Pseudo-Jonathan Explains It All to You

Into and Out of the Garden

I promised last Sunday that in this coming Sunday’s free post we would look at another story about this garden that YHWH has just planted, the garden where he placed the earthling that he molded out of dirt. First, as promised last time, let’s recap how far we’ve gotten in Version 2 of creation:

⁵ There was yet to be any shrub on earth … and any field plant was yet to sprout for YHWH God had not yet made it rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, ⁶ but a haze would well up from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. ⁷ YHWH God molded the earthling of dirt from the earth. He blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the earthling became a living being. ⁸ YHWH God planted a garden in Xanadu of old and put there the earthling He had molded.

Over the past three weeks, in addition to our usual focus on the precise language of the story — and leaving aside the differences and the (at least apparent) contradictions with the original telling in Genesis 1 — we had a number of larger questions as well. The one we ended with last time was the question of why God would make a human being, plant a garden somewhere else, and only then put the human being in the garden.

I said last time that the Targumim, the Aramaic translations of the Bible, sometimes add to the original when it seems that further explanation is necessary. As a translator myself, I understand and value this technique, which I used in the Commentators’ Bible. In the opening pages of those volumes, I explained to readers as clearly as I could the methods I used. That’s an advantage that the ancient translators did not have, so we must understand their methods by extrapolating from their work.

The translation known as Pseudo-Jonathan is particularly expansive in this regard, anticipating many questions that readers might have and adding information that resolves those questions. I will leave it up to you whether you think this kind of addition is revealing or inventing the necessary elements to fill in the missing back story of the Hebrew text.

I will steal a word from the Schottenstein edition of the Babylonian Talmud and call what Pseudo-Jonathan is doing not a translation but an elucidation. And I’ll also steal a technique, used by them and others, of printing the words that are actually translating in bold so you can see what else was added to elucidate the original text.

Here (in the English translation of Eldon Clem from the Accordance Bible platform) is how Targum Pseudo-Jonathan presents Gen 2:5–8:

⁵ And when all the trees of the field had not yet existed on the earth, and when all the plants of the field had not yet sprouted up, for the Lord God had not brought down rain on the earth, and there was no man to work the ground, ⁶ and the cloud of glory would come down from under the throne of glory and fill with water from the ocean and go back up from the earth and bring down rain and water all the face of the ground, ⁷ then the Lord God created Adam with two inclinations. And He took dust from the place of the sanctuary and from the four winds of the world and a mixture from all the waters of the world, and He created him red, black, and white, and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And the breath in the body of Adam became a speaking spirit for enlightening of the eyes and for hearing of the ears. ⁸ And before the creation of the world a garden for the righteous had been planted from Eden by the Memra of the Lord God, and He caused Adam to dwell there when He created him.

First, let’s look at some of the smaller revisions (links point to our earlier discussions for those who need a refresher):