The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Please can I have a list of all LXX occurrences of aionios?

Much of the following book of hers can be read for free online:

Ilaria Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena (Brill, 2013. 890 pp.)

worldcat.org/title/christian-doctrine-of-apokatastasis-a-critical-assessment-from-the-new-testament-to-eriugena/oclc/828140580

worldcat.org/title/christian-doctrine-of-apokatastasis-a-critical-assessment-from-the-new-testament-to-eriugena/oclc/828140580/viewport

You might eventually be able to read it all for free, since they alternate the pages one can read, from time to time IME.

Alternately, if anyone is interested, there is a site where individual chapters can be downloaded & read online for 30 USD each, whereas to buy a hardcopy of the book is much more expensive at $346, about twice the price, from what i’ve seen.

These works of Ramelli can also be read online, at least in part, for free:

Origen-in-Augustine-a-Paradoxical-Reception
scribd.com/document/2321231 … -Reception

Terms for Eternity: … in Classical and Christian Texts
Ilaria RAMELLI and David KONSTAN
redalyc.org/pdf/591/59120913002.pdf

Evagrius’s Kephalaia Gnostika: A New Translation of the Unreformed Text from …
By Ilaria L.E. Ramelli
books.google.ca/books?id=t47JCg … sa&f=false

Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early …
Ramelli
books.google.ca/books?id=2_jPGF … sa&f=false

Origen, Eusebius, the Doctrine of Apokatastasis, and Its Relation to Christology
Ilaria Ramelli
chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5881

scholars directory, w list of publications:

isns.us/directory/europe/ramelliilaria.htm

Generally, i’m totally in love with her stuff ;

But i’m no scholar & can’t read Greek, Latin, Hebrew, etc. Her Apok. book doesn’t always translate quotes from these languages into English.

I’ve almost finished chapter 1 of the Apok book & have read an article or two of hers elsewhere, plus bits & pieces of her other writings. Have a lot of her material to get through yet.

Well worth it, though, i think, even for the layman who has an interest in these subjects.

If i were younger i’d learn all these ancient lingos & become a scholar myself. But at my age it’s too late for old dogs to learn new tricks ;

Another suggested worthwhile [free online] read is:

Life Time Entirety. A Study Of Aion In Greek Literature And Philosophy, The Septuagint And Philo

books.google.ca/books?id=l-Smsh … &q&f=false

Author: Helena Maria Keizer

I think Ramelli and or Konstan gave a thumbs up to Keizer’s work above.

It seems so, from her following comment on her book “Terms For Eternity” re a Greek translation of the OT, called the LXX or Septuagint:

“The organization of the material is far from being simply chronological; in our systematic investigation we treat each of the philosophical schools in turn, pointing out, for example, the exceptional use of the terms for eternity in the Platonic tradition, and in the Bible (LXX and comparison with Hebrew background, plus the Greek New Testament), and then the reception of both biblical and philosophical language and concepts in Philo and the Patristic authors – most of whom, as we point out, maintain the terminological distinction found in the Bible, and most rigorously those who supported the doctrine of apokatastasis. We could hardly have done otherwise, beginning with Patristic philosophers without investigating their main sources of inspiration, namely the Bible and the Greek philosophers, who in turn display very different uses of aïdios and aiônios according to their schools.”

bmcreview.org/2009/02/20090251.html

I couldn’t find a free or paid version of it online, but expect to recieve a hard copy of it next week. Though one author speaks a bit on it here:

evangelicaluniversalist.com/foru … m.php?f=64

Her Apok. book also has some references to the OT from the early church writers such as Origen.

BTW a non universalist goes into some OT uses of aion/ios (olam) here:

christianthinktank.com/finaltorah

Evidently the Greek Old Testament (LXX, Septuagint) uses aionios of finite duration:

I have considered the days of old, the years of ancient(aionios) times. (Psa.77:5)

Don’t move the ancient(aionios) boundary stone, which your fathers have set up. (Prov.22:28)

Don’t move the ancient(aionios) boundary stone. Don’t encroach on the fields of the fatherless: (Prov.23:10)

Those from among you will rebuild the ancient(aionios) ruins; You will raise up the age-old(aionios) foundations;… (Isa 58:12a)

Thus says the Lord Yahweh: Because the enemy has said against you, Aha! and, The ancient(aionios) high places are ours in possession; (Ezek.36:2)

Because of thy having an enmity age-during(aionios)… (Ezek.35:5a)

They will rebuild the perpetual(aionios) ruins and restore the places that were desolate; (Isa.61:4a)

I went down to the bottoms of the mountains. The earth barred me in forever(aionios): yet have you brought up my life from the pit, Yahweh my God. (Jonah 2:6)

He beat back His foes; He gave them lasting(aionios) shame. (Psa.78:66)

Will you keep the old(aionios) way, which wicked men have trodden (Job 22:15)

Will it make an agreement with you for you to take it as your slave for life(aionios)? (Job 41:4)

’Will you not fear me?" says The Lord "will you not be cautious in front of my face? The One who appointed the sand to be the boundary to the sea, by perpetual(aionios) decree, that it will not cross over though it will be agitated it is not able and though the waves resound within her yet she will not overstep it. (Jer.5:22)

Their land will be an object of horror and of lasting(aionios) scorn; all who pass by will be appalled and will shake their heads. (Jer.18:16)

Behold I will send, and take all the kindreds of the north, saith the Lord, and Nabuchodonosor the king of Babylon my servant: and I will bring them against this land, and against the inhabitants thereof, and against all the nations that are round about it: and I will destroy them, and make them an astonishment and a hissing, and perpetual(aionios) desolations. (Jer.25:9)

And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the LORD, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans; and I will make it perpetual(aionios) desolations. (Jer.25:12)

In their heat I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual(aionios) sleep, and not wake, saith the LORD. (Jer.51:39)

When I shall bring thee down with them that descend into the pit, with the people of old time, and shall set thee in the low parts of the earth, in places desolate of old(aionios), with them that go down to the pit, that thou be not inhabited; and I shall set glory in the land of the living; (Ezek.26:20)

I will make you a perpetual(aionios) desolation, and your cities shall not be inhabited; and you shall know that I am Yahweh. (Ezek.35:9)

From those sleeping in the soil of the ground many shall awake, these to eonian(aionios) life and these to reproach for eonian(aionios) repulsion. (Daniel 12:2)

Thus says Yahweh, “Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old(aionios) paths, ‘Where is the good way?’ and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ (Jer.6:16)

For my people have forgotten me, they have burned incense to false gods; and they have been made to stumble in their ways, in the ancient(aionios) paths, to walk in byways, in a way not built up; (Jer.18:15)

Then he remembered the days of old(aionios), Moses and his people, saying, Where is he who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of his flock?where is he who put his holy Spirit in the midst of them? (Isa.63:11)


tentmaker.org/books/hope_beyond_hell.pdf

“…it doesn’t say what most evangelizers of hopelessness want it to say in that regard either.”

“It is false, he maintained, to translate that phrase as “everlasting punishment,” introducing into the New Testament the concept found in the Islamic Quran that God is going to torture the wicked forever.”

These translations of the LXX render aionios as “God” & “the Everlasting” (One):

Behold, I will answer you. In this you are not just, for God(aionios) is greater than man. (Job 33:12)
For I saw the captivity of my sons and daughters, which the Everlasting(aionios) brought upon them. (Bar.4:10)
For my hope is in the Everlasting, that he will save you; and joy has come to me from the Holy One, because of the mercy which shall soon come to you from the Everlasting(aionios) our Savior. (Bar.4:22)
Just as now the neighbors of Zion have seen your captivity, so shall they soon see your salvation from our God, which shall come upon you with the great glory and brightness of the Everlasting(aionios). (Bar.4:24)
Cast around you a double garment of the righteousness which comes from God, and set a diadem on your head of the glory of the Everlasting(aionios). (Bar.5:2)

It recalls comments i read recently by Jason Pratt. Also Tom Talbott referring to the aionion punishment in Mt.25:46 as being God’s punishment.

Substituting God & the Everlasting for aionios in Mt.25:46 & it reads:

“And these shall go away into God’s punishment: but the righteous into God’s life.”

“And these shall go away into the Everlasting (One’s) punishment: but the righteous into the Everlasting (One’s) life.”

Another interesting translation from the LXX is:

For fire shall come upon her[Jerusalem] from the Everlasting(aionios), long to endure, and she shall be inhabited by devils for a great time. (Bar.4:35) apocrypha.org/baruch/4-35.htm

Here we have an aionios punishment by fire that is not endless, but “long to endure”. It has similarities to Mt.25:41,46.

lexicon.katabiblon.com/index.php … OS&lang=el

I’m looking for a literal word for word English translation of the LXX. Does such exist?

In particular ATM this verse, Ezek 28:19:

καὶ πάντες οἱ ἐπιστάμενοί σε ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν στυγνάσουσιν ἐπὶ σέ ἀπώλεια ἐγένου καὶ οὐχ ὑπάρξεις ἔτι εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα

19 And all that know thee among the nations shall groan over thee: thou art gone to destruction, and thou shalt not exist any more. (Brenton Septuagint Translation)

19 All knowing you among the peoples Have been astonished at you, Wastes you have been, and you are not–to the eon.’ (CLV)

Though the CLV is not a translation of the LXX, the last 3 words [to the eon] seem to be a correct translation of εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα above.

into the eon (age) is the literal rendering, and “any more” (as per Brenton) OR “any longer” (as per Van der Pool) is what that would have been understood to mean.

Why would the Brenton or Van der Pool translations be the correct understanding of “into the eon”?

I know that’s a common way for translators to render “εις τον αιωνα” (into the age), but I can’t makes sense of Jesus’ words as recorded by John, chapter 11, verses 25 and 26 when translated like that.

Many translators translate it as the ESV, but if that were a correct translation wouldn’t Jesus’ two sentence be inconsistent? If someone believes in Him and dies, he will live again. But any one lives, believing in Him will never die. So if any living person who believes in Him will never die, how could it be that some who believed in Him DID die? (though they will live again).

Young’s Literal Translation translates it literally. Really literally it would read, “everyone who lives and believes in me shall no way die into the age.”
I wonder if the sentence should actually be translated like this:

He will not “die into the age” because he will be raised to life before the age.

Mainly because that seems to be its most general rendering across the bulk of passages where that phrase is used.

Literal doesn’t always trump as king… the phrase though bedded in obvious literal origins (it has to, to carry any semblance of sense) can have associated meanings attached according to context. Broadly speaking into the eon carries a sense of TOTALITY, e.g., when someone says… “our love is eternal” or “I love you forever” we understand both eternal and forever as expressions of TOTALITY with regards to which such forever-ness or eternal-ness is attached. IOW the emphasis is qualitative in understanding more than quantitative.

That at least is how I understand it.

I suppose those who accept the ESV translation could understand the word “die” in two different senses, physical & spiritual, in the two occurrences of the scripture you quoted.

The translation of “the age” as “remain” is one i haven’t seen before.

The CLV has:

“I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who is believing in Me, even if he should be dying, shall be living. 26 And everyone who is living and believing in Me, should by no means be dying for the eon. Are you believing this?”

The CLV concordance in the CLNT says EIS “into” is rendered idiomatically as “for” in relation to time in the CLV.

Not “dying for the eon” could refer to the post resurrection eon of the kingdom of the Messiah that the Jews were awaiting. This could correspond to the millennium in another of John’s writings, the book of Revelation. In some ancient Jewish literature there are references to a temporary Messianic kingdom age before the final age.

The way that Brenton renders it makes it sound like annihilation, but that contradicts the Scriptures re resurrection:

19 And all that know thee among the nations shall groan over thee: thou art gone to destruction, and thou shalt not exist any more. (Brenton Septuagint Translation)

OTOH the CLV is in harmony with the resurrection:

19 All knowing you among the peoples Have been astonished at you, Wastes you have been, and you are not–to the eon.’ (CLV)

I think you might be reading too much into that passage and so concluding things that the text doesn’t refer to, i.e., it is simply talking about the termination of the King of Tyres reign, aka his death, due to the pride (vs. 17) held in his heart. It’s NOT talking about postmortem realities.

IF you consider the 40yr covenantal transition period from old to new then AD 30-70 fits the bill… therein after remains the new covenant age, i.e., “the age to come”.

I agree it refers to the King of Tyre’s death when it says “you are not”:

19 All knowing you among the peoples Have been astonished at you, Wastes you have been, and you are not–to the eon.’ (CLV)

I take the phrase “to the eon” to describe how long he will be dead, i.e. until the eon. Evidently until the judgement spoken of in Rev.20:11-15.

As I understanding it… “to the eon” is nothing more than a technical expression indicative simply of the surety of one’s death ITSELF, and not what might be said to transpire at some juncture thereafter.

I don’t know how you come to that conclusion. I understand the surety of the Kings death from the words of Scripture which speak of him being destroyed & being not.

I’m simply NOT reading theology (in this case, postmortem-ism) back into the text…

Indeed… and THAT’S all that the phrase “to the eon” in this context means… ‘surety’ i.e., what I mentioned previously in terms of the TOTALITY of his demise.

I don’t see anything in the text that addresses the subject of postmortem. That’s where my reference to Revelation comes in.

If “to the eon” is restating the fact of the death of the King, as a “surety” after we are already told he is destroyed & is not, that would be redundant. I take the phrase “to the eon” as new info.