Wordplay in Aramaic Bible Targums

• In Event: Ancient and Medieval Biblical Reception

Abstract

Wordplay in Aramaic Bible Targums

Wordplays in the Bible have been exhaustively treated by Gary A. Rendsburg, “Word Play in Biblical Hebrew: An Eclectic Collection,”in Puns and Pundits, 137 – 162, as well as by Edward L. Greenstein, “Wordplay, Hebrew”, in The Anchor Bible Dictionary [ABD 6 (1992), pp. 968-971]. Greenstein makes reference to I.M. Casanowicz, Paronomasia in the Old Testament (1894), who cited more than 500 examples. For Greenstein, paronomasia includes many sorts of applications, such as the simple repetition of a word whose meaning changes with each occurrence, e.g. “as the crackling of thorns under a pot” (Koh. 7:6), where sir first means ‘thorns’ and then ‘pot’, as well as the citation of a single word without repetition whose phonetics alert the reader to two separate meanings: shekhem is ‘shoulder’ but also recalls the city of Shekhem (Gen. 48:22).
Not only does the category of wordplays include different phenomena; it also serves many functions. On the one hand, wordplay can serve solely as an aesthetic touch. On the other hand, wordplay includes the phenomenon known as Martin Buber’s leading word or leitwort. As a leading word, the recurrence of a word within a passage or several passages “may underline a theme”(Greenstein) or enrich the plot of adjacent stories: When Laban uses the word bekhira for his older daughter, Leah, the reader should recall the similar sounding bekhora “birthright” that Jacob wrested from Esau and connect the two stories.
The prevalence of all sorts of wordplay in the Hebrew Bible and its various contributions to biblical literature led me to consider whether wordplay was also a feature of the Aramaic Targums. I want to present a number of wordplays in Targum Onkelos on the Pentateuch as well as examples from other Targums on Prophets and Writings and attempt to delineate their uses in comparison with wordplays and their meanings in the Hebrew Bible itself.

Author

• Isaac B. Gottlieb, Bar Ilan University