Changes

The origin of the Targum (meaning "translation"),  many hold to be,  the public reading by Ezra of the Torah of Moses before the assembled people of Israel while he stood of a wooden tower made especially for the occasion. The men with him "made it clear" (meforash)  to the people, all who could understand, by reading to the people (Nehemiah 8). The succeeding generations understood, that what they were reading was the Torah of Moses in the Aramaic language, which had now become the people's tongue and not Hebrew.  

The origin of the Targum (meaning "translation"),  many hold to be,  the public reading by Ezra of the Torah of Moses before the assembled people of Israel while he stood of a wooden tower made especially for the occasion. The men with him "made it clear" (meforash)  to the people, all who could understand, by reading to the people (Nehemiah 8). The succeeding generations understood, that what they were reading was the Torah of Moses in the Aramaic language, which had now become the people's tongue and not Hebrew.  

The Targum is the translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Tenakh in the Aramaic language . All the books of the Bible have been found in Aramaic except Daniel and Ezra-Nehemiah - probably because these books already have large sections in Aramaic.  

The Targum is the translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Tenakh in the Aramaic language . All the books of the Bible have been found in Aramaic except Daniel and Ezra-Nehemiah - probably because these books already have large sections in Aramaic.  

At first, the Aramaic targumim (plural) could not be written down, as the post biblical Mishna (the Hebrew first part of the two part Talmud) could not be written down, so that people would not put it on the same level as the Hebrew Bible. But later, as the Mishna also, it was written down, and so other ways were devised for the elevation of  the sanctity of the Hebrew text in the readings of the synagogue. The reader of the Hebrew was not to prompt or correct the reader (the meturgemon) of the targum lest it be thought that the two readings were on equal level. Paralleling the level of importance of the Biblical books, the targum was to be read  after every verse of the Torah of Moses but only after every third verse of the Prophets. As the purpose of the targum is to "make clear" to the people, the targum displays a tendency to "bring down home" in language and a tendency to expansion into a paraphrase of the meaning of the Hebrew text. This allowed for the targums to bring in foreign words from the commonly understood Greek and Persian languages and allowed also for interpretive insight and contemporary and/or approved perspectives that were absent from the original Hebrew. The authorized targum for Judaism came to be the Targum Onkelos.

At first, the Aramaic targumim (plural) could not be written down, as the post biblical [[Mishnah|Mishna]] (the Hebrew first part of the two part Talmud) could not be written down, so that people would not put it on the same level as the Hebrew Bible. But later, as the Mishna also, it was written down, and so other ways were devised for the elevation of  the sanctity of the Hebrew text in the readings of the synagogue. The reader of the Hebrew was not to prompt or correct the reader (the meturgemon) of the targum lest it be thought that the two readings were on equal level. Paralleling the level of importance of the Biblical books, the targum was to be read  after every verse of the Torah of Moses but only after every third verse of the Prophets. As the purpose of the targum is to "make clear" to the people, the targum displays a tendency to "bring down home" in language and a tendency to expansion into a paraphrase of the meaning of the Hebrew text. This allowed for the targums to bring in foreign words from the commonly understood Greek and Persian languages and allowed also for interpretive insight and contemporary and/or approved perspectives that were absent from the original Hebrew. The authorized targum for Judaism came to be the Targum Onkelos.

===The Targum Onkelos===

===The Targum Onkelos===