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.
editing process. Second, the question of the relationship between the targum texts of the two witnesses as a whole (Bomberg tg) (Nürnberg tg) can only be meaningfully addressed after each of the constituent targum texts (ie., Tg. Ruth, Tg. Judges, Frg. Tg. and now Tg. Job etc.) has been examined in its own right. In this sense, it is suggested that the present study, consitutes not the closing but rather a continuance of the case of de Prato's sources, and it is hoped that when all the evidence is finally in we will be somewhat closer to knowing which text it was that lay before not Bomberg, as my title suggests, but before de Prato, the true inspiration behind the Rabbinic Bible.