Sennacherib’s Successor: Titus and Anti-Roman Rhetoric in TgJon to Isa. 10:32

Abstract

As recent research in the study of manuscripts has demonstrated, variations in the phrasing of a text not only reveal scribal error or play but also indicate how changes to a given passage in different manuscripts convey important interpretive traditions. In this article, I explore one such case in TgJon to Isa. 10:32. First, I examine how key features (or the lack thereof) in the biblical text of Isa. 10:32 led to certain lines of rabbinic interpretation as found in b. Sanh. 95b, which contains a midrashic story based on the biblical text. Second, I analyse a parallel account of this story as found in TgJon to Isa. 10:32, and I argue that a particular manuscript of this Targum (B. M. 2211) contains added layers of anti-Roman rhetoric through an allusion to Abraham and Nimrod. In this fashion, the variation in wording in this manuscript is indicative of a distinct interpretation from that found in the Talmud.