Targum Onkelos

English

In the beginning the LORD created the heavens and the earth.

Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by

Hebrew / Aramaic

Sefaria, 'Onkelos Genesis' · pd

Notes

be-qadmin, a plain adverb of time and nothing else: no construct, no wisdom, no first thing. Onkelos hears the verse as the Greek does. Etheridge's Onkelos did not return from Sefaria by version title (see notes/SOURCES-FINDINGS.md) and the Metsudah English is CC BY-NC, so the English is a fresh draft.

Threads

• → parallel · Bereshit Rabbah
  Phase 4. The targum removes the difficulty the midrash has to argue about. Where the Hebrew has the plural-looking Elohim with a singular verb, Onkelos writes YY — the Tetragrammaton, which is not plural in form — so that no reader of the Aramaic could raise the question of two authorities at all. R. Yitzḥak has to answer it three times from the verbs.
• ← contests · Targum Onkelos
  The same targum, the same difficulty, opposite hands. At Gen 1:1 Onkelos writes YY for Elohim, so that the plural-looking noun disappears and no reader of the Aramaic could raise the question of two authorities from it. At Gen 1:26 he leaves the plural verb standing — na'avid enasha be-tzalmana — and adds nothing, addresses nobody, and supplies no angels. Whatever governed the first choice, it was not a policy of removing plurals from the creation account, and the contrast is the best evidence on the daf that the Gen 1:1 substitution was about the divine name rather than about number.
• → parallel · The Seventy
  be-qadmin and ἐν ἀρχῇ make the same decision independently: turn the Hebrew word into a plain adverb of time, supply nothing, and let no construct be heard. Pseudo-Jonathan's min avvela does the same a third time.
• ← contests · Targum Neofiti
  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 · Targum Pseudo-Jonathan
  min avvela beside be-qadmin: the same refusal to interpret, in a different word. Three targums on one verse give three renderings of bereshit and only Neofiti's carries a doctrine.