Quote:
Originally Posted by Esther
I am not that familiar with the Targum and wondered how acturate it is???
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The Targums or Targumim were used after the Hebrew language became unfamiliar to the Jews. The Scriptures would be read in Hebrew and then would be paraphrased in Aramaic. The word Targum means translation or interpretation. The paraphrase had to be memorized, it could not be written down. Later, the Targumim were allowed to be written down and there are a couple of them available (translated into English) online.
Since they were a paraphrase they were not a translation but an interpretation of the Hebrew and in time more and more traditions, opinions, legends, etc. found their way into them.
As an example, you can read the first 6 chapters of Genesis in the two main targumim at
http://targum.info/pj/pjgen1-6.htm
Just compare what is there to current translations (NKJV or NASB or JPS) and you can see that there is some extra stuff in there and how accurate they are.