The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

KLEIN Cairo Genizah Tar gum Texts 21
the time served as Head of the Department of Oriental Manuscripts,
also arranged for me to see every manuscript that was suspected of
containing Aramaic Targum of any sort. This resulted in the first
comprehensive and descriptive list of Genizah manuscripts of Targum
in Leningrad. 6
II
The major advancement with the Cambridge Genizah collection came
about during the 1987-88 academic year. I devoted a full sabbatical
year to scanning the entire Cambridge collection, in situ at Cambridge
University Library. As expected, this led to many new discoveries,
and ultimately to the preparation of a descriptive catalogue of all
1,600 of its Targum fragments. This work, titled Targumic
Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, has just been
published by Cambridge University Press for Cambridge University
Library, as part of the series of catalogues edited by Dr Stefan Reif at
the Genizah Research Unit.
Before relating details of some of the new textual discoveries, I
would like to mention two additional ventures in the discovery and
identification of hitherto unknown targumic manuscripts. During a
visit to the Annenberg Research Unit in Philadelphia in November,
1991, Dr David Goldenberg asked me to describe several newly discovered
Genizah fragments that were not included in the original
Dropsie College Collection. 7 Although I only found four new targumic
fragments, one piece was of special interest. It contains Targum
of Psalms 27 and 28, with many variants that follow the Spanish
6. M.L. Klein, 'Targum Manuscripts in Leningrad', Studies in Bibliography
and Booklore 17 (1989), pp. 1-18. This article also lists 13 non-Genizah targumic
manuscripts in the library of the Institute of Oriental Studies (of the Academy of
Sciences) in St Petersburg. An earlier list produced by A. Katsh in 1962 listed only
17 targumic fragments in the Leningrad Antonin Collection and did not deal at all
with the Firkovitch collections; see A. Katsh, 'The Antonin Genizah in the Saltykov-
Shchedrin Public Library in Leningrad', in Leo Jung Jubilee Volume (ed
M.M. Kasher et al\ New York, 1962), pp. 222-23, 262.
7. M.L. Klein, 'Additional Targum Manuscripts', JQR 83 (1992), pp. 173-77.
The previously known fragments of the Dropsie Collection were described in
B. Halper, A Descriptive Catalogue of Genizah Fragments in Philadelphia
(Philadelphia, 1924).