The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

KLEIN Cairo Genizah Targum Texts 25
Three exemplars of such introductory poems were discovered in the
Cambridge collections, and will appear in the forthcoming Festschrift
in honor of Samson Levey. 15
2. New Texts and Text-types
a. Serugin. Perhaps most interesting and most important are the recent
discoveries of new texts and entirely new targumic text-types. Outstanding
among these are the four fragments of serugin (shorthand) of
Onqelos. Three of the fragments were discovered in Cambridge, and
the fourth at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. The
fragments represent four distinct manuscripts, in different scribal
hands, indicating that this was a common practice. Before describing
the texts and their significance, I merely note that they have already
been edited and will appear in the forthcoming issue of MAARA V
dedicated to the memory of Stanley Gevirtz. 16
The first serugin manuscript of the Hebrew Bible was published by
A. Neubauer in 1895. 17 However, the phenomenon remained totally
unattested among Targum texts.
Neubauer identified the serugin phenomenon with the notriqon
mentioned in rabbinic literature, a form of mnemonic shorthand that
employs the first letters of words. However, he was at a loss to explain
the Genizah texts, which preserved some initial and some medial
letters. We now know that this is related to the Masoretic pronunciation
of the text, and that in some biblical serugin texts the first letter
and the medial accented letter are written. 18
In the discussion that ensued, P. Kahle observed that the serugin
manuscripts could only be used by people who already knew the texts
by heart or those who had immediate access to a full consonantal text
15. M.L. Klein, 'Introductory Poems (R'shuyoi) to the Targum of the Haftarah
in Praise of Jonathon ben Uzziel', in Bits of Honey: Essays for Samson H. Levey
(ed. S.F. Chyet and D.H. Ellenson; South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism
74; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), pp. 43-56.
16. M.L. Klein, 'Serugin (Shorthand) of Onqelos from the Cairo Genizah', in
Let Your Colleagues Praise You: Studies in Memory of Stanley Gevirtz (= MAARAV
8 [1992]; ed. R. Ratner, et a/.), pp. 275-87.
17. A. Neubauer, 'The Hebrew Bible in Shorthand Writing' JQR 1 (1894-95),
pp. 361-64.
18. E.J. Revell, 'A New Biblical Fragment with Palestinian Vocalisation', Textus
1 (1969), p. 74.