Targum Onkelos

English

And the LORD said: let us make a human in our image, as our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the bird of the heavens and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson · cc-by

Hebrew / Aramaic

Targum Onkelos, Gen 1:26 · pd

Notes

⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. Evidence by omission, and it only reads as evidence next to the same targum's Gen 1:1. There Onkelos writes YY for Elohim, the Tetragrammaton, which is not plural in form, so that a reader of the Aramaic cannot raise the question of two authorities from the noun at all (see `targ-onk-1-1`). Here the plural verb is left standing: na'avid enasha be-tzalmana ki-dmutana — let us make a human in our image, as our likeness — with nothing added, nobody addressed, and no angels. The one difficulty the Aramaic could have removed as easily as the other, and did not. Whatever governed Onkelos's hand at Gen 1:1, it was not a general policy of smoothing plurals out of the creation account; and Pseudo-Jonathan, working on the same verse in the same language, does add the angels in so many words.

Threads

• → 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.
• ← contests · Targum Pseudo-Jonathan
  Two Aramaic versions of one verse, one adding the hearers and one refusing to. Pseudo-Jonathan: 'and the LORD said to the angels who minister before him, who were created on the second day of the creation of the world, let us make a human in our image, in our likeness.' Onkelos: 'and the LORD said, let us make a human in our image, as our likeness.' The later targum answers the question the earlier one left open, and guards its answer by dating the angels after the beginning so that they cannot be makers.