Page:A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Judges.djvu/57

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TEXT AND VERSIONS
xlvii

excellent apparatus in Vercellone, Variae lectiones vulgatae latinae Bibliorum editionis, ii. 1864.

The Syrian Vulgate (Peshiţto) also represents in the main the Hebrew Standard text, and is of more importance to the interpreter than to the critic. For the Peshiţto, which exhibits a constancy second only to that of the Hebrew, I have compared, in places where its variations seemed to be significant, the editio princeps of Gabriel Sionita in the Paris Polyglot (SP), from which that in the London Polyglot (SL) is derived immediately, and that of Lee at one remove; the photolithographic reproduction of the Ambrosian codex (SA); the Nestorian text as edited by Justin Perkins at Ooroomiah in 1852 (SO); and an old and excellent manuscript of the Historical Books and the Wisdom of the O.T., of Nestorian origin, belonging to the Harvard Semitic Museum, Cambridge, Mass. (SH).

The Targum is seldom of much critical value, but often serves us well as a commentary upon the punctuation, and fills an important place in the history of Jewish exegesis. Its text exhibits considerable variation. I have compared, in critical places, the edition by Felix Pratensis in the first of Bomberg's Great Bibles, 1518 (Tven.1), that by Jacob ben Chayim in the second of those Bibles, 1525 (Tven.2);[1] Buxtorfs rifacimento of the latter in his Great Bible, 1618–20,[2] reproduced in the London Polyglot; the Antwerp Polyglot; and Lagarde's edition of the Targum from the great Codex Reuchlinianus at Carlsruhe, Prophetae chaldaice, 1872 (Treuch.) I also collated, in 1888, Codex. Brit. Mus. Orient., 2210, a manuscript from Southern Arabia with supralinear punctuation, dated a.d. 1469 (Tm).[3]

The only systematic attempt to employ the versions for the emendation of the Hebrew text of Judges is made by A. v. Doorninck, Bijdrage tot de tekstkritiek van Richteren i.–xvi., 1879.


§ 9. Interpreters of the Book of Judges.

Of the Fathers, the nine homilies of Origen on this book, which are preserved in Rufinus's Latin translation (Orig., Opp. ed. Dela-

  1. Known to me only in the edition of 1547.
  2. The punctuation and orthography are Buxtorfs; nor did he refrain from more serious emendations.
  3. See Merx, Chrestomathia Targumica, Proleg. p. xvi.