Neofiti's Reversal of the Motiv of the the «Wandering Jews» in Genesis 47:21

Abstract

This is a case study of a unique literary feature of Targum Neofiti - the conflation of Palestinian and Babylonian versions of the same haggadah. Specimens of this unusual treatment of a targumic text can be found at the beginning and at the end of Neof’s rendering of the parashah (Gen 44:18-47:27), namely in Gen 44:18 and Gen 47:21. In both instances Neof’s margin carries three glosses, another striking feature, which occurs very rarely (only six other times in the whole of Neof). In Gen 47:21 the targumic activity was prompted by the lectio difficilior of the TM, which gave way to two different expansions, a short one witnessed to in its more simple form by O (= BT) and a longer one attested to by V (= PT). Neof’s margin splits its support between BT and PT, whereas Neof’s main text deliberately conflates both expansions. A symmetric/chiastic conflation such as the one of Gen 47:21, cannot be accidental. Here, the evidence (viz., first, the midrashic reference to the haftarah of Ez 37:16,19, which is unknown to the Cairo Geniza list of haftarot [v/vi centuries A. D.], but was commented upon by the Palestinian paytan, Shemuel the Third, [ca. 1000 A.D.], and, second, the feasibility of inserting a Babylonian targumic version into a Palestinian one) points to the late Gaonic period as the terminus ante quem non of the activity of Neof’s final editor.