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.

tendency to avoid ty + pronominal suffix, preferring to represent the object through the use of a verbal suffix ²³. However, the newest member of Group 3 is of less use in confirming or contesting Stec's cautious suggestion that Group 3 may belong to a Sephardi tradition. As Nürnberg is written in an Ashkenazic square script, Group 3 remains without a Sephardic witness in terms of paleography ²⁴. And while Nürnberg does share many of the characteristics which Stec finds in common between Group 2 (a Sephardi tradition from Northern Spain and Africa) and Group 3, the additional witness, in and of itself, neither strengthens nor weakens the linguistic argument ²⁵.