While it was perhaps natural that the Christians should view the work of Aquila with

distrust, those who were acquainted with the Hebrew recognized in Aquila's version a

very faithful adherence to the original. He was "a slave to the letter", and consequently

his version is often not only bad but unintelligible Greek. Origen and Jerome both testify

to Aquila's scrupulous fidelity to the Hebrew original.

It is difficult to illustrate the lengths to which Aquila went in his endeavour to give an

accurate version, without resorting to a number of grammatical examples. We mention a

few of these here.

He uses the Greek preposition sun (together with) to represent the Hebrew eth, as a

sign of the accusative. Also, he never translates the Hebrew name Jehovah into the

Greek Kurios, as do the LXX and the N.T., but always uses the ancient Hebrew

characters for the sacred name. Further, he attempts to translate particles that "defy

translation" and, where a Hebrew word has a complex meaning, he often gives two Greek

words to represent it. While all this makes the version extremely difficult to read from

the Hellenistic point of view, the reader will see that, as Dr. Taylor has said, his

"high standard of exactitude and rigid consistency give his translation, with all its

imperfections, unique worth for the critic".

About the same time as that of Aquila, another Greek version of the Scriptures

appeared, the work of a certain Theodotion, who, according to Jerome, was an Ebionite.

His attitude to the Alexandrian version would not be the same as that of Aquila. The

character of his version is such that it holds a middle place between the servile closeness

of Aquila, and the freedom of Symmachus, a translator whom we have yet to consider.

Instead of producing an entirely independent translation, as did Aquila, Theodotion

seems to have undertaken a revision of the existing Septuagint; wherever he attempts,

however, an independent translation of the Hebrew he betrays lack of knowledge.

Nevertheless his translation of Daniel was so superior to that of the LXX version, that it

took its place in the Christian Churches, and figures in our present-day copies.

Symmachus, whose name has been mentioned above, is said to have been an Ebionite

like Theodotion. His exact date is a matter of conjecture, although we know that his

version was known to Origen in  A.D.228.

Jerome says of Symmachus that he

endeavoured to express the sense of the Hebrew rather than give a verbal rendering, as

did Aquila. We have, therefore, in these three important versions:--

(1) A translation characterized by its verbal accuracy.

(2) A translation which, largely, was a revision of the Alexandrian.

(3) A translation which aimed at giving the sense of the Hebrew in Greek dress.

These three versions, together with the Alexandrian LXX, all dating from many

centuries earlier than any known Hebrew manuscript, are of priceless value both in their

bearing upon disputed readings, and in their illumination of the meaning and usage of

N.T. words, especially of doctrinal terms.