Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

vayyixtov David
>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.

You are correct, it's possible that two copies of Job at Qumran have nothing
to do with two rabbinic stories about a targum to Job, and the LXX
comment about using an Aramaic Job. But it would be silly to ignore
the concatenation of testimony from divrese sources. We can't be
positive, but we need to investigate such things and point them out.

> 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

All true.
As mentioned, I'm happy with viewing 4Q156 as a Leviticus targum, and
happy to list it as a targum. But it just stands so starkly alone that I must
add a question mark. It's called weighing probabilities.
We have four copies of Aramaic Tobit,
but what about central, undisputed canon? 4Q156 is alone. It's
possible that 4Q156 was among many targumim in cave 4, that got
pulverized so badly that only the Hebrew and Greek Bible fragments
remained. But the question at least arises, perhaps there weren't other
targumim in Cave 4 beyond Job? Or maybe one or two. But if so, the
question must be raised, why so few? There are more than one answer
to the question, but the question needs to remain visible. Targumim at
Qumran need to have a question around them. I find that the sense of
"question" is usually missing from discussions of Qumran targumim.

> or the nature of colloquial
> Hebrew (if there was such a thing) during the Second Temple period.

Your comment was an aside, but it bothers me. Why the repeated doubt
on colloquial Hebrew? In '88 James Barr accused NT scholarship of being
out of touch with mishnaic Hebrew scholarship and not having digested or
incorporated its results. Should he have included Literary Hebrew
scholarship, too? Maybe he had more hope for biblical Hebraists?

>> 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.

Like what?
What other book is like Job, either in its essence or problems?
 the dialect pattern of Job is sui generis. At least Qohelet has some
distinct mishnaic and northern links, but Job hovers out on the eastern
fringe somewhere. Job is the only book that the Greek translators
explicitly claimed to use Aramaic for help.

>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.

You're free to reserve commitment about Job's nature. For me it is sufficient
to explain the ancient focus and the discovery profile. From literarture we
knew it was special (LXX and rabbis) and then we find two copies at
Qumran. It fits, it's congruent. It's nice to have archaeology that overlaps
known data some of the time.

-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth AT gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
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