ר׳ אונקלוס הגר

ר׳ אונקלוס הגר is the proselyte whom Babylonian rabbinic tradition associates with an Aramaic translation of the Torah learned from ר׳ אליעזר בן הורקנוס and ר׳ יהושע בן חנניה. Traditions place him around the end of the first and beginning of the second century CE, but the historical reconstruction is unusually difficult. Palestinian sources often attribute parallel material to Aquila, a second-century convert who produced a highly literal Greek Bible translation, and scholars debate whether the names and stories were confused or partly transferred. Likewise, the standard Targum Onkelos preserves an early Palestinian Aramaic translation tradition but was transmitted and edited in Babylonia over subsequent centuries; its final literary form cannot simply be treated as a single autograph by one identifiable translator. Rabbinic narratives portray Onkelos as a Roman nobleman who converted despite imperial opposition and observed Jewish law rigorously. This map record therefore presents the traditional biography while flagging uncertainty: the dates are conventional bounds, and the geographic entries distinguish tradition from documented history. No authenticated image exists.