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Aquila’s revision dates to approximately 125 CE. He issued two different editions of his revision for some biblical books, but the relation between them is unclear. Aquila’s translation system is the most slavishly literal of the translators, creating a translation that is often not understandable without knowledge of the Hebrew source text. He believed that every letter and word in the Bible is meaningful, and therefore attempted to accurately represent every word, particle, and morpheme. For example, he translated the Hebrew sign of the direct object ʾet separately with syn (»with«) on the basis of the other meaning of ʾet (namely »with«). In his linguistic approach toward translation, Aquila paid much attention to the etymology of the Hebrew words, and this, more than any presumed rabbinic exegesis, characterizes his version.

Some scholars think that Aquila is the »Onqelos the proselyte« mentioned in the Talmud (b. Meg 3a and elsewhere) as the author of the Targum of the Torah.⁷⁴ However, although the names Aquila and Onqelos are similar, there is no evidence that the same person translated the Torah into Aramaic and revised the LXX. While both translations are exact, the amount of adherence to the MT of the Greek translation is greater than that of the Aramaic one.