AQUILA IN THE PSALTER: A PROLEGOMENON Timothy Edwards Lester Grabbe, 1 responding to and rejecting D. Barthélemy's claim in Les devanciers d'Aquila 2 that Aquila's translation was related to the school of Rabbi Akiva, concluded his article by highlighting a 'crucial desideratum' in the academic study of the Greek versions: … a comprehensive study of all the minor versions in the light of all the various types of ancient Jewish biblical interpretation. Without such a comprehensive study, no isolated theory linking a particular translation with a particular figure of Jewish literature can truly claim serious attention. (p. 536) This 'crucial desideratum' remains and needs expanding to include early Christian biblical interpretation. The aim, however, is not simply to affirm or refute Barthélemy, but to understand Aquila's translation better, and place him within the broader world of Jewish and Christian Bible translation and exegesis. This paper seeks, in some small way, to prepare the ground for such a comprehensive study of Aquila in the Psalter. Consequently there will be a heavier emphasis on methodological issues over an against the study of particular texts, although we will look at some exam- ples from the Psalms that illustrate some of these issues, and finish with a detailed study of Aquila in Psalm 1. Before commencing, however, some general introductory remarks are necessary. Throughout history Aquila the Proselyte ( הגרעקילס) has attracted both approbation and accusation for his translation of the Hebrew Bible. He is either 'very learned in Greek letters' labouring to 'bring out the proper meaning of words', or, a 'slave to the letter' attempting to translate 'even syllables and letters', 3 even deliberately 'distort[ing] certain of the words', which he 'perversely translated'. 4 His slavish 'literalism', therefore, either reveals or conceals, de- pending on who is writing and for what purpose. Modern translation theory would side with Aquila's historical critics. Elliot Weinberger, a contemporary translator of Octavia Paz, describes fidelity as possibly 'the most overrated of a translation’s qualities', 5 going on to describe an experiment where nine-year-old students in New York were given a bi-lingual dictionary and asked to translate a poem by Rimbaud. The children's attempts were 'generally as accurate' as modern scholarly versions. The conclusion: 'In short, up to a point, anyone can translate anything faithfully.' Peter Cole, in the introduction to his masterful translations of the medieval Hebrew poets, likewise decries the literalist translator when describing his own method of translation: This method seeks out [Ezra] Pound's 'trace of that power which implies the man' - a music that possesses the reader for a spell and brings about the transformative illusion of literature, not the 'accurate' representation of an irretrievable historical moment... it leads to a preservation of spirit not a pickling of form as it takes up and makes use of the original's energy. 6 Literalists, therefore, like Aquila, are no more gifted than a mono-lingual nine-year-old with a dictionary! They are the poetic equivalent of Dickens' Gradgrind, masking the 'trace of that power which implies the man', and if masking that which implies the man they mask the man. 1. L. Grabbe, "Aquila's Translation and Rabbinic Exegesis" in JJS 31–32 (1982) pp. 527–536 2. D. Barthélemy, Les devanciers d'Aquila (VTSup 10; Leiden, 1963). 3. See Jerome's Comm. on Hosea 2. 16–17 Origen, Epist. ad Afric. 3 and Jerome, Epist. LVII ad Pammachlim, II. Quoted in J. Reider, "Prolegomena to a Greek–Hebrew and Hebrew–Greek index to Aquila" JQR 4.3 (1914) pp. 321–356. 4. Epiphanius, De Mensuris et Ponderibus 15-16, in θεολογία 44 (1973) pp. 157–200. 5. Eliot Weinberger, "Anonymous Sources: a Talk on Translators and Translation" Fascicle 1 (2005) found at: http://www.fascicle.com/issue01/ Poets/weinberger1.htm (last viewed 13.9.2010). 6. Peter Cole, The Dream of the Poem (Princeton University Press; Princeton–Oxford, 2007) p. 18.