The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

REIF The Cairo Genizah and its Treasures 49
(= CD). Although Schechter and Louis Ginzberg both recognized the
importance of the two Genizah manuscripts of this work and offered
some explanations that have generally stood the test of time, no
scholar was able to place it in its precise historical and theological
context until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls exactly fifty years
after the arrival of the Genizah pieces in Cambridge. Once fragments
of the same work had been identified among the Qumran treasures, it
became possible to trace the origin of CD. 49 What is still a matter of
intense debate is how and where the texts survived that transmitted the
work from Second Temple Judea to tenth-century Cairo and whether
there were other non-rabbinic groups between the Dead Sea sect and
the medieval Karaites that might have been responsible. 50 And now
more material has come to the fore from among the Qumran
manuscripts that show it to be a reliable copy of the earliest texts; a
little less than half of an original work that constituted an admonition
and corpus of Torah interpretation and sectarian rulings; and a composite
work belonging to a Qumran legal corpus at times related to
Sadducean and proto-rabbinic traditions. 51 Finally, it should be noted
that neither Jesus nor Christian liturgy escape mention among the
Genizah fragments. The rather uncomplimentary and folkloristic
account of the life of Jesus known as Toledoth Yeshu is well represented
and no doubt made the persecuted Jews of the middle ages feel
a little better, 52 while no wholly satisfactory reason can be offered for
49. S. Schechter, Documents of Jewish Sectaries (Cambridge, 1910), I,
reprinted by Ktav with a prolegomenon by J.A. Fitzmyer (New York, 1970);
L. Ginzberg, Eine Unbekannte JUdische Sekte (New York, 1922), translated into
English and expanded as An Unknown Jewish Sect (New York, 1976); S. Zeitlin,
The Zadokite Fragments (Philadelphia, 1952); C. Rabin, The Zadokite Documents.
I. The Admonition. II. The Laws (Oxford, 2nd edn, 1958).
50. Y. Erder, 'When did the Karaites first encounter Apocryphic Literature akin
to the Dead Sea Scrolls?', and H. Ben-Shammai, 'Some Methodological Notes concerning
the Relationship between the Karaites and Ancient Jewish Sects' (both in
Hebrew) in 'Discussion: Karaism and Apocryphic Literature', Cathedra 42 (1987),
pp. 54-86.
51. M. Broshi, The Damascus Document Reconsidered (Jerusalem, 1992) has
useful essays on the current state of various aspects of research into CD by Broshi
himself and by E. Qimron and J. Baumgarten, as well as an excellent bibliography
by F. Garcia Martinez.
52. Of particular importance are the studies of E. Bammel and W. Horbury in
The Trial of Jesus: Studies in Honour of C.F.D. Moule (London, 2nd edn, 1971)