text · B0036
Targum Yonatan ben Uzziel תרגום יונתן בן עוזיאל
The authoritative Aramaic translation of the Prophets — the companion of Targum Onkelos (Targum Onkelos) on the second division of Scripture, printed beside the haftarot ever since. Tradition remembers its publication as an event: the land quaked, because it revealed what the prophets had sealed.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- תרגום יונתן בן עוזיאל
- Also known as
- Targum Yonatan, Targum of the Prophets
- Era
- zugot
II. When
- Traditional
- delivered by Yonatan ben Uzziel, greatest of Hillel's students, from the mouths of the last prophets — c. 3720–3768 AM
- Civil (computed)
- 3720–3768 AM · 41 BCE – 8 CE
- Academic
- Eretz Yisrael core 1st–2nd c. CE; final form fixed in Babylonia by c. 4th c. CE
- Duration
- ≈48 years
- Precision
- approximate
IV. What
- Language
- Aramaic
- Redaction
- Stated by Yonatan ben Uzziel "from the mouths of Chaggai, Zechariah, and Malachi" (Megillah 3a); transmitted and finalized in the Babylonian academies, where the Bavli cites its renderings through Rav Yosef.
- Structure
- A running Aramaic rendering of the entire Nevi'im (B0002) — relatively literal in the Former Prophets, freer and more expansive in the prophetic poetry, where it regularly unfolds the metaphor into its meaning.
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| "The Targum of the Prophets — Yonatan ben Uzziel said it from the mouths of Chaggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, and Eretz Yisrael quaked four hundred parsah by four hundred parsah." | rabbinic | ★★★★☆ | |
| Yonatan ben Uzziel is remembered as the greatest of Hillel's eighty students — placing the Targum's traditional origin in the generation of the last zugot, a century before the Mishnah's tannaim. | rabbinic tradition | ★★★★☆ | |
| The Bavli routinely cites the Targum's renderings in Rav Yosef's name ("as Rav Yosef translated"), and academic scholarship reads the work like Onkelos: an Eretz Yisrael core of the 1st–2nd century CE that received its fixed form in the Babylonian academies, where Rav Yosef's school was its custodian.
Yonatan ben Uzziel is now tracked as Yonatan ben Uzziel and this work carries his authorship edge per the traditional attribution (Megillah 3a); the Babylonian final form remains recorded here as the academic view.
|
rabbinic reconstruction | ★★★☆☆ |
|