The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

KLEIN Cairo Genizah Tar gum Texts 27
between this Fragment Targum of Onqelos and those of Palestinian
Targum. (2) The text contains three passages of Sa'adia's Judeo-Arabic
translation inserted within the Aramaic of Onqelos. This manuscript
will appear in a Festschrift in honour of Jonas C. Greenfield, edited
by Z. Zevit, M. Sokoloff and S. Gitin.
c. Proto Masorah of Onqelos. The survey of the Cambridge collection
uncovered 19 fragments of 15 distinct manuscripts of Masorah to
Onqelos. Some were targumic texts with marginal Masoretic notes;
others were manuscripts Masorah itself, either following the order of
the biblical text, or arranged as alphabetical lists. The majority of
these texts have already been published by Kahle, Weil and Yeiven, 22
and the survey did not reveal any new information.
On the other hand, several of the Masorah fragments are comprised
of sporadic passages extracted from complete texts of Onqelos. These
reduced texts resemble Fragment Targums, except that they are interspersed
with occasional Masoretic notes. These may hold the secret to
the medieval Masoretic process. In the absence of index cards and
computers, the Masoretes produced extracts of Onqelos, in which only
words and phrases that were of Masoretic interest were recorded, and
the rest of the text omitted. It would seem that this was a preliminary
stage in the composition of Masoretic lists, which note the number of
times particular translations or grammatical forms appear. The
reduced texts, unencumbered with irrelevant material, facilitated the
recording of Masoretically important translational features. These
Masoretic extracts of Onqelos are presently being prepared for
publication. 23
d. A new Targum of Esther. As some might be aware, Rimon Kasher
and I jointly published several Cambridge fragments of a new Targum
of Esther two years ago. 24 A few brief comments will therefore suffice.
The new text is comprised of passages from the well-known
22. See note 4, above.
23. In the meantime, see M.L. Klein, 'Manuscripts of Proto-Massorah to
Onqelos', Estudios Masoreticos (X Congresso de IOMS; En memoria de Harry
M. Orlinsky; ed. E. Fernandez Tejero and M.T. Ortega Monasterio; Madrid: Instituto
de Filologia del CSIC, 1993), pp. 73-88.
24. R. Kasher and M.L. Klein, 'New Fragments of Targum to Esther from the
Cairo Genizah', HUCA 61 (1990), pp. 89-124.