David Shepherd, «The Case of The Targum of Job in the Rabbinic Bible and the Solger Codex (MS Nürnberg)», Vol. 79 (1998) 360-380
It is a well-known fact that even in its earliest edition, an Aramaic translation or targum was amongst the vast and varied material assembled for inclusion in the Rabbinic Bible. But in contrast to the comparative wealth of information we possess regarding the circumstances surrounding its publication, we possess little knowledge with regard to the sources used by Felix de Prato when he took up the task of editing the 1517 Rabbinic Bible for the Venetian publisher Daniel Bomberg. While prior research has shown the importance of the targum text preserved in the Solger Codex (Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg) in any attempt to solve the puzzle of the pre-history of the Rabbinic Bible's targum text, many pieces of this puzzle remain as yet unexamined. The present study locates the targum text preserved in MS Nürnberg (Solger Codex) within the stemmatological framework proposed by D. Stec in the introduction to his critical edition of the Targum of Job. More importantly, the present paper presents decisive evidence (through the detection of editorial errors) that the editor of the first Rabbinic Bible (Felix de Prato) copied his targum text of Job directly from Codex Solger preserved in the Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg.
translation of the Psalms executed by an apostate Jew, Felix de Prato 2. Apparently it was de Prato himself who had first interested Bomberg in the business of books and when the time came for work to begin on his edition of the Rabbinic Bible, it is hardly surprising that Bomberg turned over responsibility for its assembly and editing to his former translator. But in contrast to the comparative wealth of information we possess regarding the circumstances surrounding its publication, we possess very little explicit information regarding the sources which de Prato used for his edition of the targum to the Hebrew text. In the light of such a lack, the mystery of de Prato's sources can be solved only through the study of the relationship between the various extant targum witnesses and the targum text presented by the Bomberg Bible.
While recent research has shown the importance of the targum text preserved in the Solger Codex (MS Nürnberg) in any attempt to solve the puzzle of the pre-history of the Rabbinic Bible's targum text, many pieces of this puzzle remain as yet unexamined 3. The primary focus of the present paper is an examination of one of these pieces the rabbinic targum of Job in the hopes of further clarifying the relationship between the targum texts of MS Nürnberg and the 1517 Bomberg Bible.
This study is by no means the first to take up the question of the manuscript witnesses to the Rabbinic Targum of Job 4. In fact, over the past 20 years it is fair to say that the question has attracted a sort of international attention. While prior studies of the targum were primarily based on the text reproduced in the printed editions, it was the Israeli scholar, Raphael Weiss who was the first to make extensive use of the manuscripts in his doctoral work on