Targum Pseudo-Jonathan

English

And the Lord said to the angels who ministered before Him, who had been created in the second day of the creation of the world, Let us make man in Our image, in Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl which are in the atmosphere of heaven, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every reptile creeping upon the earth.

J. W. Etheridge, 1862 · etheridge

Hebrew / Aramaic

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, 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. The angel reading written into the text of Scripture itself, which is as far as the rabbinic answer to this crux can be pushed. Where the Hebrew has 'and God said, let us make', Pseudo-Jonathan has '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'. Two additions, and the second is doing work: dating the angels to the second day forestalls the objection that they might have been co-creators, since they were made after the beginning and are therefore creatures like the rest. The Glossa Ordinaria at PL 113:114D says ad angelos dixisse intelligitur — he is understood to have said it to the angels — of the plural at Babel, and cross-refers to faciamus hominem; a Latin reader of the twelfth century and an Aramaic reader of the eighth are looking at the same plural and reaching for the same hearers. That the targum puts it in the biblical line rather than in a gloss is why Basil could say ferunt enim, quod angelis dixerit and be reporting rather than caricaturing.

Threads

• ← contests · Basil of Caesarea
  Basil reports the position and Pseudo-Jonathan is the position. 'Ferunt enim, quod angelis dixerit: Faciamus hominem' — for they say that he said it to the angels — is answered as a Judaica fictio; and the targum reads, in the biblical line itself, 'and the LORD said to the angels who minister before him … let us make a human in our image'. Basil's argument against it is the image clause: is there one image of God and of the angels? The targum has already met that by dating the angels to the second day, so that they are creatures and no rival makers. Neither text has the other, and the caricature turns out to be a quotation.
• ← parallel · Hugh of St Victor
  Hugh goes further than the targum. Pseudo-Jonathan has God address the ministering angels and stops there, and guards the point by dating them to the second day so that they cannot be co-creators. Hugh writes 'ad angelos ita loquatur, quorum ministerio forsitan formatum est corpus hominis' — by whose ministry perhaps the human body was formed — which grants the angels a hand in the work itself. That is the position Basil calls a Jewish fiction, Ambrose refuses because a servant is no partner, and Bruno says would make many creators; it is in a Victorine schoolbook, offered before the Trinitarian reading and only then set aside with vel quod melius est.
• → contests · Targum Onkelos
  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.
• → parallel · Glossa ordinaria (school of Laon)
  An Aramaic targum of the eighth century and a Latin schoolbook of the twelfth put the same hearers behind the same kind of plural. 'Va-amar YY le-malakhaya di-meshamshin qomoi' — and the LORD said to the angels who minister before him. 'Ad angelos dixisse intelligitur' — he is understood to have said it to the angels. Neither argues for it; both simply state it as what the verse means. The Gloss says it at Gen 11:7 and cross-refers to Gen 1:26; the targum says it at Gen 1:26 outright.
• ← contests · Bruno of Segni
  Bruno's rhetorical question has a literal answer in a book he could not read. 'Quos ad hominem creandum invitabat, dicens: Faciamus hominem?' — whom was he inviting to create the human? — and his answer is that it cannot be the angels, since otherwise there would be not one creator but many. Pseudo-Jonathan names them: the angels who minister before him, created on the second day. The targum has already conceded Bruno's premise, that no creature may be a maker, and secured it by the date; Bruno takes the reading to be refuted by the premise alone.