The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

CAIRO GENIZAH TARGUM TEXTS: OLD AND NEW
Michael L. Klein
I
The first Genizah manuscripts of Targum to be published were several
small fragments that were discovered at the beginning of the present
century by Caster, Ginsburger, Weisz and Landauer. These were
chance discoveries of relatively short passages of Palestinian Fragment
Targum, targumic toseftot and targumic poems that are presently
found in the collections of the British Library, the Bodleian Library,
the David Kaufmann Collection in Budapest and the University
Library of Strasbourg. 1
The transference of all 200,000 fragments from the Cairo Genizah
to major European libraries and private collections had been completed
in 1897, with the major shipment of 140,000 pieces by
Solomon Schechter to the Cambridge University Library. But it was
not until 1930, that the first substantial collection of fragments of
Palestinian Targum and targumic poems from the Cairo Genizah was
published. I refer, of course, to the landmark edition of Paul Kahle, in
the second volume of his Masoreten des Westens. 2 As the name of that
opus implies, Kahle's primary interest was in the Palestinian tradition
of the Massorah and the Western system of vocalization, rather than
the targumic translation and interpretation per se. But regardless of
Kahle's purpose, that group of Genizah fragments from Cambridge,
1. M. Gaster, 'Genizah Fragmente', in Gedenkbuch zur Erinnerung an David
Kaufmann (ed. M. Brann and F. Rosenthal; Breslau, 1900), pp. 226-27, 236-37;
M. Ginsburger, Das Fragmententhargum (Berlin, 1899), pp. 71-72; M. Weisz,
'Egy Erdekes Targumtoredek a Genizahbol', Magyar-Zido Szemele 20 (1903),
pp. 347-51; and S. Landauer, 'Ein interessantes Fragment des Pseudo-Jonathan', in
Festschrift zu Ehren des Dr A. Harkavy (ed. D. v. Guenzberg and I. Markon;
St Petersburg, 1908), pp. 19-26.
2. P. Kahle, Masoreten des Westens II (Stuttgart, 1930), pp. 1-65.