The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

76 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
Bible could be: a) a separate and entire edition of the Targum as
edited by the Second Biblia Rabbinica; b) the complete edition of the
Aramaic Bible as it is in MS Vatican Urbinati 1; c) the complete transcription
of the Aramaic Bible offered by Alphonso de Zamora to
Cardinal Cisneros.
For each part of the Bible one might suggest: a) for Pentateuch: MS
R. 10 Inf. of the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana in Milan (a codex with
Onqelos, without HT, on the margins there are numerous variants,
headed by the note 'nusha ahrina', but these notes seem to come from
many different collated MSS); b) for Prophets: it could be MS
Reuchlin 3, adding the vowels (not in Lagarde's edition) and the
second-hand changes, as well as the marginal notes; c) for
Hagiographa: as can be seen in the critical editions issued in the last
years (A. van der Heide, Targum Lamentations, 1981; F.J. Fernandez
Vallina, Targum Job, 1980; C. Alonso Fontela, Targum Canticles,
1987).
The third method is to select the most important MS for each book,
and then to collate this with the MSS that can offer the most likely
variants within the same tradition; each book has had its own history
of transmission, therefore it is impossible to quote a MS for each
book.
The Babylonian-Tiberian Tradition
This tradition has been studied and identified for the Pentateuch; as far
as we know, at the moment it has not been explained in any other part
of the Aramaic Bible. For the study of this tradition we have two
sources: a) Biblia Hebraica, Sabbioneta 1557, reprinted by A. Berliner
(1884); b) MS Ebr. Vat. 448 of the Vatican Library, which contains
the Targum Onqelos and HT, both with Tiberian vocalization. The
secret of this tradition is that it is a middle way between the
Babylonian superlinear vocalization and the Tiberian, because the
original superlinear vocalization was changed into the sublinear
Tiberian vocalization; in some cases, even though no reasons are
given, in the marginal notes the original superlinear vocalization
appears, e.g. Exod 11.4; 13.3, etc. 60 Moreover, we have at our
60. I have transcribed all these cases, in L. Diez Merino, 'The Targumic Masora
of the Vat. Ebr. 448', in Estudios Masoreticos (V Congreso de la IOMS) (ed.
E. Fernandez Tejero; Madrid: Instituto Arias Montano, 1983), pp. 151-84.