונקלוס
The authoritative Aramaic translation of the Torah — the mesorah's own official rendering of what the text means, printed alongside the Chumash ever since and still part of the weekly shnayim mikra ve'echad targum regimen.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- תרגום אונקלוס
- Also known as
- Targum Didan, The Targum of the Torah
- Era
- tannaim
II. When
- Traditional
- delivered by Onkelos the convert from the mouths of R' Eliezer and R' Yehoshua, c. 3850–3880 AM (c. 90–120 CE)
- Academic
- Palestinian core 1st–2nd c. CE; final consonantal text fixed in Babylonia by the 3rd c. CE
- Duration
- ≈30 years
- Precision
- approximate
IV. What
- Language
- Aramaic
- Redaction
- Stated by Onkelos the convert "from the mouths of R' Eliezer and R' Yehoshua" (Megillah 3a); transmitted and vocalized in the Babylonian academies, where it became the official Targum.
- Structure
- A verse-by-verse Aramaic rendering of the entire Torah (B0001), mostly literal, with systematic paraphrase of anthropomorphisms and of select poetic passages.
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| "The Targum of the Torah — Onkelos the convert said it from the mouths of R' Eliezer and R' Yehoshua." | rabbinic | ★★★★☆ | |
| The same passage insists targum itself is older: it was given earlier, forgotten, and re-established ("they forgot them, and they returned and re-founded them") — Onkelos restores rather than innovates, anchored back to Ezra's public reading with "meforash". | rabbinic tradition | ★★★☆☆ | |
| Academic scholarship holds the Targum's dialect and transmission point to a Palestinian core of the 1st–2nd century CE that received its final form in Babylonia by the 3rd century, and notes that the name "Onkelos" is entangled with Aquila (Akylas) the convert, to whom the Yerushalmi attributes a Greek translation in the same circumstances.
The Onkelos/Aquila identification question is genuinely unresolved; stated here as the scholarly discussion, not a conclusion.
|
reconstruction | ★★★☆☆ |
|