The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

GORDON Alexander Sperber and the Study of the Targums 95
package containing W. Rudolf's manuscript of Jeremiah. In view of
Sperber's comments in the letter, a look at Jeremiah in the first and
third editions of Biblia Hebraica is revealing. 15 Into the third edition
went a reference to the Targum at Jer. 11.14 and out went all but a
couple of the twelve references that Sperber had rejected in his letter.
It would be small-minded to dwell on the fact that Jer. 11.14 was,
even by Sperber's own canons, in no better state than the other
'variants' to which he had rightly taken exception. Still, even in
Rudolfs edition of Jeremiah for Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (1970
[1972]) the reference to the Targum remains in the apparatus at 11.14,
as does the cross-reference to 7.16, on which Sperber had partly based
his 'solution'.
The contribution of Sperber as regards the integration of Targum
citations into the apparatuses of BH^ is acknowledged by Kittel in the
foreword to the edition (p. v), and it would be an interesting study to
chart his influence across the various books—not to say editors—of
the Pentateuch and prophets in light of the detailed evidence that we
have of Sperber's views as regards the targumic Vorlagen. But first
we should note a strange inconsistency in Sperber's approach to the
matter. In the case of the Pentateuch he can envisage non-Massoretic
readings to the tune of 650 in the Vorlage of Targum Onqelos. 16 Well
over half of these supposed variants are derived from readings in the
main critical apparatus. And since many of these 'variants' are paralleled
in non-Masoretic Hebrew manuscripts, Sperber feels confirmed
in his opinion about their status as true variants and is even encouraged
to think that other Onqelos readings which do not have the
support of Hebrew manuscripts may be just as significant. The process
whereby some Hebrew manuscript readings were assimilated to the
MT may have robbed them of this kind of Hebrew manuscript support.
With the prophets, however, Sperber takes a different line, and the
long second chapter in volume IVB has for its basic premiss that the
differences between the Targum and the MT are usually occasioned
by the 'style' of the Targum (pp. 22-23), though some possible
evidence to the contrary is also noted (pp. 133-37). At the same time,
15. Sperber himself refers to the first edition of Biblia Hebraica (IVB, pp. 15-16;
cf. above), and all the citations mentioned in his letter to Kittel are found in the first
edition.
16. The Bible in Aramaic, IVB, pp. 11, 29.