The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

126 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
i.e. the 'Tower of Babel' story. The passage was chosen merely for
its appropriateness to the theme of our first paragraph rather because
of any particularly meaningful forms that it attests. Virtually any
similarly-sized selection of material would yield the same kind of evidence.
Abbreviations used in this table are 'O': Onqelos; T: Pseudo-
Jonathan; 'N': Neofiti; 'N2': Neofiti marginalia (all hands); 'P': the
Paris 110 MS of the Fragment Targum; and 'V: the Vatican 440 MS
of the Fragment Targum. (B) The Testament of Levi, as per the
Qumran fragments from Cave 4 (and isolated words from 1Q21) and
the Cairo Genizah text, pieces of which are in both the Bodleian and
Cambridge libraries. 21 (C) Tobit, as per the the various 4Q MSS
where it parallels the medieval text published by Neubauer. 22
Our object here is to delineate the kinds of variation evident among
the traditional targumim and to compare that variation to the kinds of
variation obtaining between Qumran and Cairo Genizah versions of
the same text on the one hand (T. Levi) and Qumran and a not
directly related medieval version on the other (Tobit). Nor should
internal variation among multiple Qumran MSS be ignored! Forms of
particular interest have been highlighted.
For purposes of the current discussion, let us exclude the problem
of the lengthy textual additions characteristic of Pseudo-Jonathan as
illustrated at vv. 7 and 8. The remaining kinds of variations may be
divided into three not-totally-independent categories:
reliable editions; they thus may and do differ in detail from those of the several published
editions. Qumran readings are those of the author based on positive prints
from the 4Q collection photographs in the possession of the Klau Library, Hebrew
Union College, Cincinnati with reference to the by-now infamous 'concordance'.
Subsequent to the oral presentation, mutually beneficial consultations were undertaken
with the scholars who are officially responsible for the publication of T. Levi
(M.E. Stone and J.C. Greenfield) and Tobit (J.A. Fitzmyer); but nothing in the
current presentation should be taken to be indicative of the readings in the current or
future work of those scholars.
21. Cf. especially, J.C. Greenfield and M.E. Stone, RB 86 (1979), pp. 214-30;
and K. Beyer, Die aramaischen Texte vom Toten Meer (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1984), pp. 188-209.
22. The material distributed for the oral presentation included a complete version
of the Tobit material. Here only the parallel passages have been included, since
nothing in the unparalled 4Q material is of immediate relevance for the matter at hand.