Targum

Targum Onqelos usually offers a straightforward Aramaic rendering of the biblical verse. The Palestinian Targums (=Targum Yerushalmi), in contrast, offer more expansive, midrashic renderings of the verse. Numbers 24:1, in which Balaam looks to the wilderness, offers us a further glimpse into a world with multiple Targumic traditions.

The standard Aramaic translation of the Torah, Targum Onkelos, usually renders place names in the original Hebrew or leaves them out. However, there are exceptions.

Potiphar’s wife sets up her friends to learn about Joseph’s beauty for themselves, the hard way, in a story that appears in both rabbinic midrash and the Quran. Sefer HaYashar, a 16^th century midrashic work, dramatizes this story in a way sympathetic to her character, even giving her the name Zuleikha, borrowed from Islamic sources.

In the Bible, the Queen of Sheba is an unnamed foreign visitor to Solomon’s court. How did she later become a paradigmatic religious convert, Solomon’s wife, and the mother of Nebuchadnezzar and Menelik I, the founding figure of the Ethiopian royal court? The answer begins in the Qur’an.