The 16th Century roots of the word "eternal" in scripture
It is more than just a little interesting that the word aion was never translated "eternal" or "unending" in any writings prior to the 16th Century. In fact it is extemely rare for a word to have two meanings that are opposite, in this case, "limited duration" and "unending" as our modern dictionaries indicate concerning the word "aion". Even English which is a much less precise language than Greek doesn't have that sort of thing going on unless you are talking slang with teenagers. So why and when did aion take on this contradictory meaning? Read on....
This is a short quote from a book entitled:
"The Greek Word Aion -- Aionios, etc..." Written by: Rev. John Wesley Hanson in 1875.
The oldest lexicographer, Hesychius, (A. D. 400-600,) defines aion thus: "The life of man, the time of life."
At this early date no theologian had yet imported into the word the meaning of endless duration. It retained only the sense it had in the classics, and in the Bible.
The meaning of which is clearly pointed out in various other posts on this blog...in a nutshell they all refer to a "period of time" or "age" as in the Old Covenant priesthood, Jonah's time in the whale, and numerous other examples from scripture as well as other writings, ie. Aristotle wrote about someone being in an "aion" of drunkeness.
Theodoret (A. D. 300-4--) "Aion is not any existing thing, but an interval denoting time, sometimes infinite when spoken of God, sometimes proportioned to the duration of the creation, and sometimes to the life of man."
John of Damascus (A. D. 750,) says, "1, The life of every man is called aion. 3, The whole duration or life of this world is called aion. 4, The life after the resurrection is called 'the aion to come.'"
But in the sixteenth century Phavorinus was compelled to notice an addition, which subsequently to the time of the famous Council of 544 had been grafted on the word. He says: "Aion, time, also life, also habit, or way of life. Aion is also the eternal and endless AS IT SEEMS TO THE THEOLOGIAN." Theologians had succeeded in using the word in the sense of endless, and Phavorinus was forced to recognize their usage of it and his phraseology shows conclusively enough that he attributed to theologians the authorship of that use of the word.
Alluding to this definition, Rev. Ezra S. Goodwin, one of the ripest scholars and profoundest critics, said, "Here I strongly suspect is the true secret brought to light of the origin of the sense of eternity in aion. The theologian first thought he perceived it, or else he placed it there. The theologian keeps it there, now. And the theologian will probably retain it there longer than any one else. Hence it is that those lexicographers who assign eternity as one of the meanings of aion uniformly appeal for proofs to either theological, Hebrew, or Rabbinical Greek, or some species of Greek subsequent to the age of the Seventy, if not subsequent to the age of the Apostles, so far as I can ascertain."
From the sixteenth century onward, the word has been defined as used to denote all lengths of duration from brief to endless.
Scripture is pretty clear on the concept of punishment for the wicked but the concept of endlessness was never attached to it. Before the 16th Century, no one would have heard "endless" with the use of the word "aion". The idea of endless torment was borrowed from pagans who used the concept as a form of coercing the masses into obedience. The following is a quote from Chapter 3 of "Universalism the Prevailing Doctrine of Christian Church during the first 500 years of Christianity" by J.W. Hanson D.D..
Catholic Hell Copied from Heathen Sources
Classic scholars know that the heathen hell was early copied by the Catholic church, and that almost its entire details afterwards entered into the creeds of Catholic and Protestant churches up to a century ago. Any reader may see this who will consult Pagan literature 16 and writers on the opinions of the ancients. And not only this, but the heathen writers declare that the doctrine was invented to awe and control the multitude. Polybius writes: "Since the multitude is ever fickle there is no other way to keep them in order but by fear of the invisible world; on which account our ancestors seem to me to have acted judiciously, when they contrived to bring into the popular belief these notions of the gods and of the infernal regions." Seneca says: "Those things which make the infernal regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river of flaming fire, the judgment seat, etc., are all a fable." Livy declares that Numa invented the doctrine, "a most effective means of governing an ignorant and barbarous populace." Strabo writes: "The multitude are restrained from vice by the punishments the gods are said to inflict upon offenders, for it is impossible to govern the crowd of women and all the common rabble by philosophical reasoning: these things the legislators used as scarecrows to terrify the childish multitude." Similar language is found in Dionysius Halicarnassus, Plato, and other writers. History records nothing more distinctly than that the Greek and Roman Pagans borrowed of the Egyptians, and that some of the early Christians unconsciously absorbed, or thoroughly appropriated, the doctrines of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans concerning post-mortem punishment, and gradually corrupted the "simplicity that is in Christ" 17 by the inventions of antiquity, as from the same sources the Jews at the time of Christ had already corrupted their religion. 18 What more natural than that the small reservoir of Christian truth should be contaminated by the opinions that converts from all these sources brought with them into their new religion at first, and later that the Roman Catholic priests and Pagan legislators should seize them as engines of power by which to control the world?Read the rest of this entry ... (15 words left)
