date of the Targum Pseudo Jonathan

ton verdam

Can someone with more resources than I tell me the right date for the Targum Pseudo Jonathan?

I have so many different views and dates that I am confused...

and also for the Damascus Documents?

Thanks

 

Mark Barnes

There is no 'right date'. It's  a document that seems to have been edited over a long period of time, and different parts of it seem to date from different periods, but no-one is quite sure. Even when it speaks of things that are early, it's not clear that even these parts were written at the time, or in retrospect. It would generally be put around 7th-8th century AD. As usual, AYBD has a reasonable summary.

There are fragments of the Damascus Document at Qumran, which places it (or at least those parts of it) roughly in the 1st Century BC. But the full copy we have is much later - early medieval. How much of the later document actually dates from the 1st century is difficult to know, but the general consensus is that most of it does date from that period.