The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

BEATTIE The Textual Tradition of Targum Ruth 341
But, while such speculations may be very entertaining, we really
ought to establish what Targum Ruth is before attempting to say anything
very much about it. So, when I had (more or less) completed
that translation, I turned to a careful examination of the manuscript
tradition to find out what could be discovered, hoping, perhaps, that
whatever might emerge from such a study of a small Targum with
plenty of manuscripts all stemming from a single textual tradition,
might be of value in other areas of Targum study.
What do we actually know about the Targum of Ruth? It was first
cited by Nathan ben Yehiel in 1101, at approximately the same period
that Rashi denied the existence of a Targum of the ktuvim.6 Its earliest
extant manuscript (Sassoon 282) dates from 1189. I am aware of the
existence of about 30 manuscripts—and there may well be more—
dating from the sixteenth century or earlier. So far, I have examined
15 of these. 7 There is also an enormous number of manuscripts of
Yemenite provenance and later dates which I am convinced, having
examined 10 of them, are based on European printed texts and are of
value mainly for demonstrating that the tradition of revising Targum
texts lived on until recent times. 8
At the first stage of my study 9 I surveyed the manuscripts listed in
the Appendix below, except for the Niirnberg manuscript which I discovered
fairly recently and about which more will be said later. On
the basis of those manuscripts I formulated the hypothesis that Sassoon
282, which has the shortest text, several distinctive readings and a
translation of the Hebrew which is frequently non-literal, represents
the earliest stage of a textual tradition reflected in the other manuscripts
and distinct in certain ways from the text which appears in the
printed editions. Some of the later manuscripts share features with the
printed tradition while the Antwerp and Paris polyglots often agree
6. Rashi, commentary on b. Meg. 21 b.
7. In addition to the manuscripts listed below, these are: three in the Jewish
Theological Seminary, New York—L125 (14th century German, defective), L610
(15th century Italian, extant only from 3.13), L431 (16th century Yemenite)—and
two in the Palatine Library, Parma—nos. 3077 (13th century) and 3189 (13/14th
century).
8. D.R.G. Beattie, "The Yemenite Tradition of Targum Ruth', JJS 41 (1990),
pp. 49-56.
9. D.R.G. Beattie, "The Textual Tradition of Targum Ruth: Some Preliminary
Observations', IBS 10 (1988), pp. 12-23.