the author of a celebrated Targum or Chaldee paraphrase of the Pentateuch, is supposed to have flourished during the first centuries of the Christian era, and most probably during the first. The notices of him are meagre and uncertain. He is mentioned four times in the Babylonian Talmud, but it is all but certain that he is there confounded more than once with the Greek paraphrast Aquila, who occasionally went by the same name. From the purity of his Chaldee, it has been inferred that he was a Babylonian; but as we do not possess any specimens of the Palestinian Chaldee of that time with which to compare his version, little weight can be attached to this conjecture. The knowledge of his paraphrase is supposed by Eichhorn and Bertholdt to have been confined to the Babylonian Jews only for a long time, as Origen and Jerome are silent regarding it. But it is to be remembered that these fathers had to do with Greek versions of the original text when they were occupied with biblical literature. Prideaux also concludes, from the excellency of his paraphrase, that he must have been a native Jew; and there can be no doubt that his knowledge of the Hebrew was worthy of all the praise bestowed on it by the Jews. In point of purity, the diction of his Targum approaches the style of Daniel and Ezra. His work is not properly a paraphrase, as he for the most part adheres with great literacy to the original text, which renders his version useful alike for purposes of criticism and interpretation. The Targum of Onkelos was used by the Jews as a sort of dictionary of Hebrew words. The chief editions of it are those of Bologna, 1482 and 1490; Lisbon, 1491; Constantinople, 1505; Bomberg, in his rabbinical Bibles, 1518-1549; also in Buxtorf's rabbinical Bible, and in the Paris and London polyglotts. A Latin translation of it, with valuable notes, was published by Fagi at Strasburg in 1546; and an important work on the text of Onkelos appeared at Vienna in 1830, by S. D. Luzzato, under the title of *Philoxenos.* (See De Onkelo Chaldaico, Pent. Paraph., Leipz. 1846; also Dr S. Davidson's Biblical Criticism, 1854.)