No, the translator doesn’t decide whether an adjective is singular or plural. Greek adjectives agree with the nouns they modify — in number, gender, and case.
As for the Greek adjective “αἰωνιος”, it means neither “everlasting” or “belonging to an age.” Indeed the meaning has no temporal implications whatever.
The word was used in koine Greek (the Greek that was written and spoken from 300 B.C. to 300 A.D.) to refer to anything which is enduring. The word was used by Diodorus Siculus to describe the stone used to build a wall. The word seems to have been used as meaning “lasting” or “durable”.
Josephus in “The Wars of the Jews” book 6, states that Jonathan was condemned to “αἰωνιος” imprisonment. Yet that prison sentence lasted only three years.
Jonathan’s imprisonment was not everlasting. Neither did it “belong to an age.” But is was “lasting”. Although “αἰωνιος” can modify or describe that which is everlasting, it does not mean “everlasting”. Although “αἰωνιος” can modify or describe that which is temporary, it does not mean “temporary”. It means “lasting”, and I think you will find that that meaning fits all contexts wherever you find the word in Koine Greek.
Probably, but I would double check if I wanted to be certain. If you want to give us some specific verses, I’m sure people here would be glad to help you verify them.
I have come to believe that eon does not mean eternal, but how am I to understand verses like Gen 21:33, Psalms 100:5, and Deut 33:27? Thank you for any help you can give me.
The Hebrew word being poorly translating as everlasting or forever, conveying a meaning of eternity, is olam. The Hebrews did not have the abstract concept of eternity that modern Christians have acquired from Hellenistic influences.
Jeff Benner has a write up about this on his website:
In the ancient Hebrew words that are used to described distance and direction are also used to describe time. The Hebrew word for east is qedem and literally means “the direction of the rising sun”. We use north as our major orientation such as in maps which are always oriented to the north. While we use the north as our major direction the Hebrews used the east and all directions are oriented to this direction. For example one of the words for south is teyman from the root yaman meaning “to the right”. The word qedem is also the word for the past. In the ancient Hebrew mind the past is in front of you while the future is behind you, the opposite way we think of the past and future. The Hebrew word olam means in the far distance. When looking off in the far distance it is difficult to make out any details and what is beyond that horizon cannot be seen. This concept is the olam. The word olam is also used for time for the distant past or the distant future as a time that is difficult to know or perceive. This word is frequently translated as eternity or forever but in the English language it is misunderstood to mean a continual span of time that never ends. In the Hebrew mind it is simply what is at or beyond the horizon, a very distant time. A common phrase in the Hebrew is “l’olam va’ed” and is usually translated as “forever and ever” but in the Hebrew it means “to the distant horizon and again” meaning “a very distant time and even further” and is used to express the idea of a very ancient or future time.
{aiônios} (as in all three questions) is sometimes translated “pertaining to the age” (i.e. pertaining to the age to come) by some universalists and annihilationists (especially 17th-19th century ones) who (correctly) don’t want to acknowledge it always means “eternal” but who wanted to have it always mean something else instead.
Those particular translators would render “eonian life” and “eonian redemption” as “life pertaining to the age [to come]” and “redemption pertaining to the age [to come]”.
By this they would either mean a single age not to be confused with ages afterward, namely the age of Christ’s millennial reign before the lake of fire judgment (but then they have to explain why apparently the Bible never talks about real eternal life and real eternal redemption even when they themselves believe in these things); or they would mean the Great Age of the Day of the Lord which in itself contains innumerable ages of ages and which is never-ending (but then by reference to that never-ending Great Age the objects of the adjective would seem to be never-ending, too, whether never-ending life or never-ending punishment.)
This is why I don’t think “pertaining to the age” is a valid contextual translation in every situation, although I acknowledge it technically could be for some occurrences of the term. (Also a few occurrences make no sense as pertaining literally to any kind of an age at all, although there are many occurrences in the Greek OT that could pertain to a sub-age other than Christ’s millennium reign: the sub-age of the Levite priesthood for example.)
Anyway, people who translate it as “pertaining to the age” don’t have to be talking about only one sub-age. Paidion’s “lasting” is a much better attempt at a one-translation-fits-all, though. There are still a few places where such a translation wouldn’t make much sense, such as when Paul talks about the revelation of a secret hushed in lasting times but manifested now and through prophetic scriptures. (Rom 16:25-26) But I don’t know of any single-option translation yet that cleanly fits all examples, including my own preferred single-option translation (if one has to be made): Godly, uniquely from God. Multiple translations according to context makes more sense to me.
“Eon” per se never meant eternity per se; it only meant “age”. Phrases and terms built from “eon” might (by metaphorical application) mean eternal or eternity, but context has to indicate whether or not they do on a case by case basis. The same is true for the adjective “olam” as noted by DaveF; and there’s another less frequently used term with much the same meaning in Hebrew, AHD (I don’t recall the vowel pointing). Both are used in reference to something not only definitely less than eternal (hills both created and flattened by God) at Habakkuk 3:6, but also in contrast to something truly Olam namely God in the same verse.
So Olam actually does mean everlasting sometimes, most appropriately when talking about God.
Don Hewey (who wrote the article) has some problems with his article:
1.) trivially (but tellingly), (almost?) none of his examples support the contention of his thesis, that {aion} specifically always means “eternity”. Every example is about the adjective “eonian” or about prepositional phrases which end in “eon” or “eons” like “into the eon”. This is obscured by his translations, such as (a semi-random example from the text his site is named after) 1 John 2:17b, “but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever[aion]”. What’s translated “for ever” isn’t the term {aion} but the phrase “into the eon”. One wonders why he doesn’t bother to spell that out?–because his opponents routinely do!
2.) His argument only works against those universalists (not the majority of us) who insist that phrases and cognates (especially the adjective) of eon always only refer to a temporary period of time. Even those universalists would be able to answer many of his contentions by reference to Jesus Christ reigning until He hands over the kingdom to the Father, although not all his examples could be answered that way (which is why I and many other universalists, probably the majority, don’t go this route). His argument is worth nothing at all to those of us (such as myself) who recognize multiple translations possible to the meanings of the phrases and the adjective; or to those of us (such as Paidion earlier in this thread) who use a broad widescale translation that still allows variable meaning in reference to the object (for example “lasting”). We don’t regard God as eternal because the term “eonian” is used of God: otherwise we would have to regard Jonah’s imprisonment as eternal by the same token (it wasn’t even remotely eternal without beginning or end, nor remotely never-ending) or else we would have to regard God in the same way DH is so eager to avoid based on comparison with temporary usages!
3.) His argument completely fails to mention the occasions when the adjective and the phrases cannot possibly mean never-ending and/or eternal. Possibly because that would blow his thesis. (But maybe he tries to account for that on another page.)
You said me that the word can change the sense of the adjective: GREAT footbal player : an important footbal player but not a infinite person
GREAT god: the eternal and unending GOD , the creator
so aionios means aionian or age lasting , pertaining an age (it is clear that there is a beginning and an end) when the context doesn’t mean clearly that it’s unending, endless
Jason, translation does involve more than a little interpretation and the “meaning” of the context can be informed by many things that were not necessarily in the mind of the original author. So I wonder if everlasting, in the sense of endless time or timeless eternity, is an intended meaning we can attribute to the various authors of the Tanakh.
To illustrate this:
Jewish Complete Bible
When he stands up, the earth shakes;
when he looks, the nations tremble,
the eternal mountains are smashed to pieces,
the ancient hills sink down;
the **ancient **paths are his.
NIV
He stood, and shook the earth;
he looked, and made the nations tremble.
The ancient mountains crumbled
and the age-old hills collapsed.
His ways are eternal.
21st Century KJV
He stood and measured the earth;
He beheld and drove asunder the nations;
and the everlasting mountains were scattered,
the perpetual hills did bow. His ways are everlasting.
Young’s Literal Tranlation
He hath stood, and He measureth earth,
He hath seen, and He shaketh off nations,
And scatter themselves do mountains of antiquity,
Bowed have the hills of old, The ways of** old** [are] His.
“Eternal” and “everlasting” convey a very different meaning from “ancient” and “old.” The Jewish version and Young’s are much close to the actual meaning of olam. There is nothing in the immediate context that compels the use of everlasting or eternal. What does however inform the choice of those words is a larger doctrinal agenda that those particular translators wish to support. Choosing to translate olam as everlasting is really redundant. That God has always existed and always will is a given and saying that he is everlasting is stating a redundancy. By doing that it is in fact obscuring a deeper more profound meaning about the nature of God, which the psalmist is trying to convey.
The Hebrew meaning of olam “being beyond the horizon” suggests that is more about a quality than a quantity. More specifically what issues or comes from God.
“Before the mountains were brought forth or ever You had formed and given birth to the earth and the world, even from olam (far beyond the horizon) to olam (far beyond the horizon)You are God.” Ps 90:2 Here the passage repeats olam to convey a superlative. Hebrew has no way to say something is “best” or “greatest” so it doubles a word to give it a superlative.
The extent of God’s agape and passion for His creation is beyond our perception and comprehension–we see through a glass darkly. The self-revelation of God in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ presents us with the best view of what is beyond the far horizon of God’s new creation, at least until the veil is pulled back and His full presence amongst us is seen by all.
I’m on record several places (I thought I had mentioned it here in this thread too somewhere) as being much in favor of the notion of {aiônios} in the New Testament, and often that and olam in the OT, meaning that the object the adjective is describing comes uniquely from God.
The verse from Habakkuk that I referenced can be read that way, too. But even if the term is translated “ancient”, I think there’s a very obvious immediate context comparison going on: we might call the hills OLM and AHD and that might be true in one way, but there’s a big qualitative difference between their temporary and impotent OLM and God’s superior and true OLM. His ways are OLM; the ways of the hills aren’t, not really, even though we call them OLM and AHD.
Exactly what that superior OLM means has a major hint in the context: the OLM hills are shattered and bow down to YHWH Whose ways are OLM. The prophecy may not spell out the technical details of ontological superiority there (such as God’s real self-existent original eternity compared to the naturally long-lasting but derivative and temporary hills), but they do fit quite well.
There’s probably a poetic reference to YHWH decisively smashing idolatry, too, looking at local contexts of the prophet and comparing with extended contexts elsewhere in other prophets saying similar things. The false gods enshrined on those hills shall have their temples destroyed and they themselves shall bow in fealty to YHWH eventually thanks to the glorious and terrible advent of YHWH.
(It may, by extended context, also be a reference to YHWH touching down from heaven to save Jerusalem from her ruin at the beginning of the reigning Day of YHWH: at least one of the major prophets, I forget who, says somewhere that when His foot descends to the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem on that day, the hill will be split in two, one side going north and the other south, also partially collapsing, creating a long valley between them that runs for miles away from Jerusalem parallel to a main road, and which will also apparently connect with Ge-Hinnom valley nearby. The bodies of the slain superarmy attacking and sacking Jerusalem will be burned and buried there during the first seven years of YHWH’s earthly visible reign. How this will, or has been, actually fulfilled I won’t comment on. But the parallel just occurred to me. The prophets indicate Israel, having returned to Jerusalem from being scattered, will devolve into the worst idolatry again as they had done before the Babylon dispersion, despite God’s grace, and will build idolatry temples on the nearby hills again. I wouldn’t be surprised if one or more of those was envisioned as being destroyed in the immediate vicinity of YHWH’s visible glorious rescue of faithless Jerusalem from her enemies.)
According to Webster’s the English word “aeonian” is from the Greek word “aionios”.
According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary eonian is a variant spelling of aeonian. Another variant is aeonic. They all mean, according to Webster’s definition, “lasting for an immeasurably or indefinitely long period of time”. Webster’s adds “Origin and Etymology of aeonian…from Greek aiṓnios “lasting an age, perpetual” (derivative of aiṓn eon) + 2-an; aeonic from eon + 1-ic”. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eonian
OTOH for the English word “eternal”:
Another dictionary says re eonian “Of, relating to, or constituting an eon” & “eonian - of or relating to a geological eon (longer than an era) aeonian. 2. eonian - continuing forever or indefinitely…” https://www.thefreedictionary.com/eonian
As a person who has studied Greek formally for more than three years, and who has studied it informally in context for MANY years, I affirm that the best translation of “αιωνιος” (aionios) is “lasting”.
There are still a few places where such a translation wouldn’t make much sense, such as when Paul talks about the revelation of a secret hushed in lasting times but manifested now and through prophetic scriptures. (Rom 16:25-26) But I don’t know of any single-option translation yet that cleanly fits all examples, including my own preferred single-option translation (if one has to be made): Godly, uniquely from God. Multiple translations according to context makes more sense to me.
(But maybe he tries to account for that on another page.)