[B-Greek] More on AIONIOS

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Oct 27 07:21:49 EDT 2004


At 12:21 AM -0400 10/27/04, Chesster67 at aol.com wrote:
>Hi Harold,
>
><<<The lexicon BAGD for the expression CRONOIS AIWNIOIS in Rom 16:25 gives
>"long ages ago." With PRO as in Tit 1:2 and 2 Tim 1:9, the phrase means
>"before time began." In Job 3:18 the word refers to people who lived long
>ages ago. In Job 10:22 the idea is "perpetual.">>>>
>
>So would you agree with me in suggesting that AIWNIOS takes on opposing
>meanings in 16:25 and 16:26?  That is, in the former AIWNIOS denotes a
>temporary duration of time whereas, in the latter, AIWNIOS denotes an
>unending duration of time?

One really ought to read carefully the BDAG (or BAGD, if that's all you
have access to) article in its entirety with its listing of passages under
the three headings with listings of passages and an attempt at careful
differentiation:

1. pert. to a long period of time, long ago
2. pert. to a period of time without beginning or end, eternal
3. pert. to a period of unending duration, without end

That is to say: one ought to avoid oversimplification, reductionism, and
characaterization in terms of oversimplified antitheses, and it might be
well to appreciate the fact that the adjective AIWNIOS/ON relates to the
noun AIWN which has its own range of ambivalence and which often relates to
Hebrew OLAM. For AIWN, BDAG offers: hO AIWN MELLWN (ha Olam habba)

1.  a long period of time, without ref. to beginning or end
a. of time gone by, the past, earliest times, readily suggesting a
venerable or awesome eld
b. of time to come which, if it has no end, is also known as eternity (so
commonly in Gk. lit. Pla. et al.)
2. a segment of time as a particular unit of history, age
a. hO AIWN hOUTOS (ha Olam hazzeh) the present age (nearing its end)
b. hO AIWN MELLWN (ha Olam habba) the age to come, the Messianic period
3. the world as a spatial concept, the world
4. the Aeon as a person, the Aeon

I think that this range of actual usage of the noun AIWN goes far to
clarify the range of observed NT usage of the adjective AIWNIOS; I think
moreover that some painstaking care is called for in exploration of the
evidence bearing on how the noun and adjective are used in particular
texts--it's all too easy to speculate when talking about time and
timelessness or duration outside of a context of evidence of the cultural
bases of actual usage in particular texts.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



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