Aquila of Sinope

Aquila was a Jewish scholar from 1 / 2 Century AD, who had converted to Judaism ( proselyte ). He is regarded as an auditor of the Greek Septuagint, which has the Jewish Bible 125 again translated literally into Greek.

Person

About person and life Aquila little is known. Unsafe According to tradition he came from Sinope (now Turkey); also unsure of the student body is often assumed ( 50/55-135 AD) with the famous Jewish teacher Akiba. The survival data Aquila can be estimated only on the basis of his translations he completed around 125 AD. The translation of Aquila is now mainly obtained as a Christian writing tradition in the Greek language, where he also inherits its significance for Old Testament scholarship.

Work and significance

Aquila took an unconventional new translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. It is literally, so that the meaning of the source text is in the Aquila word for word interpreted and transferred text often difficult to detect. This type of translation was apparently meant as a supplement or as a counterpart to the already -received Hellenized Septuagint, which had become unclean in Judaism because of increasing mistranslations and immigrant Hellenistic heresy and was rejected.

Maybe the translation of Aquila's manner was inspired by certain Jewish traditions of interpretation, according to which each word of the Hebrew source text of particular importance. To such an authentic, based on individual interpretation of the Hebrew word of God again also for the Greek Septuagint, which garnered increasingly inaccurate transmissions of the Hebrew text and translation error to provide a literal rendering of the Hebrew text was required.

The translation of Aquila is of great importance for the textual criticism of the Christian Old Testament, both of the Hebrew as well as the Greek Old Testament. The readings of Aquila allow conclusions to its original Hebrew as well as parallels can be drawn to revisions of the Septuagint, especially for Kaige revision.

Swell

The texts of the Aquila, as most generally received the texts of the Septuagint as Christian Scripture tradition in the Greek language. Like all official and authorized by then leading Jewish interpreters translations of the Jewish Bible in the ancient Greek language, the Greek texts of the Aquila are only little and usually does not get as an original source. A complete manuscript of the translation of Aquila is not obtained. Numerous fragments of his translation have been preserved in fragments and quotations of Christian Hexapla, in the third column the translation of Aquila was fully recorded. In addition to palimpsests longer sections of the translation of Aquila were found.

A (now outdated ) compilation of the known readings of Aquila provides the output Frederick Fields. A new compilation is currently carried out within the framework of international Hexapla project.