Targum Neofiti (or Targum Neophyti) is the largest of the Western Targumim on the Torah, or Palestinian Targumim. More than a mere Aramaic translation of the Hebrew text, Neofiti offers lengthy expansions on the biblical text at several places.
Neofiti’s date of origin is uncertain. The manuscript’s colophon dates the copy to 1504 in Rome.
Díez Macho argues that Neofiti dated to the first century CE as part of a pre-Christian textual tradition, based upon anti-halakhic material, early geographical and historical terms, New Testament parallels, Greek and Latin words, and some supposedly pre-masoretic Hebrew text. Martin McNamara argues that Neofiti originated in the fourth century CE.
The language of the Targum Neofiti is conventionally known as “Palestinian Aramaic” as opposed to the “Babylonian Aramaic” of the Targum Onkelos.
Peter Schaffer’s, who is not a bible believing Christian and is considered the foremost authoritative scholar on the beliefs of the Jews before, during and after the time of Christ up until the medieval period (5th century), ”Two Gods in heaven”, p.29-32. In his exposition of Sirach 24:23, Schäfer notes,
“All this” refers to everything that had previously been said about wisdom; all this is now interpreted as the Book of the Covenant between God and his people Israel–that is, as the Torah (Greek nomos). Wisdom, God’s personified messenger on earth, is now embodied in a book, the book of Torah. This reinterpretation of biblical wisdom paved the way that classical rabbinic Judaism would take: from personified Wisdom to the book of the Torah, which needs to be interpreted. Hence, the s0-called Fragment Targum, one of the oldest Palestinian targumim on the Torah, translates the verse Genesis 1:1 be-reshit Elohim not as “in the beginning God created the heaven and earth” but instead as “through/by means of wisdom (be-hokhmah)8 God created and perfected the heaven and the earth.”9 “Wisdom” here of course means “Torah,” as explicitly explained in the midrash Genesis Rabbah:10The Torah declares: be-reshit God [the heaven and the earth] (Gen. 1:1) and reshit refers to the Torah, as it is said: “The Lord created me (qanani) as the beginning (reshit) of his way.” (Prov. 8:22)Here, the reshit from Genesis 1:1 is interpreted through Proverbs 8:22. There, Wisdom says of herself that sheis the beginning (reshit) of his way–that is, his action of creation; accordingly, the reshit in Genesis 1:1 must refer to wisdom: be-reshit means, as in the targum, “through/by means of wisdom.” At the same time we know from Jesus Sirach 24:23 that this wisdom is identical to the Torah, so the verse in Genesis 1:1 according to this rabbinic interpretation means “through/by means of the Torah God created the heavens and the earth.” Thus in contrast to the canonical and noncanonical wisdom tradition, the Torah is not only the first created work of creation but also God’s tool of creation. As a parable in the midrash further expounds, God looked in the Torah while creating the world–that is, he used it as a blueprint as it were for his creation. In contrast to this, New Testament Christianity continues the line of the personified (male) Logos, referring it to Jesus: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).
”This Christological interpretation [of John 1:1] can be found, of all places, in the oldest complete Palestinian targum on the Pentateuch that we know of: the so-called Codex Neofiti. In the Aramaic translation of the Codex Neofiti, Genesis 1:1 reads, Mileqadmin behokhmah bera de-YYY’ [Jehovah/YHWH] shakhlel yat shemayya we-yat ar’a [Aramaic transliteration] which can only be translated literally as, “In the beginning, by means of wisdom, the son of God [Out of respect for his Jewish collegues, he doesnt want to translate the divine name, but the literal translation is Jehovah] perfected the heaven and the earth.” This version combines the two variants of the Fragment Targum (mileqadmin, “in/at the beginning,” and be-hokhmah, “through/by means of wisdom”), and by inserting the particle “de” before YYY’, transforms the verb bera (created) into the noun bera (son): “the son of God/God’s son.” Since the verb bera was no longer there and shakhlel (perfected) remained as the only verb, the copula we- (and) before shakhlel (also in the Fragment Targum) no longer made sense and was deleted by a redactor [In a few Tragums, such as the Fragment Targum, they dropped the term ”bera” so the text now said ”In the beginning, by wisdom, God ‘wa shkhlel’ and perfected…”. This didnt make sense so the later editors took it out and it became, ”In the beginning, by wisdom, God perfected…”], as can easily be seen on a photocopy of the manuscript.12 In other words, whoever deleted the copula we- before shakhlel wanted to give a clear meaning to the sentence, which had become incomprehensible due to the particle de- before YYY’—namely, it was the son of God, the Logos of the New Testament, who through the wisdom of God perfected creation. Unfortunately, we do not know how this Christological interpretation of the first verse of Genesis should be dated. The Codex Neofiti is the only extant manuscript of this targum, and the colophon dates the manuscript to 1504. The targum itself was dated to the first century CE by its discoverer, Alejandro Díez Macho, but this early dating has not found general acceptance. Today it is assumed to have been written in the fourth century. But what was the original version of Genesis 1:1? The we- before shakhlel was definitely in the original manuscript text, but it is also true that the particle de- before YYY’, which makes it impossible to read bera as a verb and confuses the syntax of the sentence, was in the original manuscript text as well. The most probable and theologically least unsettling explanation of the extant version of Genesis 1:1 is that the clearly Christological interpretation was the work of an early modern Christian redactor
[Peter Schaffer is saying that critics are postulating a theory. They’re saying that the copy they have, a Christian got his hands on it and edited it].
On the other hand, it cannot be entirely ruled out that the reading bera de-YYY’ (son of God) was intended in the original targum text, and that the manuscript scribe continued in the early sixteenth century with we-shakhlel (and perfected), because this was familiar to him from other versions of the targum (as documented in the Fragment Targum)
[Peter Schaffer, however, is not entirely convinced by their theory. You cannot rule out, on the basis of the evidence, that ”the Son of Jehovah” was originally there written by the targumist and not a later Christian redactor, and because the scribe who was copying this targum, was so familiar with the other targums, wrote ‘wa-shakhlel’ and perfected, which didn’t make sense to later copyists, which is why they removed the ‘wa’. This means that there is no solid textual archaeological proof that ”Son of Jehovah” was not in the original Targum. Why then would a Jew write this? This proves that the Trinity, or at least a binaty, was not alien to Judaism during the second temple period, even later Jewish medievil sources call this 2nd Power Enoch, and Jehovah Hakattan].”
In this case, here we would have an interpretation of the first verse of Genesis that is utterly unique in rabbinic tradition,16 which against the background of the early Jewish evidence discussed here, however, does not seem as singular as it might appear at first glance.
(Two Gods in Heaven: Jewish Concepts of Godin Antiquity p.29-32), all Italicised text is my commentary.
The Son of God
So now lets look at the Targum itself:
Genesis 1:1 – From the beginning with wisdom the Son of the Lord perfected the heavens and the earth.
Notice that this paraphrase of Genesis 1:1 doesn’t read literally. The Hebrew says ”barashit bara elohim…” In the beginnig, created God…”. The scholars say that the Jews were perplexed at the reading of Genesis, and the Targums provide further proof this was so. They were perplexed because they saw something greater and deeper in the word ”barashit”. The preposition ‘bar’ can mean ‘in’, ‘with’ or ‘by’. The English translations render it as ‘in’ but the Jews took it to mean ‘by’ or ‘with’. So literally, ”By/With rashit, God created…” This made the Jews look for an entity, the ‘rashit’ that God used to create the heavens and the earth. And they found it in Proverbs 8:22-36, which has Wisdom, hakmah in Hebrew, saying, ”…Jehovah brough me forth as the beginning (rashit) of His works…” (vs 22). The Fragment Targum writes Genesis 1:1 as ”By Wisdom ”ber hakmah”, the Lord created…”. So the Jews saw something particularly unique in Genesis 1:1 because the word that it typically used to refer to a beginning process is ”rishona”, but the Jews who read the Hebrew meticulously saw that God used ”rashit” and not ”rishona” therefore God must be telling them something deeper than the basics. So when they came to Wisdom, in Proverbs 8:23-25 where it says that Wisdom was begotten ”howlalti”, which is used one other time in Psalm 51:5, ”Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.” Given this, just like David existed in his mother’s womb before he was birthed out, the Jews applied the same to Wisdom, having existed in God’s metaphorical and spiritual womb, His mouth (Prov 2:6) eternally, being a part of God. This ties in with Wisdom being His Word because she comes out of His mouth as His Word. Connecting this to sonship, if Wisdom is brought forth, begotten, this means that it is God’s Son. In the same book of Proverbs, God is said to have a Son who is just as incomprehensible as he is, and does what God alone is capable of doing (Proverbs 30:3-4)
This describes God and his Son as the Holy Ones that have established and maintain creation, which are divine acts illustrating the fact of their possessing a nature (“name”) that is beyond human comprehension.
Moreover, there is clearly an allusion to Proverbs 8:22-31 here, since it also mentions God bringing forth and setting the bounds of creation.
In light of the above points, one can reasonably assume that this incomprehensible Son, who is the other Holy One coexisting with God, is none other than divine Wisdom itself. And those Jews scribes/rabbis who read their Bible meticulously, with great detail, would have noted these connections and therefore arrived at the same conclusion.
The brilliance of these Jews lost their way since as smart as they were, they didn’t identify this Son with Jesus Christ. The thing that’s gets tricky is that in Proverbs 8, Wisdom is personified as a woman sine hakmah is a feminine noun, the same as the Greek, ”sophia”. However, just because the noun is feminine, this does not in any way imply that Wisdom is the daughter of God since this is only a personification that requires correct grammar. So Wisdom can still be applied to the Son of God, who was known as Jesus by the early Church.
Peter Schaffer’s ”Two Gods in Heaven”, p.63 – He mentions Philo’s, who was a contemporary of Christ, view concerning his thoughts about the identity of the Logos:
”Should a man desire to use words in a more simple and direct way, he would say that the world discerned only by the intellect (ton noēton kosmon) is nothing else than the Word of God (theou logon) when He was already engaged in the act of creation.”
When Philo attempts to describe more precisely the relationship between the unknowable and unattainable God and his Logos, he uses not philosophical but rather biblical language. The Logos is
‘God’s First-born (prōtogonos), the Word, who holds the eldership (presbytatos) among the angels, their archangel (archangelos) as it were, the ruler (hyparchos) with many names, for he is called: “the Beginning” (archē), and the Name of God (onoma theou), and His Word (logos), and the Man after His image (ho kat’ eikona anthrōpos), and “he that sees” (ho horōn), that is Israel. Similarities with the Prayer of Joseph are immediately obvious. The Logos is the firstborn and oldest among the angels, and is identical with Israel.”
Yet Philo is more precise than the Prayer of Joseph with regard to the salvific function of the Logos reaching into the earthly world:
“We are all sons of one man” (Gen. 42:11). For if we have not yet become fit (enough) to be thought sons of God yet we may be sons of His invisible image (tēs aeidous eikonos), the most holy Word (logou tou hierōtatou). For the Word is the eldestborn image of God (theou gar eikōn logos ho presbytatos).”
We humans, although we cannot (yet) call ourselves “Sons of God,” can indeed refer to ourselves as “Sons of the Logos,” his “firstborn image,” who elsewhere is even denoted as “second God”:
”For nothing mortal can be made in the likeness of the most high One and Father of the universe but (only) in that of the second God (deuteron theon), who is his Logos.”
The Shekinah as the Holy Spirit
Genesis 1:26-29 – ”And the Lord said: Let us create man in our image, similar to ourselves, and let him have dominión over the fishes of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. And the Word of the Lord created the son of man in his (own) image, in a resemblance from before the Lord he created him, male and his partner he created them. And the Glory of the Lord blessed them and the Word of the Lord said to them: Be strong and multiply and fill the earth and sub- due it and have dominión over the fishes of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that creeps upon the earth. And the Glory of the Lord said: Behold I have given you all the herbs that produce seed that are on the face of all the earth and every tree that has fruit on it —the fruit-bearing tree— to you I have given them as food.
Genesis 2:1 – ”And they [God, His Word, and His Glory] completed the creatures of the heavens and earth and all the hosts of them.”
Now this glory of the Lord, who is He, and how do we know? This is where it gets a bit complicated: in Judaism, specifically Rabbinic Judaism, the concept of the shekinah glory, the ”Kabod”, glory, of Jehovah, which is said to be the Shakina of Jehovah. The term Shekinah, presence, comes from the word ‘shakan’, which is the word from which we get ‘mishkan’, which is the Hebrew term for the tabernacle/tent, where He would appear in a visible cloud, which scripture calls the glory of Jehovah (Exo 40:34-38), to situate His presence. And in Rabbinic Judaism, that shekinah is identified as the Holy Spirit:
Jewish scholar Abraham Cohen, Everyman’s Talmud (The First Comprehensive Summary, for the English Reader, of the Teaching of the Talmud and the Rabbis on Ethics, Religion, Folk-lore and Jurisprudence. Cohen does an excellent job of presenting the origins of Talmudic literature and summarizing in a meaningful way the many doctrines it contains), Chapter II. God And The Universe, II. Transcendence And Immanence, p. 45:
“Another Rabbinic concept to indicate the nearness of God and His direct influence on man is that of Ruach Hakodesh (the Holy Spirit). Sometimes it seems to be identical with the Shechinah as expressing the divine immanence in the world. For instance, it is related that after the destruction of the Temple, the Emperor Vespasian dispatched three shiploads of young Jews and Jewesses to brothels in Rome, but during the voyage they all threw themselves into the sea and were drowned, rather accept so degraded a fate. The story ends with the statement that on beholding the harrowing sight: ‘The Holy Spirit wept and said, “For these do I weep” (Lament. i. 16)’ (Lament. R. I. 45).
So according to the Rabbis, the Holy Spirit weeps, which presupposes personhood, over the fate of the Jews who killed themselves out of their love for God.
“And Jehovah went his way, as soon as he had left off communing with Abraham: and Abraham returned unto his place.” Genesis 18:33 American Standard Version (ASV)
And the Glory of the Shekinah of the Lord went up when it had finished speaking with Abraham. And Abraham returned to his place.” Genesis 18:33 (Targum Neofiti)
“Then Jehovah rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven;” Genesis 19:24 ASV
”And the Word of the Lord made to come down upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulphur and fire from before the Lord, from the heavens.” Genesis 19:24 (Targum Neofiti)