David Shepherd, «The Case of The Targum of Job in the Rabbinic Bible and the Solger Codex (MS Nürnberg)», Vol. 79 (1998) 360-380

It is a well-known fact that even in its earliest edition, an Aramaic translation or targum was amongst the vast and varied material assembled for inclusion in the Rabbinic Bible. But in contrast to the comparative wealth of information we possess regarding the circumstances surrounding its publication, we possess little knowledge with regard to the sources used by Felix de Prato when he took up the task of editing the 1517 Rabbinic Bible for the Venetian publisher Daniel Bomberg. While prior research has shown the importance of the targum text preserved in the Solger Codex (Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg) in any attempt to solve the puzzle of the pre-history of the Rabbinic Bible's targum text, many pieces of this puzzle remain as yet unexamined. The present study locates the targum text preserved in MS Nürnberg (Solger Codex) within the stemmatological framework proposed by D. Stec in the introduction to his critical edition of the Targum of Job. More importantly, the present paper presents decisive evidence (through the detection of editorial errors) that the editor of the first Rabbinic Bible (Felix de Prato) copied his targum text of Job directly from Codex Solger preserved in the Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg.

the rabbinic targum of Job undertaken during the 1970's ⁵. However, while Weiss' work clearly showed the need for a critical edition of the targum, the initiative for such a project shifted to Europe where the Spanish researcher F.J. Fernández Vallina published his edition in 1980 ⁶. The latter's El Targum de Job was indeed a substantial undertaking and included many important witnesses, however it was not comprehensive in its coverage of the known manuscripts and thus toward the end of the 1980's the centre of study shifted yet again – this time to Britain where in 1989 David Stec completed his introduction and critical edition of the Targum of Job ⁷.

      The current stemmatological position with regard to the targum of Job is, in essence, a refinement of the general outline worked out first by Weiss. He arranged the manuscripts at his disposal into general divisions which roughly correspond to the four groupings arrived at later by Fernandez Vallina. Stec included an additional six witnesses in comparison to the nine which had been used by Vallina, but his conclusions confirmed Vallina’s work (See chart 1) ⁸.

      Before going on to define the more particular relationship between Nürnberg and the text preserved in the Bomberg Bible, it seems wise to first locate it within the above stemmatological framework ⁹.

    1. MS Nürnberg in relation to Group 3

      What light does the collation of Nürnberg ¹⁰ shed on Group 3 texts? Stec's findings suggest that while there is no physical break