A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

7. The Targum of Joseph the Blind, upon the Book of Job, the Psalms, and the Proverbs.

8. The Targum upon the First and Second Books of Chronicles.

Upon Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel, there is no Targum at all. Indeed, a great part of Daniel and Ezra is written originally in Chaldee; and therefore there was no need of a Chaldee paraphrase upon them: but Nehemiah is written wholly in the Hebrew tongue, and no doubt anciently there were Chaldee paraphrases upon all the Hebrew parts of those books, though they are now lost.

The Targum of Onkelos is, without doubt, the most ancient that is now extant. He was certainly older than Jonathan Ben Uzziel, the author of the second Targum, who is supposed to have lived in our Saviour’s time, and who could have no reason to omit the Law in his paraphrase, but that he found Onkelos had done this work with success before him. No Chaldee writing, now extant, comes nearer the style of what is written in that language by Daniel and Ezra, than the Targum of Onkelos, which is a good argument for its antiquity. It is rather a version than a paraphrase; for the Hebrew text is rendered word for word, and for the most part with great exactness.

The Targum of Jonathan Ben Uzziel, upon the Prophets, is next to that of Onkelos in the purity of its style, but not in the manner of its composure; for Jonathan takes the liberty of a paraphrast, by enlarging and adding to the text, and by inserting several stories and glosses of his own, which are no reputation to the work. The Jews not only give him the preference to all the disciples of Hillel, but equal him even to Moses himself.

The Targum ascribed to Jonathan Ben Uzziel, upon the Law, is none of his, as appears by the style. Who was the true author of it, or when it was composed, is utterly unknown. It seems to have lain long in obscurity among the Jews themselves; for no notice was taken of it till it was published at Venice, about a hundred and fifty years since; and the name of Jonathan, it is probable, was prefixed to it for no other reason than to give it the more credit, and the better to recommend it by that specious title.

The Jerusalem Targum, upon the Law, was so called, because it was written in the Jerusalem dialect. There were three dialects of the Chaldean language. The first was spoken in Babylon, the metropolis of the Assyrian empire. The second was the Commagenian, or Antiochian, being that spoken in Commagena, Antioch, and the rest of Syria. The third was the Jerusalem dialect, which was spoken by the Jews after the captivity. The Babylonian and Jerusalem dialects were written in the same character; but the Antiochian was in a different, and is the same with what we call the Syriac. The purest style of the Jerusalem dialect is, first, in the Targum of Onkelos, and next, in that of Jonathan; but the Jerusalem Targum is written in a most barbarous style, intermixed with a great many foreign words, taken from the Greek, Latin, and Persian languages. This Targum is not a continued paraphrase, but only upon some parts here and there, as the author thought the text most wanted an explication; and sometimes whole chapters are omitted. It was written by an unknown hand, and probably some time after the third century.

The fifth Targum, which is that on the Megilloth, and the sixth, which is the second Targum on the book of Esther, are written in the corrupted Chaldee of the Jerusalem dialect; but the author of these is unknown. The seventh, which is upon Job, the Psalms, and the Prophets, is equally corrupt, and said to be written by Joseph the Blind, who is as unknown as the author of the other two. The second Targum on Esther is twice as large as the first, and seems to have been written the last of all the Targums, by reason of the barbarity of its style. There is also a third Targum on Esther. The first Targum upon Esther is a part of the Targum upon Megilloth, which makes mention of the Babylonish Talmud, and therefore must have been written after the year of Christ 500. The last Targum, upon the First and Second Books of Chronicles, was not known till the year 1680, when Beckius, from an old manuscript, published, at Augsburg in Germany, that part which is upon the First Book; the paraphrase upon the Second he published three years afterwards, at the same place.

TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. (“We praise Thee, O God,” &c.) This sublime composition has been referred to several different authors. Some have ascribed it to Ambrose and Augustine, others to Ambrose alone; others, again, to Abondius, Nicetius, bishop of Triers, or Hilary of Poictiers. In truth, it seems that there is no way of determining exactly who was the author of this hymn. Archbishop Usher found it ascribed to Nicetius, in a very ancient Gallican Psalter, and the Benedictine editors of the works of Hilary of Poictiers cite a fragment of a manuscript epistle of Abbo Floriacensis, in which Hilary is unhesitatingly spoken of as its author; but Abbo lived five or six centuries after that prelate, and therefore such a tradition is most doubtful. Some reasons, however, appear to justify the opinion, that Te Deum was composed in the Gallican Church, from which source we also derive the inestimable creed bearing the name of Athanasius. The most ancient allusions to its existence are found in the Rule of Cæsarius, bishop of Arles, who lived in the fifth century, and in that of his successor Aurelian. It has been judged from this, that the Te Deum may probably have been composed by some member of the celebrated monastery of Lerins, which was not far from Arles; or perhaps by Hilary of Arles, who seems to have composed the Athanasian Creed in the fifth century. Another presumption in favour of the same notion is deducible from the wording of this hymn. The verse, “Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin,” (“Dignare, Domine, die isto sine peccato nos custodire,”) gives reason to think that it was originally composed for the matin, and not for the nocturnal office, for it appears that the day is supposed to have actually commenced. Now Cæsarius and Aurelian both appoint Te Deum to be sung in the morning, while Benedict directed it to be sung in the nocturnal office on Sundays; and thence we may observe that the former appear to have adhered closer to the intentions of the author of this hymn than the latter: that therefore they were better acquainted with the author’s design than Benedict; and therefore the hymn was probably not composed in Italy, but in Gaul.

In the office of matins this hymn occupies the same place as it always has done, namely, after the reading of Scripture. The ancient offices of the English Church gave this hymn the title of the “Psalm Te Deum,” or the “Song of Ambrose and Augustine,” indifferently. As used in this place, it may be considered as a responsory psalm, since it follows a lesson; and here the practice of the Church of England resembles that directed by the Council of Laodicea, which decreed that the psalms and lessons should be read alternately.