No actually that’s also according to vine’s, University of Chicago Logion Lexicon, Thayer’s dictionary, Perseus digital library, and Westcott and Hort, in fact every single lexicon I’ve seen all agree, all except for your single source.
The Greek Words Aiõn and Aiõnios | Concordant Publishing Concern
The Scholars
To start with, Rotherham’s The Emphasized Bible, which is a literal word for word translation of the Bible, translates the word
aionios here and elsewhere in the Bible as “Age Abiding.” You can see this for yourself at the following website.
Matthew 25 - Rotherham's Emphasized Bible EBR 1902 Online Bible Translation
Young’s Literal Translation, also a literal word for word translation of the Bible, translates the word
aionios here and everywhere else as, “Age During.”
Read & Study The Bible - Daily Verse, Scripture by Topic, Stories
The Concordant Version translates it as “Eonian” in the sense of pertaining to an Eon.
http://www.concordant.org/version/index.html
The Emphatic Diaglott simply transliterates the word as “Aionian” to avoid any confusion at all concerning its meaning. This is only done when a translator feels that the language he is translating into does not have a proper word to use. Which means that he finds the word “eternal” to be lacking.
The Cambridge Bible Dictionary, by A.W. Argyle, says about Matthew 25:46,
“Eternal punishment, i.e., punishment characteristic of the Age to come, not meaning that it lasts for ever. Eternal life, i.e., the life that belongs to the Age to come, the full abundant life which is fellowship with God.” (Italics mine.)
Bible translator, Dr. R.F. Weymouth, slightly disagrees with Young’s translation (mentioned above) on page 657 of The New Testament in Modern Speech, saying,
“Eternal: Greek: ‘aeonion,’ i.e., ‘of the ages.’ Etymologically this adjective, like others similarly formed, does not signify ‘during,’ but ‘belonging to’ the aeons or ages.”
So he is saying he doesn’t like Young’s translation of “
age-during” but would rather render it “
belonging to the age.”
Dr. Bullinger’s Appendix 129 to The Companion Bible, says this about the NT term aion:
“aion = an age, or age-time, the duration of which is indefinite, and may be limited or extended as the context of each occurrence may demand. The root meaning of aion is expressed by the Hebrew olam . . . which denotes indefinite, unknown or concealed duration; just as we speak of ‘the patriarchal age,’ or ‘the golden age,’ etc.”
When he claims that the actual duration of the age is unkown or concealed, he does not mean that it is infinite, it just means nobody knows its length until it is over. This of course is perfectly natural, b/c who doesn’t tend to shy away from admitting their age!
The oldest lexicographer that we have of the Greek New Testament, Hesychius (who lived somewhere around AD 400-600), defines aion thus: “The life of man, the time of life.” J.W. Hansen remarks about Hysychius’ definition here saying,
“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 (which refers to Greek writers before the Septuagint), and in the Bible.”
Theodoret (AD 300-400) in his work In Migne Vol. IV, on page 400 says,
“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 (AD 750) defines it thus,
“1, The life of every man is called aión. … 3, The whole duration or life of this world is called aión. 4, The life after the resurrection is called ‘the aión to come.’”
Dr. Edward Beecher in his book Christian Union remarks about the ancient understanding of this word,
“It commonly means merely continuity of action . . . all attempts to set forth eternity as the original and primary sense of aión are at war with the facts of the Greek language for five centuries, in which it denoted life and its derivative senses, and the sense eternity was unknown.”
He further states,
“that the original sense of aión is not eternity. . . . It is conceded on all hands that this (life) was originally the general use of the word.”
In the Paris edition of Henry Stephens’ Lexicon it is affirmed emphatically,
“that life, or the space of life, is the primitive sense of the word, and that it is always so used by Homer, Hesiod, and the old poets; also by Pindar and the tragic writers, as well as by Herodotus and Xenophon.”
We will explore these Greek writers and their use of
Aion and
Aionios along with many others in a later blog in this series.
Professor Knapp, the author of an edition of the Greek Testament, one in use in many colleges, observes that:
“The pure idea of eternity is too abstract to have been conceived in the early ages of the world, and accordingly is not found expressed by any word in the ancient languages. But as cultivation advanced and this idea became more distinctly developed, it became necessary in order to express it to invent new words in a new sense, as was done with the words eternitas, perennitas, etc. The Hebrews were destitute of any single word to express endless duration. To express a past eternity they said before the world was; a future, when the world shall be no more. . . . The Hebrews and other ancient people have no one word for expressing the precise idea of eternity.”
Hasting’s Dictionary of the New Testament, says,
“There is no word either in the O.T. Hebrew or in the N.T. Greek to express the abstract idea of eternity.” (p. 542 Vol. I)
“Eternal, everlasting–nonetheless ‘eternal’ is misleading, inasmuch as it has come into the English to connote the idea of ‘endlessly existing,’ and thus to be practically a synonym for ‘everlasting.’ But this is not an adequate rendering of aionios which varies in meaning with the variations of the noun aion from which it comes.” (p. 369, Vol III)
For those who may be unfamiliar with the laws of language,
an adjective cannot have a greater force than the noun from which it originates. And aion is a noun and aionios is the adjective directly derived from aion. Thus if
aion means age, then
aionios cannot mean anything greater than an age. Thus by Linguistic principles
aionios can only mean age-long, or pertaining to an age. A good example of this is the adjective generational, which originates from the noun generation. Generational means “pertaining to a generation.” A generation is usually around 40 years. If I was to come along and start claiming that the word generational meant 1000 years, or to make this an even better analogy, to claim that generational means an endless duration, I would literally be crucified by English professors!
This helps make the above quote more understandable when he says that,
“everlasting…is not an adequate rendering of aionios which varies in meaning with the variations of the noun aion from which it comes.”
James Donnegan in A New Greek and English Lexicon (1839) writes,
“Time; space of time; life time and life; the ordinary period of man’s life; the age of man; man’s estate; a long period of time.”
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (page 1010) says,
“Primarily signifies time, in the sense of age, or generation”
Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon says,
“A period of existence; one’s lifetime; life; an age; a generation; a long space of time. A space of time clearly defined and marked out; an era, epoch, age, period or dispensation.”
And lastly is the Strong’s Concordance. Not generally a good source for defining words, but nonetheless what the majority of Christians will reference when looking for the definition of a word.
Anyways, even the NASB’s Strong’s Concordance gives “Age-long” as one of the definitions of aionios! The evidence has been right in front of us this whole time, but we have not had eyes to see it.
