The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

GORDON Alexander Sperber and the Study of the Targums 99
consonantal text of the books in question. 29 A good proportion of the
errors—whether originating with Sperber as editor or with the
printers—involved the letters waw and yodh, and could charitably be
regarded as second-order offences. But even yodh can be crucial to
the correct understanding of a word or sentence, as in Zech. 3.3
which, as I have argued elsewhere, preserves a rare occurrence of the
qtyl I- syntagma highlighted by E.Y. Kutscher as an Old Persian
caique in Eastern Aramaic and a criterion for distinguishing between
Eastern and Western Aramaic. 30 There is no doubt about the validity
of the reading within the manuscript tradition, and the presence of the
construction may even provide collaborative evidence of separate
redactional levels within the Targum of Zech. 3.1-5.
Since, however, Sperber saw the inner-Targum variants collected in
his apparatuses as specially important for the study of the 'official'
Targums, it is all the more regrettable that he did not do his collating
of these with greater care. Sample checks reveal a tendency to omit
and otherwise misreport to an unacceptable degree. 31 And yet
Sperber was correct in his estimation of the importance of the inner-
Targum variae lectiones, as the following two examples will illustrate.
1. smh/sm
Among the smooth stones of the valley is your portion;
they, they are your lot.
The second line of this quotation m Isa. 57.6 translates MT hm hm
gwrlk, and the Hebrew and English may be judged to make reasonable
sense. IQIs 3 , on the other hand, has 'there they are your lot' (smh
hmh gwrlkh), which picks up the locative 'Among the smooth stones'
of the first colon. Kutscher thought that 'the scribe' responsible for
lQIs a 57.6 had introduced the change in order to make the connection
with the first line, and yet, as he himself notes, the lQIs a reading
is paralleled in the Targum's tmn 'nwn 'dbk? 2 More interesting for
29. 'Sperber's Edition of the Targum to the Prophets: A Critique', JQR NS 64
(1974), pp. 314-21.
30. Studies in the Targum to the Twelve Prophets: From Nahum to Malachi
(VTSup 51; Leiden: Brill, 1994), pp. 113-14.
31. See 'Sperber's Edition', pp. 319-20.
32. E.Y. Kutscher, The Language and Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll
(lQIsa a ) (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah, VI; Leiden: Brill, 1974),