Targum Neofiti

English

In the beginning and in great wisdom, God created and finished the heavens and the earth.

Sefaria Community Translation · cc0

Hebrew / Aramaic

Targum Neofiti, Gen 1:1 (Vatican, Neofiti 1) · neofiti-vatican

Notes

The single most consequential word on this crux: Neofiti does not translate bereshit, it interprets it — min qadmin be-ḥokhmah, 'from the first, in wisdom' — and then adds a second verb, shakhlel, 'and finished'. A Palestinian targumist and the Latin fathers reach the same gloss on the same word, 'in Wisdom', and then part company entirely over what Wisdom is: for Bereshit Rabbah it is the Torah, for Augustine and Bede it is the Son. Neither side knows the other is there. The CC0 English prints 'in great wisdom'; there is no word for 'great' in the Aramaic, and the reading בחוכמתא recorded in the manuscript's own margin is simply the emphatic state. Note that this witness and K7's targ-neof-1-2 are two slices of one Sefaria segment: the whole of Gen 1:1–5 comes back as a single block.

Threads

• → contests · Targum Onkelos
  Two Aramaic versions of one Hebrew word, and only one of them interprets: Onkelos writes be-qadmin, 'in former times'; Neofiti writes min qadmin be-ḥokhmah, 'from the first, in wisdom', and adds a second verb, 'and finished'. What Onkelos leaves as a time, Neofiti makes an instrument.
• → parallel · Bereshit Rabbah
  R. Banai proves that the world was created for the merit of the Torah from Prov 3:19, 'the Lord founded the earth be-ḥokhmah, with wisdom'; Neofiti puts that same be-ḥokhmah inside Genesis 1:1 as the translation of bereshit. A proof text in one place is the text itself in the other.
• ← parallel · Augustine
  'In this Beginning, God, you made heaven and earth: in your Word, in your Son, in your Wisdom' is, as a sentence, what Neofiti prints as the text of Genesis 1:1. A Latin bishop's prayer and a Palestinian targumist's translation arrive at the same clause, and mean by Wisdom the second person of the Trinity and the Torah respectively.
• ← parallel · Chalcidius
  Neofiti does not translate bereshit but interprets it — min qadmin be-ḥokhmah, from the first, in wisdom — and Chalcidius gets to the same gloss by argument rather than by rendering, and from the verse Neofiti's tradition uses. Neither can have known the other. What separates them from the Latin bench that later reaches 'in wisdom' by Ps 104:24 is that both of these stop at Wisdom, and neither says the Son.
• ← parallel · Philo of Alexandria
  Neofiti alone among the targums renders bereshit as be-chokhmah, in wisdom, making the beginning an instrument rather than a date. Philo makes it the intelligible world in the divine Reason, which is the same move in a philosophical vocabulary: not when God made, but with what. The two are the only Jewish witnesses on this crux to answer the question that way, they are four centuries and one language apart, and neither can be shown to have known the other.