Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 6:01 pm
Going back to my "short answer", meanwhile: the first and chief reason that Maurice's proposed underlying meaning for {aio_n} wouldn't make gibberish of expressions like "aion tou aionios" in the scriptures, is because that type of phrase never shows up once in the scriptures. Not in the NT, and (as far as I know or even could imagine) not in the OT Greek LXX either. "Age of ages" yes, once. "Ages of ages", yes, many times. "Age of Agey" (or whatever the adjective {aio_nio_n/ios} would be super-literally translated as, with appropriate direct article), never. (But the plural of eon, when used in a particular prepositional form, looks at first glance very much like the adjective {aio_nio_n}.)
The technical rebuttal doesn't detract from the strength of your complaint, however.
Thank you Jason,
But would Maurice's proposed underlying meaning for aio_n make gibberish of phrases like "aio_n tou (or ton) aio_nio_n/ios"?
(And btw, not having Greek font, and having to spell phonetically using the keys on available on this keyboard, does make this level of technical discussion rather difficult.)
Translating "into the eons of the eons" as "into the eons of the eons" isn't the difficult thing; that's the easy thing. The far more difficult thing is figuring out how the NT authors are using the adjective "eonian"; which I do find has thematic connection to the Deity.
I agree.
I don't consider "eon" to have a primary meaning of expressing a permanent fixed state in NT usage. Even if I did, though, there might be something equivalent to 'a larger permanent fixed state encompassing a smaller permanent fixed state'.
I'd hate to think of what being "tormented into a larger permanent fixed state encompassing a smaller permanent fixed state" might mean.
If not gibberish, I suspect it would mean something like "forever and ever," no?
I had already answered that, several comments previously, when you asked it: "yes, too far." (Michael wrote:he seems to have gone too far. He seems to have taken timelesness/Divinity to be the essential meaning of "aion.")Jason wrote:I agree, that would be going too far.
Since I don't agree with Maurice that the base meaning of {aion}, as applied in the NT, has to do with divinity (despite my appreciation with some suggestions along that line in other more recent comments), I consequently don't have a conflict in translating "into the eons of the eons" as "into the eons of the eons" in Rev 20:10...I find the NT usage of {aio_n} per se to typically involve reference to what you're calling a succession of moments of indeterminate (but long) length. The aions are not regarded as permanently fixed in the sense that Greek Stoics and similar philosophies regarded them; there isn't, for example, an endlessly repeating cycle of ages of approximately (or even identically) the same events, inescapable and binding upon all reality, even upon the gods (if they exist), eternal in its supreme ontological status. (And even then, each one of the cycle of ages can hardly be said to be essentially a permanently fixed state, since they transition successively into one another.)
Then we appear to be in total agreement (aside from the technicalities.)
BTW: Let me reiterate that I agree with those (like Dean Farrar and Prof. Talbott) who say that aio_nio_n often has "has thematic connection to the Deity."