The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

DlEZ MERINO Targum Manuscripts and Critical Editions 83
(except for the Complutensian Targum Onqelos published in the vol. I
of the Complutensian Polyglot) can be found in the list of MSS given
above when we examined the Sephardic tradition of the Aramaic
Bible, which is represented as far as we know today by the Targum
Onqelos of the Complutensian Polyglot, Antwerp Polyglot and MS 100
of Paris National Library.
In the original edition 600 or more copies were printed (Pope's
Prologue: 'usque ad sexcenta volumina vel amplius'), but most of
them were lost at sea when taken to Italy, 75 and this was the reason for
the new edition in the Antwerp Polyglot, also paid for by the Spanish
king Philip II. This Complutensian Polyglot has been more recently
reproduced in Rome, by the Spanish Biblical Foundation in 1,000
copies, and is still available in Valencia (Spain) at the Spanish Biblical
Association.
The Aramaic text presented by the Complutensian Polyglot has to
be examined: (a) because it was made upon reliable MSS, whose identity
has not yet been discovered, but were very old and correct;
(b) because the transcription was made with fidelity, and not with editorial
aims of analogy with other biblical texts, as can be said of the
Antwerp or London Polyglots.
The Antwerp Polyglot. Christophe Plantin (ca. 1520-1589) was
a French Humanist, printer and publisher. He was a Catholic, but
his Protestant sympathies led him (1549) to the more congenial atmosphere
of Antwerp (Spanish Netherlands). He started his work as a
publisher about 1555, and was, after Daniel Bomberg, the outstanding
sixteenth-century Christian printer of Hebrew books. Plan tin's greatest
publishing achievement was the eight-volume Antwerp Polyglot:
Biblia Sacra hebraice, chaldaice, graece et latine..., 1568-72), presented
as an improved and expanded version of the first Spanish
Polyglot Bible, namely the Complutensian Bible (Alcala de Henares,
1513-1517). The Pope's approval was given in 1568. The four
volumes devoted to the Old Testament included revised texts of the
Targums, and a Latin translation; the fifth covered the New
Testament; and the three last volumes constituted the Apparatus Sacer,
which included pioneering lexicons of Syriac and Aramaic. The introductions
to the first volume, inspired by the prefaces to Daniel
75. 'Carta del Rey Felipe II al Duque de Alba con el Doctor Arias Montano', in
Instruction, Memorias de la R.A. de la Historia (Madrid 7, 1832), p. 144.