The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

72 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
enough, the article refers to Prophets, with other and different problems
from the Targum Onqelos.
It seems that Sperber's edition of the Targum of the Former
Prophets was prepared with special care . 51 I do not know if Sperber
had a Hebrew typewriter, but for the Targum of the Prophets he took
a copy of Lagarde's reproduction of Reuchlin, and as it is in its original
without vowels, he wrote the supralinear Yemenite pointing.
When he found matres lectionis he erased them if they were not in the
MS he was reproducing. However the errors that Van Zijl noted are
not surprising. The mixture begun in the first part Targum Onqelos
continues in the same way: Tiberian vocalization with Yemenite,
incunabula and rare books (printed texts) with manuscripts, but the
worst thing is that no division of Western (Palestinian) and Eastern
(Babylonian, Yemenite) traditions is made. In this case he managed to
introduce some quotations from the Genizah fragments, but with a
regrettable method, namely that all the fragments are quoted by the
same siglum ('Fr.'), with the result that it is impossible to identify
them. Sperber explains it: 'Various Biblical fragments with Targum,
of the Taylor-Schechter Collection of the University Library in
Cambridge, England'. And he offers a new excuse: 'But despite all
these drawbacks, these fragments represent a valuable addition to the
Critical Apparatus, because in very numerous instances they are now
the only evidence we have for variants'. 52 It is curious that he does not
distinguish the Western tradition of the Prophets from the Eastern
one, although he had it at hand, for instance in Kimchi's commentary
(e.g. 1 Sam 27.7). In marginal notes in Codex Reuchlinianus he does
not recognize all the ways in which this MS is quoted in f\6, the most
important siglum, because it represents the Palestinian Targum of the
Prophets; this siglum represents different sources, although in
Sperber's unification it is impossible to follow these sources.
Sperber was not aware of the existing Palestinian Targum of the
Latter Prophets; he speaks only about 'Additional Targum' (pp. 23-25:
Isa 10.32-33; pp. 462-465: Hab. 3.1-5.11; pp. 479-480: Zech 2.14-
15). He could not be aware that in many cases the Codex
51. A. Sperber, 'Zur Textgestalt des Prophetentargums', ZAW 44 (1926)
pp. 175-76; idem, 'Zur Sprache des Prophetentargums', pp. 267-68.
52. Sperber, The Bible in Aramaic, II, pp. vi-vii, but he does not name the thousands
of such fragments in the Library where he had been working so many years,
the Jewish Theological Seminary.