judaism beyond the rabbis 291
serious disputes between Jews concerning the use of languages in syna-
gogal worship:
It was right and proper that the Hebrews, when listening to the Holy
Books, should not adhere to the literal writings but look for the prophecies
contained in them, through which they announce the Great God and the
Saviour of the human race, Jesus Christ. However, although they have
erred from the right doctrine till today, given as they are to senseless inter-
pretations, when we learnt that they dispute among themselves we could
not bear to leave them with an unresolved controversy. We have learnt
from their petitions, which they have addressed to us, that while some
maintain the Hebrew language only and want to use it in reading the Holy
Books, others consider it right to admit Greek as well, and they have
already been quarrelling among themselves about this for a long time.
Having therefore studied this matter we decided that the better case is that
of those who want to use also Greek in reading the Holy Books, and gen-
erally in any language that is the more suited and the better known to the
hearers in each locality ... Furthermore, those who read in Greek shall use
the Septuagint tradition, which is more accurate than all the others ... Let
all use mainly this translation; but in order that we shall not appear to
prohibit them all the other translations, we give permission to use also
Akilas’ translation, although he was gentile and in some readings differs
not a little from the Septuagint. What they call Mishnah, on the other
hand, we prohibit entirely, for it is not included among the Holy Books,
nor was it handed down from above by the prophets, but it is an invention
of men in their chatter, exclusively of earthly origin and having in it noth-
ing of the divine.^3
Justinian’s assertion that Aquila was a gentile picks up a Christian
tradition, first found in Irenaeus in the second century ce, that Aquila
was a Jewish proselyte; the same tradition is found in the Palestinian
Talmud: ‘Aquila the proselyte translated the Law before R. Eliezer and
R. Joshua; and they praised him and said to him, “You are the most
beautiful among the children of men.” ’ There is every reason to suppose
that at least some Greek- speaking Jews continued to use one or other of
the Greek versions of scripture throughout the Middle Ages. The maj-
ority of the Greek texts transliterated into Hebrew script found in
the Cairo Genizah are biblical texts or Bible commentaries, and as late
as 1547 a polyglot columnar edition of the Pentateuch was published
in Constantinople with the text presented in transliterated Greek, as
well as Hebrew and Aramaic and transliterated Spanish.^4