The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

BEATTIE The Textual Tradition of Targum Ruth 345
write tno^Q instead of in'O he might have preferred to sacrifice the i.
In Ruth's oath of 1.17, where N reads676?>?|*^ ? > ? = + ? l;hj c
the reading cms 1 KIT cannot be right. Other manuscripts read one' and
I would suggest that the «rp should be treated as an error (there are
other examples of otiose words in N), but the printed texts read TP
onsn, producing, as I would suggest, from N a reading not found in
any manuscript. Further, the printed texts read T3 in place of kghkjhkjhgsabalj
in this verse. Although four of my nine manuscripts (L is defective),
including Sassoon 282, read T3 it is not necessary to suppose that
another manuscript has been utilized here; a sixteenth-century editor
might well have felt dubious about the authenticity of the pronominal
use of memra—it may be recalled here that we have already found
reason to suspect that he may have had some compunction about using
the word—and so he decided to correct what he saw as an error.
Fourth, and perhaps most important, in two places where the
printed texts have a distinctive reading, these readings may be
explained on the basis that N, and only N, was the source for the
printed texts. The phrase prrma ira paia ao'Q 1 ? pronoi (1.8), which
appears also, with minor variations in spelling, in several other
manuscripts, and in the Antwerp and Paris polyglots, is orthographically
identical in N and the printed texts except that the printed
texts read Knma for paia (the form which appears in all other
manuscripts which have the phrase). In N, where it occurs at the end
of a line, the final nun is omitted and it may be suggested that the
distinctive reading Nnrm of the printed texts has been derived (or, as
we might say, 'reconstructed') from the abbreviated form '-ma. In
1.22 the verb 'they came' (to Bethlehem) is omitted by N; other
manuscripts, and the Antwerp and Paris polyglots, have a form of "TU>,
but the printed texts have in». This suggests that N was the sole
manuscript source used in the preparation of the latter; confronted by
an obvious lacuna in the text, the editor supplied the obvious Aramaic
equivalent for the Hebrew i&o. The omission of the preposition b from
urb rrzb in both N and the printed texts adds support to the suggestion
of the dependence of the latter on the former.
A final note (the fifth of my four heads, if I may so put it, taking
advantage of our location in Ireland) should be added. The existence
in N of the second half of 1.7, 'and they went on the way to return to
the land of Judah', which is characteristically lacking from the printed
texts, ought not to be overlooked. If I am right in my identification of