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Targum Neofiti (or Targum Neophyti) is the largest of the western or Israeli on the Torah. The name derives from the ecclesiastical Latin word Neophyte (a new convert to a religion, in Greek neophutos) because the owners of the earliest copy were converts from Judaism . The extant copy consists of 450 covering all books of the Torah, with only a few damaged verses.
More than a mere Aramaic translation of the Hebrew language text, Neofiti offers lengthy expansions on the biblical text at several places. It is often more expansive than Targum Onkelos, but less so than Targum Pseudo-Jonathan.
At that time Targum Neofiti was titled incorrectly as a manuscript of Targum Onkelos, and it remained unremarked until 1949, when Professor Jose Maria Millas Vallicrosa and Alejandro Díez Macho noticed that it differed significantly from Targum Onkelos. It was translated and published from 1968 to 1979 and has since then been considered the most important of the Palestinian Targumim, as it is by far the most complete of the Western Targumim and perhaps the earliest as well.
Díez Macho argues that Neofiti dated to the first century CE as part of a pre-Christianity textual tradition, based upon anti-halakha material, early geographical and historical terms, New Testament parallels, Greek language and Latin words, and some supposedly pre-Masoretic Text Hebrew text. Martin McNamara argues that Neofiti originated in the fourth century CE.McNamara, Martin, The Aramaic Bible, Targum Neofiti 1, Michael Glazier, 1992, p. 45.
The language of the Targum Neofiti is conventionally known as "Palestinian Aramaic" as opposed to the "Babylonian Aramaic" of the Targum Onkelos.
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