III. JONATHAN BEN-UZZIEL, or the son of Uzziel. We have a Targum or Chaldee Paraphrase of the five books of Moses, and another of the Prophets, that is to say, of Joshua, Judges, and the two books of Samuel, the two books of Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve small Prophets; that is to say, all the books of the Old Testament, excepting the Hagiographa, namely Job, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Solomon’s Song, Daniel, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, and last of all Esther. The Jews say great things in commendation of Jonathan; they believe he lived in the time of Haggai, Zachary, and Malachi; that is to say, soon after their return from the captivity; and that he received from them the oral law or tradition. They add, that he was likewise the first and most excellent Disciple of Hillel, the famous Rabbi who lived, as is said, a little before the coming of our Saviour, or about that time, in the reign of Herod the Great. But if Jonathan had seen Haggai, Zachary and Malachi, and besides had been Hillel’s Disciple, he must have been about five hundred years old, which is incredible. However this may be, the Jews are never weary of exalting the merit of Jonathan the son of Uzziel. They equal him to Moses, and relate, that while he was about his Paraphase, God in a visible manner protected him; that to prevent any thing diverting him from his application, if a fly came and sat upon his paper, or a bird flew over his head, they were immediately consumed with fire from Heaven, without his being at all hurt by it, or any thing about him: that intending to compose a Targum on the Hagiographa, as he had done upon the Law and the Prophets, he was diverted from this design by a voice from Heaven, which told him, that the end of the Messiah was therein determined. This story whether true or false, but rather false than true, has been the occasion of some Christians taking the advantage of this confession, to maintain against the Jews, that the death of the Messiah was clearly foretold in the Prophet Daniel, whom the Hebrews place among the Hagiographa. And since these disputes the modern Jews have taken the liberty of changing this passage, lest such an acknowledgment should be a prejudice to them.
Of the two Targums, whereof Jonathan the son of Uzziel is said to be the Author, it appears that he composed that only which is upon the first and last Prophets. The Jews call Joshua, Judges; Samuel and the Kings, the first Prophets; and Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve small Prophets, the last Prophets.
The Targum or Paraphrase on all these books comes pretty near the style of Onkelos’s, which is esteemed the best of all: there is almost the same purity of style discernible in it; but whereas the Targum of Onkelos is an exact and literal version, Jonathan takes the liberty of paraphrasing, of enlarging and adding, sometimes a gloss, sometimes a story, which do no great honour to his work. What he has done upon the last Prophets is still more uncorrect, more imperfect, and less literal than the rest. Thus much concerning the two Targums of this Paraphrast.
That on the Law, which is attributed to him, is very different from the first, both as to the style, (as we may be easily convinced by reading them with attention, and comparing them together) and method: for this last Paraphrase is still more stuffed with fables, glosses, long explanations, and vain additions, than the Targum on the Prophets, which without contest is Jonathan’s. Besides, he speaks there of several things which were not as yet existing in his time, or at least did not go under the names he gives them; for example, Targum in Exod. xxvi. 9.he mentions the six orders or books of the Mishna, which were not written till long after his time; there are the names of Constantinople and Lombardy in it, which are still more modern than the Mishna.
We cannot tell who is the real Author of this last Targum; it continued a long time unknown even to the Jews: they had no notice of there being such a book, till it was published at Venice, about an hundred and fifty years ago; the name of Jonathan was in all probability put to it only to give credit to the Work, and promote the sale of it. See the article Targum. In the edition of the Polyglott Bible at Antwerp a good deal of the impertinences in Jonathan’s Targum has been suppressed. See F. Morinus’s Exercitat. Bibl. l. 2. Exercitat. 8. c. 1, 2, 3.