Targum Studies

This article is a published version of my 1982 MA dissertation at Oxford University. Done under the supervision of Geza Vermes.  It is my first investigation of the connections among the added materials in the Palestinian Targums to the Pentateuch and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. The study uses Targum Neofiti as a base.

The present study deals with the most prominent Christian and Jewish
interpretations of Song of Songs in the Antiquities comparing them in
view of their hermeneutical tools. Due to the measure of the corpus,
the analysis is reduced to Song of Songs 2:14. Following the nowadays
discourse, we point to the fact that the tool of allegory should be used in
a broader sense. Having the same biblical roots, however, the application
of allegory is used differently by Origenes and the Rabbis. The evident
interpretational differences are due to the different evolution of the
method and the dissimilar changes of the intellectual concepts. In these
concepts both the environment of the application and its relation to the
reader and listener are different.

The Wroclaw Code M1106 originating from the first half of the thirteenth century, distinctive for its careful writing and clear signs of vocalization, is not only an important monument of the Jewish literature, but also of medieval art of illumination. Although it has been mentioned in the library and bibliographical studies even since the eighteenth century and lived to see a large monograph by Th. Metzger devoted mainly to the art of decorating contained in it, it is still too little appreciated for the values of the text. It is hardly known in the community of scholars involved in textual criticism of both the Hebrew Bible and Targums as well as exegetes themselves. Certainly attracting to it attention of a wider community of scholars can contribute not only to revival of the memory of an important document of the Jewish literature tradition, but also can make a valuable contribution to the study of the transmission of the Bible text and the targums, as well as the phenomenon of targumisation.

Artykuł stanowi krótki opis jednego z najcenniejszych manuskryptów żydowskich znajdujących się w zbiorach Biblioteki Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego. Pochodzący z pierwszej połowy trzynastego wieku Kodeks Wrocławski M1106, wyróżniający się starannym pismem i wyraźnymi znakami wokalizacji, jest nie tylko ważnym zabytkiem piśmiennictwa żydowskiego ale i średniowiecznej sztuki iluminacyjnej. Zawiera on tekst masorecki Biblii hebrajskiej: Tora, haftarot, pięć megillot i inne księgi  hagiograficzne (Ps, Hi, Prz, Dn, Ezdr, Neh, 1-2 Krn). Pięcioksiąg, megillot oraz Księga Psalmów, Hioba i Przysłów są zapisane na przemian werset po wersecie z targumem. Chociaż manuskrypt ten był wymieniany w opracowaniach bibliotecznych i bibliograficznych już od XVIII i doczekał się sporej monografii autorstwa Th. Metzger poświęconej głównie zawartej w nim sztuce dekoratorskiej, to wciąż mało są doceniane walory zawartego w nim tekstu.

This a book of history. Its raison d'être is the encounter between the angel of the Lord and the priest Zechariah in the Jerusalem temple. St Luke did not explain what is an angel. He figured every Hebrew of his time knew, and the author of this book wonders what an Hebrew of his time considered that an angel was. This question requires to review the whole Bible, and to discuss the main ways in which God or His angel talk to human beings.

В статье рассматривается способ помехоустойчивого контроля уровня жидкости вибрационным методом. Предлагается колебательную систему вибрационного сигнализатора уровня включить в цепь неавтономного генератора хаоса для повышения помехоустойчивости на физическом уровне. Предложенный способ контроля апробирован на лабораторном макете

This is the introduction to a special volume of Aramaic Studies on "A Jewish Targum in a christian World". As guest editors, Alberdina Houtman and Eveline van Staalduine-Sulmann brought together and edited seven papers that were presented at the congress of the International Organzation for Targumic Studies that took place in 2010 in Helsinki.

The use of formally marked and unmarked nouns varies and has changed in Aramaic dialects throughout the course of history. Until recently, it was assumed that determination in nouns in Targum Prophets was no longer working properly since extant grammars do not point out specific rules of grammar and syntax in this regard. It has been argued that the marked form of the noun came to depose the unmarked form. However, a focused study on Targum Samuel by Renaud Kuty (2010) demonstrates that the retention or abandonment of determinate and indeterminate nominal forms functions according to two linguistic systems in this Targum. This contribution investigates the retention or abandonment of final long A in nominal forms in Targum Malachi by observing how marked and unmarked nominal forms appear in typical grammatical, syntactic, and semantic arrangements, and what the impact of discourse perspective is.

This article is concerned with the translation of nineteen piyyutim (poems) which were dedicated to the Pesach festival and added to the text of Palestinian Targums from the Cairo Genizah. These poems are written in Aramaic and belong to the pre-classical type of Jewish poetry (IV-VI cent.). In this article the Russian translation of the poems with commentaries and exegetical notes is given.
From the point of view of history these poems are interesting because of some ideas and concepts of so called “folk” Judaism, which are present in their text. These beliefs have some differences from ideas of the classical Jewish texts (e.g. Mishnah and Talmud). From the philological point of view, piyyutim from the Cairo Genizah are interesting as patterns of a new type of versification, which is different from the biblical parallelism. The presentation of these poems in their historical and philological context is given in this article.

This article is concerned with analysis of the syntactic foundations for versification in the Jewish liturgical poetry written in Aramaic in the pre-classical and classical periods. This research embraces thirty poems which were added to the text of Aramaic translation of the Pentateuch in the Cairo Genizah Targum and Fragmentary Targum. The main hypothesis is: the verse structure in both poetical traditions is not strictly connected with certain syntactic models, but rather orientated to the rhythmic structure and phonetic means (acrostic and rhyme). Just for this reason the main syntactic unit of the verse structure in both pre-classical and classical poetry is a syntagma-colon.
Analysis of the correlation between poetical lines does not display any specific type of syntactic relationships: the lines may be independent clauses, parts of coordinate or subordinate composite sentences, or parts of clauses (nominal phrases, predicative expressions or adverbial phrases). This characteristic of syntax is inherent in both the pre-classical linear and the classical strophic verse structures, what confirms our hypothesis that the main principles of versification in the Jewish liturgical poetry were not strongly orientated to the syntactic standards. The main difference in the verse structure at the level of a poetical line in these two types of poetry is a more regular rhythm and rhyme in the classical poems.

In the article have been analyzed “Armenian question” which Ottoman Empire and Azerbaijan faced to the same problem. Political ambitions of Tsar Russia in the Ottoman Empire and in the South Caucasus have been studied attentively and proven by the author. From comparative analyzing of source and historical literature known that tsar Russia’s expansionist policy toward to Azerbaijan’ territory and Ottoman’s was continuing the similar scenarios.
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Disguising its economic and political interests in the umbrage of Armenian question tsar Russia firstly created “reliable ethnic base” on the territory of Azerbaijan, and disguised its plans which intended to occupy Black Sea, Bosporus and Dardanelle and also Iskenderun Bay with the slogans “the struggle to rescue of Christians from the oppression of Muslim Turkey.”