Targum Jonathan תרגום יונתן
The Aramaic translation of the Prophets, ascribed to Jonathan ben Uzziel. Not to be confused with the "Targum Jonathan" on the Torah: that is another work, and the name was given it by mistake.
When Hebrew ceased to be understood, the reading in the synagogue began to be accompanied by a translation into Aramaic. Onkelos translated the Torah; the Prophets were translated by the Targum named for Jonathan ben Uzziel, a disciple of Hillel; the Talmud says that at that translation the earth shook.
How it differs from Onkelos. Onkelos translates close to the word. The Targum on the Prophets is freer: it often does not translate but explains—inserts midrash, unfolds a hint, names by name someone the verse leaves unnamed. Reading it, one sees how the prophets were understood in those centuries.
The mistake in the name. There is another targum—on the Torah, full of midrashim, printed under the title "Targum Jonathan." Jonathan has nothing to do with it: in the manuscripts it is called Targum Yerushalmi, abbreviated T"Y, and the abbreviation was read as "Targum Yonatan." Scholarship calls it Pseudo-Jonathan, and it is a case where a slip of five hundred years ago still lives in printed books.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Megillah 3a — Onkelos translated the Torah, Jonathan ben Uzziel the Prophets
- Bava Batra 134a — “the greatest of them was Jonathan ben Uzziel”
Basis: Talmud and midrash.