HistoricalChristian.Faith

Epiphanius of Salamis on the Rabbinic Corruption of Scripture

Dates: c. 392 (the Treatise on Weights and Measures) · Wikipedia
Summary: Epiphanius narrows the corruption charge to a single named agent. In his Treatise on Weights and Measures (c. 392) he tells the life of Aquila, the second-century Jewish proselyte whose hyper-literal Greek revision the synagogue preferred to the Septuagint, and reads it as a story of apostasy and spite: a one-time Christian, expelled from the church for clinging to astrology, who turned Jew "embittered in mind" and then made a translation "not by the right motive, but (by the desire) so to distort certain of the words" of the Seventy — so that the passages "testified to about Christ" might be made "to be fulfilled in some other way." Where Eusebius charged the rabbis with shortening the chronology, Epiphanius charges a translator with bending the messianic proof-texts on purpose.

Claims & evidence

Aquila apostatizes "embittered in mind" and becomes a Jew

"But as one who had become embittered in mind over how he had suffered dishonor, he was puffed up with vain jealousy, and having cursed Christianity and renounced his life he became a proselyte and was circumcised as a Jew. And, being painfully ambitious, he dedicated himself to learning the language of the Hebrews and their writings."

— Epiphanius, Treatise on Weights and Measures, §15, source. Epiphanius frames the whole revision biographically. Aquila, a kinsman of Hadrian set over the rebuilding of Jerusalem as Aelia, had seen the apostles' disciples working "great signs" and was baptized — but never gave up casting horoscopes "on the horoscope of his birth," was repeatedly rebuked by the teachers, and, refusing correction, "was expelled from the church." The translation is thus presented as the act of a man nursing a grievance, not of a disinterested scholar.

He distorts the words of the Seventy to evade the testimonies to Christ

"After he had first been thoroughly trained for it, he made his translation. He was moved not by the right motive, but (by the desire) so to distort certain of the words occurring in the translation of the seventy-two that he might proclaim the things testified to about Christ in the divine Scriptures to be fulfilled in some other way, on account of a certain shame that he felt (to proffer) a senseless excuse for himself."

— Epiphanius, Treatise on Weights and Measures, §15, source. This is the core of the charge and the seed of the Aquila-revision argument: the divergence between Aquila's Greek and the Septuagint is read as deliberate, anti-Christian, and aimed precisely at the christological proof-texts — the words "testified to about Christ" rerouted so they could "be fulfilled in some other way." Epiphanius does not here adduce a specific verse; the indictment is of the translator's intent across the revision as a whole.

The verdict: a translation "incorrect and perversely translated"

"But we must say, beloved, the words of it are incorrect and perversely translated, (words) which carry condemnation for him in the very translation which he made."

— Epiphanius, Treatise on Weights and Measures, §16, source. Having dated the revision — "the twelfth year of Hadrian Aquila became known," i.e. c. 128–130 — Epiphanius closes the notice with a flat verdict that the version is corrupt by its own showing. Yet the same treatise elsewhere uses Aquila as a textual witness when the Seventy seem to have omitted a Hebrew word, conceding his closeness to the Hebrew even while condemning his motive — a tension worth noting against the malice reading.

Notes

• Charge by translator, not by chronology or excision. Epiphanius supplies the patristic person behind the corruption thesis. Where Justin charged anonymous "teachers" with cutting passages and Eusebius charged "the Jews" with shortening the Genesis numbers, Epiphanius names Aquila and assigns the motive to a single embittered apostate. This is the key witness for the Aquila-revision argument (assessment: weak — the distortion charge does not hold against Aquila's literalizing method).
• The motive is biographical, and hostile. The account is overtly polemical: it explains the revision wholly by Aquila's grievance (expulsion for astrology) and "vain jealousy." Modern scholarship instead reads Aquila's version as a deliberately hyper-literal rendering toward the (proto-Masoretic) Hebrew — a translation philosophy, prized in the rabbinic academies of Aquila's teachers — rather than a campaign of distortion. The argument weighs Epiphanius's malice thesis against that reading, and finds the distortion charge weak.
• Epiphanius's own use of Aquila cuts against him. Earlier in the same treatise he appeals to Aquila (with Symmachus and Theodotion) to recover Hebrew words the Seventy had "omitted," treating his literalism as a corrective to the Greek. The witness who calls Aquila "perversely translated" also uses him as a check on the Septuagint — a sign that the divergence is one of method, not only of malice.
• The same treatise's origin legend. The earlier sections of the same work (§9–12) retell the making of the Septuagint — the seventy-two in thirty-six paired cells, and the Greek's divergences from the Hebrew defended as inspired additions. That inspired-LXX premise is the ground on which this notice condemns Aquila's rival Greek; the two are two halves of one argument.
• Text used. Epiphanius's De mensuris et ponderibus (On Weights and Measures) survives complete only in a Syriac version; the English above is from the standard translation of that Syriac. The work is conventionally dated 392.