The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

TRADITION AND ORIGINALITY IN THE TARGUM
OF THE SONG OF SONGS
Philip S. Alexander
The Targum of the Song of Songs was unquestionably one of the most
popular and widely disseminated works of the Jewish Middle Ages. It
survives in over sixty manuscripts of diverse provenance and date,
scattered through the great Judaica libraries of the world. In addition,
we have early translations of it into Ladino, Yiddish, Judaeo-Arabic,
Judaeo-Persian, and the Neo-Aramaic dialect of the Jews of
Kurdistan 1 —eloquent testimony of the desire to make the work avaliable
to the general public. The large number of manuscripts is
remarkable. There may be as many manuscripts of Targum Onqelos,
but few other texts are so well attested. By way of contrast, Shir ha-
Shirim Rabba, which springs most readily to mind as the major Jewish
exposition of the Song of Songs, survives in only four complete
1. Ladino: Moses Laniado's version was first published in Venice in 1619, and
often reprinted (e.g. Amsterdam, 1664; Venice, 1756 and 1778). See further,
A. Yaari, A Catalogue of Judaeo-Spanish Books = Kirjath Sepher 10 (1934), p. 3.
Yiddish: Freiburg, 1584 (attributed to Jacob Koppelmann ben Samuel of Metz).
Judaeo-Arabic: Livorno, 1870 and Baghdad, 1914. Earlier Judaeo-Arabic editions
are listed in A.E. Cowley's Catalogue of Hebrew Printed Books in the Bodleian
Library (Oxford, 1929), under 'Bible'. Judaeo-Persian: E.Z. Melamed, Shir ha-
Shirim: Targum Arami, Targum Ivri, Tafsir bi-leshon Yehudei Paras (Jerusalem,
1971). See also JNUL, Jerusalem, ms 28° 5290. Neo-Aramaic: Yona Sabar,
Targum de-Targum: An Old Neo-Aramaic Version of the Targum of the Song of
Songs (Wiesbaden, 1991) = Columbia University Library ms. X893 M686 and
JNUL ms 8° 925. Sabar (p. 15 n. 14) notes two other Neo-Aramaic versions: JNUL
ms 8° 495 and 28° 5290. For early Italian and Hebrew translations, see notes 3 and
8 below. A full bibliography of translations of Targum Shir ha-Shirim into 'Jewish'
languages is a desideratum (I have offered here only a few random notes, which may
be supplemented by consulting standard works such as Cowley's Catalogue). The
substance of these translations has also not received the attention it deserves. Sabar's
is the only attempt to analyse any of them seriously.