The Hebrew Bible says God "blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7). Targum Onkelos renders that final phrase differently: man became a "speaking soul." One word changes everything.
In the Hebrew, Adam is a living creature—nefesh (the vital soul) chayyah—the same phrase used for animals elsewhere in Genesis. But Onkelos elevates humanity above the animal kingdom with a single Aramaic word. A human being is not merely alive. A human being speaks. Language, reason, the capacity to name and define reality—this is what separates the human from every other creature God formed from the same dust.
This translation choice echoes through the rest of the chapter. When God brings every animal to Adam "to see what he would call them," the act of naming is not a trivial exercise. It is the defining human power—the very capacity that makes Adam a "speaking soul." Whatever Adam called each creature, "that is its name." Naming is not arbitrary labeling. It is perceiving essence.
Onkelos also subtly adjusts the Tree of Knowledge. The Hebrew calls it the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil." Onkelos renders it as the tree "from which the fruit, if eaten, gives knowledge of what is good and what is evil." The tree itself is not knowledge. The tree is a mechanism. The knowledge comes through the act of eating—through human choice and its consequences.
Throughout Genesis 2, Onkelos walks a careful line: staying close enough to the Hebrew to be recognizable, diverging just enough to teach. Every departure is a theological lesson in miniature.