11QAramaic Job: the Qumran Targum as an ancient Aramaic version of Job

Abstract

The first point of departure for the present thesis is the observation that the Ara¬ maic translation of Job found at Qumran (11Q10) sits uncomfortably in the genre of the 'classical' targum despite the original editors' classification of the text as '1 lQtargumJob'. A second stimulus for the study arises from the author's review of scholarly discussion on 11Q10 in which its comparison with the Targum and Syriac ver¬ sions of Job has been either anecdotal or extremely limited in scope. In light of the obvi¬ ous relationship between these two observations, and in the hope that the investigation of the latter will shed light on the former, the author attempts to take up the question of the classification of the Qumran text through a synoptic comparison of 11Q10 with the Targum and Syriac versions.

Moving beyond static definitions of literalness, questions of dating and the de¬ pendence of the Syriac on the targum tradition, the author makes use of recent work in Targumic and Syriac studies which has attempted to come to grips with issues of genre through an assessment of modes of representation and the formal treatment of the He¬ brew text. Having noted that preliminary investigations of the relationship between these Aramaic versions have been limited to a study of addition and substitution, the present investigation attempts to assess the respective translators' attitudes toward the Hebrew text through an analysis of omission and transposition. Following on from these investigations, the Aramaic versions' treatment of that smallest of Hebrew lexemes—the waw conjunction—is analysed as a further index by which the attitudes of the various translators toward their Hebrew source may be assessed.

Having investigated the attitude of the respective translators to their source text, the author locates his findings both within the context of the Qumran translation's classi¬ fication as targum and, more broadly, within the study of the Aramaic versions. The author concludes that, in terms of its representation of the Hebrew text, the Aramaic translation from Qumran shares certain fundamental features with the Peshitta of Job rather than with its nominal cousin, the Rabbinic Targum of Job.