The extant copy consists of 450 folios covering all books of the Torah, with only a few damaged verses.
In 1587, Andrea de Monte[1] gave the Targum Neofiti to his friend Ugo Boncompagni, who, like him, was a convert from Judaism.
In 1602 Boncampagni gave what was at that time labeled "Item 1" along with a fragmentary targum to the College of the Neophytes, the document's namesake, who preserved it until 1886, when the Vatican bought it along with other manuscripts when the Collegium closed.
Díez Macho argues that Neofiti dated to the first century CE as part of a pre-Christian textual tradition, based upon anti-halakhic material, early geographical and historical terms, New Testament parallels, Greek and Latin words, and some supposedly pre-masoretic Hebrew text.
The Codex itself has many marginal glosses containing corrections and different interpretations, perhaps drawn from Targum Pseudo-Jonathan.