Excerpt from The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch: With the Fragments of the Jerusalem Targum, From the Chaldee; Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy The holy Pentateuch opens with a sentence which combines the majesty and simplicity of a Divine oracle In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and th cart a sentence whose few but sublime words throw the first beam of light on the otherwise inscrutable mystery of existence, and lead us up to the foun tain and cause of created being, in God, its Author and End. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch: With the Fragments of the Jerusalem Targum; From the Chaldee Yet to Him who is of necessity One, is here give, and by His own dictate, a plural appellation. This phenomenon, which occurs in a multitude of places in the Old Testament, is explained as being a mere adaptation to the usual style of royalty; - pluralis majestatis, vel excellenti . According to this view it does not indicate a plurality of Persons in the Deity, but the multiform and all-comprising perfection of the One God; the index of physical and moral majesty in their highest expression. When, therefore, we read such words as, "Elohim said, Let us make man in Our Image;" (Gen. i. 26;) or, "Behold, the man is become as one of Us;" (Gen iii. 22;) the formula is to e understood after the manner in which we read the plural in a proclamation of one of the kings of the earth. But the insufficiency of this explanation is apparent in the fact, that Elohim is used not only with plural pronouns in the first person, as in thetexts qouted, but with plural adjectives, (Elohim kerobim, "near Gods," Dent. iv. 7; chayim, "living Gods," Jer. x. 10; kedoshim, "holy Gods," Joshua xxvi. 19, ) and in concord with plural verbs in the third person. (Gen. xx. 13: hithu Elohim othi; "The Gods caused me to wander." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."