My study of the Targum of Ruth grew out of my earlier work on Targum Lamentations and the Targumim of the Megilloth. From this page and the submenus above you can navigate to my essays on the Book of Ruth, Targum Ruth, brief commentary on the Book of Ruth, and translation of Targum Ruth. You can also navigate to images of the Valmadonna 1 manuscript and images of the Solger manuscript. The oldest known MS is Valmadonna 1 and my transcription and translation are based upon that MS. This MS is currently in the Museum of the Bible.
Targum Ruth
The Book
The Proselyte and the Prophet: Character Development in Targum Ruth can be ordered it at Brill’s site.
The first review came out in August of 2018 on Reading Religion, by Steven Fassberg.
Description: Historiated initial I(incipit) at the beginning of the book of Ruth, of Elimlech above and Naomi and her two sons beneath.
Origin: Italy, N. (Bologna)
Book Outline
- Introduction
- Transcription of Valmadonna No. 1 & Translation
- Exegetical Commentary
- Analysis
- Naomi
- Ruth
- Targumic Ruth
- Practically Perfect Proselyte
- The Last Deed is Better than the First
- Mother of the Messiah
- Boaz
- Targumic Boaz
- Ibzan the Righteous
- Boaz the Pious
- Rabbinic Exemplar
- Conclusion
The Articles
- “Eschatological Lists in the Targumim to the Megillot” is a paper I presented at IOTS in Slovenia 2007. The article has since appeared in Journal for the Study of Judaism, Volume 40, Numbers 4-5, 2009 , pp. 493-509(17). You may download it here: Brady_JSJ40.
- “The Conversion of Ruth in Targum Ruth” in Review of Rabbinic Judaism, Volume 16, Issue 2, 2013, pp. 133–146 (14). You may download it here: RRJ_016_02_133-146
The Translation
My translation can be found here, on this site.
Samson H. Levey’s translation can be found here, at the Newsletter for Targumic and Cognate Studies at Targum.info.
Valmadonna 1 Images
Images of TgRuth from Valmadonna 1 MS are available here.
Solger MS Images
Images of TgRuth from the Solger MS are available here.
Word Cloud
This is more for curiosity’s sake than anything else, but creating a word cloud offers an interesting visual look at the content (in English) of TgRuth.
