Fragmenten van een Palestijnse Targum? Tosefta Targums in Liturgische Collecties (TEXTEVOLVE)

The proposed project is part of the larger body of projects called "TEXTEVOLVE: A New Approach to the Evolution of Texts Based on the Manuscripts of the Targums". TEXTEVOLVE seeks to develop a new methodology (Evolutionary Philology) for textual studies based on principles of evolutionary biology and apply these to the study of the Targums. In addition, TEXTEVOLVE will expand the corpus of available texts as well as perform textual analysis on recently discovered manuscripts. The proposed project: "Fragments of a Palestinian Targum? Tosefta Targums in Liturgical Collections" will focus on medieval Targum manuscripts that have been preserved in liturgical texts (such as mahzorim and haftaroth collections). The corpus will be composed of 40-50 high-priority manuscripts from different cultural zones and liturgical rites. These texts express features of the Palestinian Aramaic dialect (which may suggest they belong to a Palestinian Targum tradition) as well as features that were introduced in medieval Europe. The proposed project will use Evolutionary Philology to distinguish and categorize these features, which will enable the researcher to study the extent to which these texts reflect a Palestinian tradition as well as to reconsider the possibility of a Palestinian Urtext.