The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

96 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
'real' variants reflected in the Targum of the Prophets are listed, with
occasional comments, in ch. VB.
We may be grateful, then, that Sperber's influence upon the apparatuses
of BH3 for the Pentateuch was not as great as for some other
parts of the Hebrew Bible. Sample checks in the early chapters of each
of the Pentateuchal books reveal a slight increase in Targum citation
over the earlier edition(s), 17 but that is all. When comparisons are
made between Sperber's list of 'real' variants in the Targum of the
Prophets, as in his ch. VB, and the apparatuses of the several
prophetic books the evidence of his influence becomes stronger. It is,
perhaps, surprising in view of his negative success in banishing the
pseudo-variants discussed in his 1923 letter to Kittel that he did not
manage to introduce into Rudolfs revised edition of Jeremiah more of
the variants that he assumed genuinely to have a basis in the Targum.
Of ten agreements between BH$ and Sperber's list for Jeremiah 1-10,
six were in the first edition of Biblia Hebraica. More striking, on the
other hand, is the extent to which Kittel himself was willing to accept
Sperber's judgment in the books which Kittel personally edited. If we
take Isaiah 1-10, for example, we find that, of twenty-seven variants
in Sperber's list, 18 nineteen are cited in BH^, as against only three in
the first edition of Biblia Hebraica. The picture is not significantly different
for 1 Samuel, which was one of the other books edited by
Kittel. There are eleven agreements between Sperber's own list and
the BH$ apparatus to 1 Samuel 1-10, only three of which were in the
first edition of Biblia Hebraica.
Now since one of the most obvious things to be said about Sperber's
assumed variants in the targumic Vorlagen is that many of them are
no more convincing than those that he excluded on grounds of
targumic style, he cuts a very enigmatic figure here as in some other
departments of his work. Despite his own statement that it was only
after he had gone through all the prophets that he became aware of the
peculiarity of the targumic translation technique, 19 it is clear that
Sperber was trying to exorcize the retro version demon back in 1923. 20
17. That is, in relation to the lists of variants given by Sperber in ch. VA of The
Bible in Aramaic, IVB.
18. Counting the references to 10.1, 13, 18 as two variants in each case.
19. The Bible in Aramaic, IVB, p. 16.
20. Cf. also his article, 'Zur Sprache des Prophetentargums', ZAW 45 (1927),
pp. 267-88 (268-72).