By Troy Salinger
The purpose of this article is to counter some of the torrent of misinformation being promulgated on the internet concerning the ‘memra’ of the targums. Many of the claims made regarding the meaning and function of memra in the targums is greatly over-exaggerated or just plain false. Most of the misinformation and hyperbolic claims being disseminated by online apologists have been derived, whether correctly or incorrectly understood, from the work of two scholars – the Jewish Professor of Talmudic studies, Daniel Boyarin and the Old Testament scholar and popular Christian author, Michael Heiser. I think it is fair to say that Heiser seems to have derived his ideas about memra from Boyarin’s work. Heiser hasn’t done any indepth teaching on this subject, he usually simply mentions the ‘memra’ of the targums as further evidence in support of his teachings on binitarianism in the OT and then credits and recommends the work of Boyarin. So Heiser, more than anyone else, is responsible for having popularized Boyarin’s ideas about ‘memra’.
Boyarin basically thinks that ‘memra’ in the targums denotes a second divine hypostasis who acts in a mediatorial role for God, showing that Jewish belief included the idea of a second god figure1. He proposes this is the same as what the deeply Hellenized Jewish philosopher Philo called the Logos. Likewise, he suggests that the Logos of the prologue of the gospel of John is based on this same idea2. He also posits that these concepts of Memra and Logos laid the groundwork for the acceptance of Jesus as this second god by the early Jewish disciples and for the eventual development of the Christian Trinity.
It is easy to see why orthodox apologists have been eager to promote the ideas of Boyarin in their effort to show that the doctrines of Christ’s deity and the Trinity were not ideas that developed from Greek metaphysics but from thoroughly Jewish sources. This is certainly how Heiser used Boyarin’s work, as has the plethora of online apologists who have devotedly followed Heiser. But the evidence I will present in this article will show that the supposed connections between the targumic ‘memra’ and the ‘logos’ of John’s gospel are superficial at best. I will present seven reasons why one should be cautious in concluding that the ideas of memra and logos in Jewish thought pointed to a belief in a second divine hypostasis who mediated between God and man.
Reason 1
The consensus of targumic scholars is to deny that ‘memra’ in the targums is meant to denote a personal hypostasis.
Boyarin himself admits that the scholarly consensus is against his view3, and offers reasons why he rejects that consensus. It should be noted that Boyarin is not a targumic scholar but a Talmudic scholar. This, of course, doesn’t mean that Boyarin cannot read the targums and reach his own conclusions. Yet it is instructive to know that among those who have devoted their studies to the targums on an academic level, there is general agreement that ‘memra’ in the targums is not a personal hypostasis distinct from God4.
Reason 2
Memra in the targums is used as a circumlocution for God.
Once again, this is the consensus among targumic scholars5. When one steps back from all of the Christian hype regarding memra, and even from Boyarin’s speculations, and simply reads the targums themselves, it becomes clear what is going on with the use of memra. What we find is that when the Hebrew text simply says Yahweh did or said such and such, in the targums it will often say “the memra of Yahweh” did such and such. When in the Hebrew text it has Yahweh saying “I will do such and such,” in the targums this is translated as “my memra will do such and such.” Or when in the Hebrew text, speaking of God, it says “He will do such and such,” in the targums it will read “His memra will do such and such.” Also in places in the Hebrew text where men do some kind of action toward God, whether good or bad, the targums translate it as done to or against the memra of Yahweh. For example, the Hebrew text of Deut. 3:22b reads, “Yahweh your God, he is the one who fights for you.” The same text in targum Onkelos reads, “Yahweh your God, his memra fights for you.” In Deut. 18:19 the Hebrew reads, “And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him,” but targum Onkelos reads, “. . . my memra will require it of him.” The Hebrew of Gen. 9:12 reads, “And God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant which I make between me and you’ . . .,” whereas the targum reads, “This is the sign of the covenant I make between my memra and you.” In all of these cases, as with all of the like uses of memra in the targums, the word memra is not a translation of any Hebrew word in the corresponding Hebrew text, but is simply added into the text by the translators.
What the apologists want us to believe amounts to this – the translators of the targums were given a special revelation by God to reveal what was hidden in the Hebrew text, i.e. that it wasn’t simply Yahweh himself who was being referenced in these passages, but it was a distinct second hypostasis that was actually being referred to. Since such a thing could only have been known by these men through divine inspiration or revelation, then we must assume this is how they knew it.
Long ago, noted OT scholar George Foot Moore summarized the problem for us:
The sum of the whole matter is that nowhere in these Targums is memra a ‘being’ of any kind or in any sense, whether conceived personally as an angel employed in communication with men, or as a philosophically impersonal created potency, as in Maimonides’ theory; or God himself in certain modes of self-manifestation, which has been thought to be the opinion of R. Moses ben Nahman. The appearance of personality which in many places attaches to the memra is due solely to the fact that the phrase ‘the memra of Y.,’ or, with pronouns referring to God, My, Thy, His, memar, is a circumlocution for ‘God,’ ‘the Lord,’ or the like, introduced out of motives of reverence precisely where God is personally active in the affairs of men; and the personal character of this activity necessarily adheres to the periphrasis. The very question whether the memra is personal or impersonal implies, from the philological point of view, a misunderstanding of the whole phenomenon; and every answer to a false question is by that very fact false.
Intermediaries in Jewish Theology: Memra, Shekinah, Metatron; The Harvard Theological Review, Jan. 1922, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 53-54
The targums also employ other circumlocutions for God, such as shekinah (presence) and yekara (glory).
Reason 3
The targums never portray God as personally addressing his memra or his memra personally addressing God.
This fact is precisely what one would expect to see if memra was being used as a circumlocution or a substitute for God in the Hebrew text. But it is not what one would expect to see if memra was intended by the targum authors to denote a personal hypostasis distinct from Yahweh. Some may try to avoid the damaging implications of this fact by claiming that this is an argument from silence, but sometimes silence speaks louder than words, especially when there is a high expectation that something would have been said if it were true.
Reason 4
In the targums, memra de Yahweh never translates the Hebrew phrase dabar Yahweh (the word of Yahweh) in all of the passages in the Hebrew Bible where “the word of Yahweh” is said to have come to someone.
This fact alone is devastaing to the apologists’ case. It is these very passages in the OT {e.g. Gen. 15:1; 1 Sam. 15:10; 1 Kings 6:11; 17:2; Jer. 1:2; etc.} that are employed by the apologists to show that the “word of Yahweh” is a second, distinct personal hypostasis, and the memra of the targums is then appealed to as evidence of this supposed fact. Yet, the fact of the matter is, that in every one of these passages, the targums translate the Hebrew phrase dabar Yahweh not by memra de Yahweh but by pitgama nebu’a de Yahweh which translates as “a word of prophecy from Yahweh.” This clearly shows that the writers of the targums had no intention to associate memra with “the word of Yahweh” that came to men. The choice of pitgama nebu’a to translate this phrase shows that the word refers to the content of God’s communication to the prophets and not to a personal entity.
Reason 5
In the Peshitta6 OT, the phrase “the word of Yahweh” in the Hebrew Bible is never translated as memra marya but as pitgama marya or miltha marya.
If Boyarin is correct that the concept of the memra as a personal hypostasis was a widespread belief among 1st century Jews and that the early Christians incorporated this idea into their belief about Jesus, then why is this fact not reflected in the Peshitta OT, which was written by Christians in Syria? Just as the targums, which were written by Jews, does not reflect this idea in the very passages where it would be expected, neither does the Peshitta OT.
Reason 6
In the Peshitta NT, the logos of John 1 is not translated as memra but as miltha.
Based on Boyarin’s view that John developed his idea of the logos from the memra of the targums, one would expect to see John 1:1 in the Peshitta NT to read: “In the beginning was the Memra, and the Memra was with God, and the Memra was God.” Yet, this is not what we find. Instead, we see the word logos translated by the Aramaic word miltha. It doesn’t seem like this concept of memra as a second god person was as widespread as Boyarin asserts. If memra was the background thought for John’s prologue and the idea behind the word logos, then why, when John’s gospel was later translated into Aramaic in the Peshitta, did the translators not use memra to translate logos, but instead used miltha?
Reason 7
The phenomenon of “the memra of Yahweh” is confined to the targums alone. There is no mention, much less discussion, of memra in the Talmud, the Midrash, or any other rabbinic literature7. There is no mention of “the memra of Yahweh” in the Dead Sea Scrolls or even in the early church fathers.
Again, this is highly unexpected on the proposition that memra as a second god person played such a key role in the development of Jewish and Christian concepts of binitarianism.
Endnotes
Daniel Boyarin, The Gospel of the Memra: Jewish Binitarianism and the Prologue To John, Harvard Theological Review 94:3 (2001), p.255
Ibid., pp. 256-284
Ibid., pp. 254-255
See George Foot Moore, Intermediaries in Jewish Theology: Memra, Shekinah, Metatron, The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Jan., 1922), pp. 53-55.
Martin McNamara, Targum Revisited (2010), pp. 146-162.
C.K. Barret, The Gospel According To John, p. 128.
M. McNamara, Targum Revisited, pp. 162-3. See also Dictionary of the Talmud and the Jewish Encyclopedia under the entry Memra.
The Peshitta was written by Syriac speaking Christians and contains both the OT and NT in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic.
M. McNamara, Targum Revisited, pp. 161-2. G.F. Moore, Intermediaries, p.54.
D. Boyarin, The Gospel of the Memra, p. 268