In the Second Century AD, there were three men who created new translations of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek: Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus.

This urge to create new translations was spurred on by a few factors.

First of all, copies of the Greek Septuagint, which the Jews had been using for hundreds of years, had developed several scribal errors. So, by the Second Century, it was in need of a revision where it could be compared to the original Hebrew to make sure that it was still a faithful translation. In fact, of these three scholars, Theodotion’s translation was little more than a revision of the Septuagint.

But, there was a second, more pressing concern.

Christianity.

All three of these scholars (except maybe Symmachus) were Jews. So, they wanted to try and discredit the many prophecies mentioned in the Christian New Testament. To do this, they made their own translations to show how the Septuagint’s translation of the Hebrew prophecies in the Old Testament was not always the same word-for-word.

For example, the Gospel according to Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14, saying that:

…The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son…

And that is what the Septuagint says. However, the original Hebrew likely said:

…The young woman will conceive and give birth to a son…

So, Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus seemingly wanted to try and discredit the prophecies mentioned in the New Testament by showing that, in the original Hebrew, the prophecies didn’t necessarily say the exact same thing word-for-word.

Aquila

While we know very little about all three of these scholars, we do have a decent bit of information on Aquila.

He seemingly lived in the early second century AD. And he likely completed his famous translation around the year 129-130 or so.

Aquila was probably originally from the city of Sinope in the region of Pontus (so, be careful not to mistake him for the other Aquila of Pontus, mentioned in the New Testament).

According to one legend, he was the nephew of the Roman Emperor Hadrian (ever heard of Hadrian’s Wall?).

Now, the timeline gets muddled, and there are many conflicting stories. But, one source tells us that Hadrian ended up sending Aquila on assignment to Judea, where Aquila converted from Roman Paganism to Christianity, and then from Christianity to Judaism. Another source just says that he converted straight from Paganism to Judaism though.

Either way, ancient writers would commonly call him “Aquila the Proselyte”. So, we can confidently say that at some point he was not a Jew, but then he converted to Judaism at some point in his life.

Aquila’s Translation

Again according to legend, Aquila was the disciple of an important Second Century Rabbi who was very interested in analyzing every last word and letter of the Old Testament for some sort of hidden meaning. This was similar to many other Jews of the time.

So, seemingly under the guidance of this Rabbi, Aquila made his translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek. The hallmark of his translation was that it was an overly literal, word-for-word translation. Not caring whether it even made sense, Aquila just translated every single word to mean exactly what the Hebrew said.

This reminds me of nothing so much as Young’s Literal Translation in English (look it up if you want). Both translations were focused on giving the reader the most precise meaning of each word, no matter the context of the sentence or passage. Obviously, this results in a very difficult to read translation, but one which is very useful for scholars.

Unfortunately, almost all of his translation is now lost.

But, from what fragments we do have left, we can learn a lot about the Hebrew text he was working with. First of all, since he was so precise in his translation, scholars can pretty easily figure out what the Hebrew translation he was using looked like. This allows us to better ensure that our modern Bibles say the same things that the original writers wrote.

Second of all, because Aquila would often transliterate words from Hebrew into Greek instead of translating them, scholars can better determine how Hebrew was pronounced during the Second Century.

Relation To Onqelos

As a brief note, there’s a big ole’ dispute over whether or not Aquila and Onqelos are the same guy.

“Who’s Onqelos?” You ask.

Well, he was a Roman nobleman who converted to Judaism and wrote a translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Aramaic during the early Second Century.

Sounds a lot like Aquila, doesn’t it?

The Jewish Talmuds also tell identical stories about Aquila the Proselyte and Onqelos the Proselyte.

Thanks to all these similarities in the sources we’ve got, many people think that Onqelos was just another name for Aquila. But, some people still make arguments that they are, in fact, two different people.

Jerome’s Use Of Aquila

Jerome was the man who compiled the Latin translation of the scriptures, known as the Vulgate, in the late 300s and early 400s AD.

I found some conflicting sources on whether Jerome liked or disliked Aquila’s translation. One of the sources though gave a quote of Jerome’s where he specifically criticizes Aquila for making a translation that is just about unreadable.

I don’t have any clue why some sources were saying that Jerome praised Aquila’s translation, but I did read that in a couple spots. Overall, from my familiarity with Jerome’s translation methods and from reading his specific quote, it seems that he did not particularly like Aquila’s translation.

With all that said, I did read one source which said that Jerome did still refer to Aquila’s work when making his own translation to Latin. The evidence given for this is that in the Book of Psalms, Jerome translates the Hebrew word Selah as Semper (meaning “always”), which lines up with Aquila’s use of the word ἀεὶ (also meaning “always”).

Summary

Well, we unfortunately don’t have too much information on Aquila, but still I hope this helped give you some good new knowledge.

Aquila was likely a convert to Judaism in the early Second Century AD, who created a very literal, word-for-word translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek.