Onkelos’ choice, then, to dissolve the metaphor “fat of the land” in favor of “goodness of the land,” then, may be evidence of a broader, deliberate program eschewing metaphor more generally. That might imply that when Targum Onkelos dissolves metaphors, even about God, it has something more than deanthropomorphizing in its program: the translator appears to prefer semantic clarity to figurative language. In other words, this is part of a literary project rather than a theological one.For more on this series, see here.
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