Biblical Hebrew Forum

[dwashbur AT nyx.net]

On 31 Aug 2009 at 12:19, Randall Buth wrote:

> vayyixtov David
> >> so what do we find at Qumran? Two copies of Aramaic Job, and a
> >> snippet from
> >> Lev 16 that may or may not refer to a targum of the whole book.
> >
> >Do you have a different hypothesis about what it was?  As far as I
> know, it's commonly
> >accepted among Qumran scholars that it was a fragment of a Targum
> of Leviticus.
> 
> Yes, it may have been from a book of Leviticus, or it may have been
> from a
> reading for the Day of Atonement (Lev 16) and part of another work.
> If we had
> other targumim besides Job, this would be an easier call. But all by
> itself,
> it remains difficult to characterize, especially after the long Job
> ms has
> eastern links. We just don't know about this Leviticus fragment. And
> it sits
> like an orphan.

For that matter, it may have been a snippet of some child's attempt to play 
with a new 
language.  This kind of speculation gets us nowhere.  We have plenty of 
unexplainables 
among the DSS corpus: the copper scroll, the mishmash of fragments in Cave 4 
and their 
confusing textual patterns; the Psalms scroll from Cave 11 with its plethora 
of quirks.  The 
idea that the Aramaic Leviticus fragments are something other than a Targum 
seems to 
have arisen, at least based on what Randall has said, from a particular view 
of the Aramaic 
language and especially Targum usage, rather than from any real analysis of 
the documents 
themselves.  Frankly, I find it much too ad hoc for my tastes.  It looks like 
a Targum, it walks 
like a Targum, it quacks like a Targum.  I conclude that it's a Targum.  
Others are welcome 
to speculate about other identifications, as long as it's clear to all that 
they're speculating 
and nothing more.
 
> >> And the long Job targum shows features of having been imported
> from the
> >> East.
> >
> > What exactly are these "features"?
> 
> Wish I could remember them and citations, so rather than misquote
> something--
> See T. Muraoka, 1974, The Aramaic of the Old Targum of Job from
> Qumran
> Cave XI" JSS 25: 425-43 on this manuscript. 

It's in JJS, actually.  And even  in Seattle, tracking down such an old 
article is going to 
be...interesting.  But I'll give it a try.

Ed Cook "Qumran Aramaic
> and
> Aramaic Dialectology" Studies in Qumran Aramic, Suppl 3., ed T.
> Muraoka,
> 1992:1-21. cook reviewed the evidence and showed that much of it was
> based
> on spelling rather than language structure (syntax/morphl) so that
> 11Q Job is
> not very valuable for his purpose of tracing dialect bands accross
> the Middle
> East, but that still leaves the Eastern provinence of this Job
> edition
> intact, even
> if recopied at Qumran preserving Eastern spellings.

That's an amazing leap.  Cook's review shows that the basis of this "eastern" 
provenance 
isn't accurate and isn't "valuable for his purpose of tracing dialect bands 
etc." but that's the 
way it is anyway.  Forgive me if I'm skeptical :-)

 ...
> >> And it appears that a targum of Job circulated in antiquity
> that
> >> was
> >> popular all over the Jewish world, with two copies turning up in
> our
> >> Qumran
> >> mss. there was good reason for this world-wide popularity of a
> Job
> >> targum. The Hebrew text has singular dialectical difficulties.
> >
> >I'm still not sure what your point is.
> 
> The point is that we do not have strong evidence for an Aramaic
> Bible in the
> West at this time. We have a coincidence of Alexandria (LXX), two
> rabbinic
> stories, and two Qumran texts all testifying to the use of an
> Aramaic Job.
> Five ancient testimonies to a Targum of Job, pretty amazing. When it
> rains
> it pours.
> And then virtually nothing,

That's exactly what I was talking about when I spoke of the accident of 
preservation.  The 
Alexandrian and Rabbinic material may or may not have anything to do with the 
DSS 
materials; once again, the evidence is more than a little equivocal.

> except for 8 verses from Leviticus 16 (which is interesting
> in its own right because of traditions of special readings on yom
> ha-kippurim mYoma 7:1). With hundreds of biblical Hebrew texts and
> a
> significant number of Greek Bible texts, the lack of general Aramaic
> Bible
> texts is an enigma. My point is that the lack of targumim at Qumran
> are
> problematic for a view that the targum was in use and circulation in
> Judea
> in the first century. Proof that a targum was not there or in use?
> No. But
> Job is special enough, and the other manuscripts of Hebrew and
> Greek
> Bible are numerous enough to make it doubtful that targumim were
> in
> general use in Judea in the first century. Is it a leap to call this
> doubtful?

I can see your point if one comes at it from the Targum question, but if we 
look at it from a 
DSS angle, the picture is a bit different.  One thing your approach doesn't 
take into account 
is where the three alleged Targumim were found.  The only one of any 
substance, the Job 
one, was in Cave 11.  Most of the documents in that cave were fairly well 
preserved, which 
is why we have most of the Job text in that document.  But both the other Job 
and the 
Leviticus fragment were in Cave 4.  Cave 4 yielded the greatest number of 
fragments, but 
they were in horrible condition.  Who knows how many documents were simply 
lost because 
of too much bat guano, moisture and time.  There are still plenty of 
fragments that we know 
have some kind of writing on them, but they're in such bad shape we can't 
tell what it is with 
out current technology.  And that's the crux of the problem: the DSS can't 
tell us as much as 
we would like about things like Targum use or the nature of colloquial Hebrew 
(if there was 
such a thing) during the Second Temple period.

> For me the bigger leap is to jump from virtual silence to claim that
> Qumran
> establishes the use of the targum. (I'm not saying that you claim
> this, just
> that many claim this.) The character of Job, and the virtual lack of
> targum
> leave probability on the side of no widespread, general use of
> targum in
> Judea in the first century.

You've made several appeals to the nature of Job, but I think too much may be 
made of 
that; we have other books of the Tanakh that are equally problematic.  Why 
did some 
ancient authorities focus on Job?  I have no idea.  But I'm not sure its 
"nature" is sufficient to 
explain the evidence.

> And while not proof, it is an interesting lack of prediction of the
> Geiger
> hypothesis (which was disproved on other grounds). That is, the
> Geiger
> hypothesis would predict that if thousands of pieces of Bibles
> in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek were discoverd in first century Judea,
> one
> would find popular, numerous, Aramaic evidence. We don't. What we
> have is a general lack of Targum. The silence is loud enough to have
> a
> voice, even if not decisive.

Not being a Targum scholar, or even a Targum researcher of any magnitude, I'm 
not familiar 
with Geiger, so I won't try to address that.  My part in this discussion 
involves the DSS 
evidence, for which I can claim some small measure of expertise, so I'll 
restrict myself to that 
little corner.

Dave Washburn

http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur