The Hebrew Bible begins with "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). Targum Neofiti, the Palestinian Aramaic translation, opens with something grander: "In the beginning and in great wisdom, God created and finished the heavens and the earth." Creation was not a brute act of power. It was an exercise of wisdom.
This single addition—"in great wisdom"—separates the Palestinian Targum from Targum Onkelos, the Babylonian standard. Where Onkelos stays close to the Hebrew, Neofiti interprets freely, embedding rabbinic theology directly into the translation. The creation account becomes a commentary on how God works: wisely, deliberately, with a plan.
The description of primordial chaos is also more vivid. The Hebrew says the earth was tohu va-vohu—"formless and void." Neofiti specifies: "desolate from humans and animals alike, empty of all planted vegetation and trees." The void is not abstract. It is a concrete absence—no people, no animals, no plants. The reader can picture the emptiness before imagining its filling.
Where Onkelos translates God's ruach (spirit) as a "breath from before God" that "blew," Neofiti calls it a "merciful spirit from before God" that "blew across the water." One word—"merciful"—transforms the theology. Creation did not begin with power or judgment. It began with mercy. The very first divine act was compassion, expressed as wind moving over dark water.
The Neofiti creation account is shorter than Onkelos's version, covering only two days in this passage. But its additions reveal a distinct theological personality—warmer, more interpretive, more willing to tell the reader not just what God did but how God felt while doing it.