Aquila (2)
Aquila author of a Greek version of the O.T., was originally a heathen, born at Sinope, a city of Pontus. Having seen the professors of the Christian religion work many miracles, he became a convert to it, probably on the same ground with Simon Magus. Refusing to quit the practice of magic and judicial astrology, he was excommunicated by the Christians, on which he went over to the Jewish religion, became a proselyte, and was circumcised. Being admitted into the school of Rabbi Akiba, he made such great proficiency in Jewish learning that he was deemed well qualified to make a new translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, to take the place of the Septuagint. This version he made so strictly literal that Jerome said it was a good dictionary to give the genuine meaning of the Hebrew words. He finished and published his work in the twelfth year of the reign of Adrian, A.D. 128. He afterward revised and published another edition of it. It appears from Irenaeus, 3, 24, that the Ebionites used the translation of Aquila in order to support their Judaizing tenets. The remains of this translation have been edited by Montfaucon and others in the "Hexapla" of Origen. Clarke, Succession of Sac. Lit. 1, 44; Cave, Hist. Lit. ann. 128; Smith, Dict. of Biog. s.v. SEE VERSIONS.
