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.
that de Prato in his edited Bomberg text, almost always includes the alternative targumim in the margin of Nürnberg following the targum offered in the body of Nürnberg 33. It was surely neither incidental nor accidental that as a rule, when Nürnberg Mg does contain an alternative (second) Aramaic translation, the marginal hand of Nürnberg often provides an insertion mark following the targum which is in the body of the text 34. In the light of this general practice, it is not surprising that de Prato's approach produced the "correct" order of alternative targumim in many cases 35. But there are many others where the following of this default procedure resulted in Bomberg having a radically different ordering of alternative targumim 36.
For example, in chapter 36, while a significant proportion of the witnesses (12) preserve three targumim to verse 33, the order in which these three targum are preserved in Bomberg is unique. The targum which most witnesses cite first (T1) is in fact cited by Bomberg as the second targum, while T2 corresponds to the third targum preserved in Bomberg. To complete the confusion, Bomberg gives T3 as its first targum. Nürnberg and de Prato's reading of it seems to provide the answer to the question of Bomberg's mysterious ordering. (See Illustr. 1) Nürnberg preserves T3 in the body of its text. De Prato, accordingly includes it in Bomberg as his first targum. The remaining two targumim (T1 and T2) are preserved by Nürnberg in its margin in the same order and are therefore included by de Prato in the "proper" sequence. This then would seem to explain the unique order of the alternative targumim in Bomberg's text of Job 36,33. While it is undoubtedly possible that Bomberg's tendency toward unique ordering of its targumim could have an