[B-Greek] More on AIONIOS

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Oct 28 00:20:42 EDT 2004


At 11:56 PM -0400 10/27/04, Chesster67 at aol.com wrote:
>Hi Carl, you wrote:
>
><<<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>>>
>
>
>Could it be that definition #1 is the basic meaning of AIONIOS, and that
>the other two are glosses suited only to certain contexts?
>
>Now, not to discredit the BDAG, but I must take issue with the seemingly
>equivocal usage of "period" in the three statements.  to the best of my
>understanding, a period is an interval of time, finite by definition.
>Moreover, the idea that something can have a beginning yet no end is
>nonsensical to me.  Perhaps too many years of philosophy have warped my
>thinking?

I would urge you to consider that possibility; I believe that it is a
perspective that is propounded in the Biblical text. This is really not the
place to get into philosophical discussion, but I believe that in the
ancient world timelessness or eternity as outside of time is a Greek idea
rather than a Hebraic one; the Hebraic notion seems rather to be endless
duration. What is at stake here is not philosophic conceptions of time and
eternity but rather conceptions of time held and understood by authors of
the Biblical texts in their own cultural context.

> <<<<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)>>>
>
>Point well taken.  Yet, how do we go about determining the relationship
>between the noun and the adjective in any given context?
>
><<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.>>
>
>That makes fine sense, but what of the root fallacy?  How far must one go
>interpretting the adjective in light on the noun before one is comitting
>this fallacy?

Gabe, (1) there's no root fallacy involved here; there's no grounds to
doubt that AIWNIOS derives directly from AIWN and is formed with the
adjectival suffix -IOS, the suffix bearing the sense "related to," "having
to do with," "pertaining to";

(2) I think that of BDAG's three senses for AIWNIOS relate to common senses
of the noun AIWN;

(3) In Greek impacted by Hebraic usage AIWN represents the Hebrew Olam,
which is a term encompassing both the notion of temporal duration and the
notion of the world enduring during that period of time, something like
"world-age." In the eschatological perspective of Second Temple Judaism,
there is the conception that the world-age that began with the Creation is
indeed finite, that it will come to an end, and that it will be superseded
by a new Creation or new world-age that will not end. Now I think that all
of these senses of AIWN and of AIWNIOS sketched out in BDAG's description
of NT usage can be clarified from that cultural background: thus (1)
AIWNIOS may refer to the AIWN that began with the creation of the world and
that will come to an end; (2) AIWNIOS may refer to the world-age that will
be inaugurated with the consummation of God's Kingdom--a world-age that
will not end; moreover, it's possible to conceive that that AIWN hO MELLWN
has always existed but that it will not become manifest on earth until the
old world-age has come to an end; (3) AIWNIOS may refer to the world-age to
come and its quality of endless duration.
-- 

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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