The New International Encyclopædia/Aquila, Ponticus

AQ'UILA, Ponticus, i.e., Aquila of Pontus (Lat. Aquila Ponticus) . A celebrated translator of the Old Testament into Greek, who flourished about A.D. 130. He lived in Palestine and seems to have been a pagan converted first to Christianity and subsequently to Judaism. He studied under the Jewish Rabbis, notably the celebrated Rabbi Akiba. His Greek version, fragments of which are preserved in Origen's Hexapla, was marked by an extreme literalness of translation: it was probably this literalness that made the Jews for a long time prefer the version of Aquila to the Septuagint translation. A recently found specimen of Aquila's translation has been published by F. C. Burkitt, Fragments of the Book of Kings, according to the translation of Aquila (Cambridge, 1897).