01.3.1. Greek Classics

1.-- THE GREEK CLASSICS

It is a vital question How was the word used in the Greek literature with which the Seventy were familiar, that is, the Greek Classics?

Some years since Rev. Ezra S. Goodwin (Christian Examiner, Vols. x, xi, and xii. Boston: Gray & Bowen) patiently and candidly traced this word through the Classics, finding the noun frequently in nearly all the writers, but not meeting the adjective until Plato, its inventor, used it. He states, as the result of his protracted and exhaustive examination from the beginning down to Plato, "We have the whole evidence of seven Greek writers, extending through about six centuries, down to the age of Plato, who make use of Aión, in common with other words; and no one of them EVER employs it in the sense of eternity."

When the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into Greek by the Seventy, the word aión had been in common use for many centuries. It is preposterous to say that the Seventy would render the Hebrew olam by the Greek aión and give to the latter (1) a different meaning from that of the former, or (2) a different meaning from aión in the current Greek literature. It is self-evident, then, that Aión in the Old Testament means exactly what Olam means, and also what Aión means in the Greek classics. Indefinite duration is the sense of olam, and it is equally clear that aión has a similar signification.

In the Iliad and Odyssey Aión occurs thirteen times, as a noun, besides its occurrence as a participle in the sense of hearing, perceiving, understanding. Homer never uses it as signifying eternal duration. Priam to Hector says (I. xxii, 58), "Thyself shall be deprived of pleasant aiónos" (life.) Andromache over dead Hector (I. xxiv, 725), "Husband thou hast perished from aiónos" (life or time).

Dr. Beecher writes (Christian Union), "But there is a case that excludes all possibility of doubt or evasion, in the Homeric Hymn of Mercury, vs. 42 and 119. Here aión is used to denote the marrow as the life of an animal, as Moses calls the blood the life. This is recognized by Cousins in his Homeric Lexicon. In this case to pierce the life (aión) of a turtle means to pierce the spinal cord. The idea of life is here exclusive of time or eternity." These are fair illustrations of Homer’s use of the word.

Hesiod employs it twice: "To him (the married man) during aiónos (life) evil is constantly striving, (Theog 609) etc. Æschulus has the word nineteen times, after this manner: "This life (aión) seems long, (Persæ 263) etc. "Jupiter, king of the never-ceasing world" (aiónos apaustau) (Supp.572, cited by Prof. Tayler Lewis).

Pindar gives thirteen instances, such as "A long life produces the four virtues" (Ela de kai tessaras aretas ho makros aión) (Nem. iii, 130).

Sophocles nine times. "Endeavor to remain the same in mind as long as you live" (Askei toiaute noun di aiónos menein) (Electra 1030). He also employs makraion five times, as long-enduring. The word long increases the force of aión, which would be impossible if it had the idea of eternity.

Aristotle uses aión twelve times. He speaks of the existence or duration (aión) of the earth (De Mundo Cap. 5); of an unlimited aiónos (In Metaph Lib. xiv); and elsewhere, he says: aión sunekes kai aidios, "an eternal aión" (or being) "pertaining to God." The fact that Aristotle found it necessary to add aidios to aión to ascribe eternity to God demonstrates that he found no sense of eternity in the word aión, and utterly discards the idea that he held the word to mean endless duration, even admitting that he derived it, or supposed the ancients did, from aei ón according to the opinion of some lexicographers.

A similar use of the word appears in de Cælo (Lib. ii). "The entire heaven is one and eternal (aidios) having neither beginning nor end of an entire aión." In the same work (Lib. i, Cap. 9) occurs the famous passage where Aristotle has been said to describe the derivation of the word, which we have quoted on page 7, Aión estin, apo tou aei einai.

Mr. Goodwin well observes that the word had existed a thousand years before Aristotle’s day, and that he had no knowledge of its origin, and poorer facilities for tracing it than many a scholar of the present, possesses. "While, therefore, we would regard an opinion of Aristotle on the derivation of an ancient word, with the respect due to extensive learning and venerable age, still we must bear in mind that his opinion is not indusputable authority." Mr. Goodwin proceeds to affirm that Aristotle does not apply aei ón to duration, but to God, and that (as we have shown) a human existence is an Aión. Completeness, whether brief or protracted, is his idea; and as Aristotle employed it "Aión did not contain the meaning of eternity."

Hippocrates, "A human aión is a seven days matter."

Empedocles, "An earthly body deprived of happy life, (aiónos).

Euripides uses the word thirty-two times. We quote three instances: "Marriage to those mortals who are well situated is a happy aión" (Orestes, 596). "Every aión of mortals is unstable" (Ibid 971). "A long aión has many things to say" (Med. 428), etc.

Philoctetes. "He breathed out the aióna." Mr. Goodwin thus concludes his conscientious investigation of such of the Greek classics as he examined line by line, AION IN THESE WRITERS NEVER EXPRESSES POSITIVE ETERNITY."

In his Physic (Lib. viii cap 1), Aristotle quotes a passage from Empedocles, saying that in certain cases "aión is not permanent."

AIONIOS

Aiónios is found in none of the ancient classics above quoted. Finding it in Plato, Mr. Goodwin thinks that Plato coined it, and it had not come into general use, for even Socrates, the teacher of Plato, does not use it. Aidios is the classic word for endless duration.

Plato uses aión eight times, aiónios five, diaiónios once, and makraión twice. Of course if he regarded aión as meaning eternity he would not prefix the word meaning long, to add duration to it.

In all the above authors extending more than six hundred years, the word is never found. Of course it must mean the same as the noun that is its source. It having clearly appeared that the noun is uniformly used to denote limited duration, and never to signify eternity, it is equally apparent that the adjective must mean the same. The noun sweetness gives its flavor to its adjective, sweet. The adjective long means precisely the same as the noun length. When sweet stands for acidity, and long represents brevity, aiónios can properly mean eternal, derived from aión, which represents limited duration. To say that Plato, the inventor of the word, has used the adjective to mean eternal, when neither he nor any of his predecessors ever used the noun to denote eternity, would be to charge one of the wisest of men with etymological stupidity. Has he been guilty of such folly? How does he use the word?

PLATO’S USAGE

1. He employs the noun as his predecessors did. I give an illustration (De Legib. Lib. iii) - "Leading a life (aióna) involved in troubles."

The Adjective. Referring to certain souls in Hades, he describes them as in aiónion intoxication (De Repub. Lib. ii). But that he does not use the word in the sense of endless is evident from the Phædon, where he says, "It is a very ancient opinion that souls quitting this world, repair to the infernal regions, and return after that, to live in this world." After the aiónion intoxication is over, they return to earth, which demonstrates that the word was not used by him as meaning endless. Again, he speaks of that which is indestructible, (anolethron) and not aiónion (De Leg., Lib. x). He places the two words in contrast, whereas, had he intended to use aiónion as meaning endless, he would have said indestructible and aiónion.

Once more (Timæus), Plato quotes four instances of aión, and three of aiónios, and one of diaiónios in a single passage, in contrast with aidios (eternal) . The gods he calls eternal, (aidios) but the soul and the corporeal nature, he says, are aiónios, belonging to time, and "all these," he says, "are part of time." And he calls Time [Kronos] an aiónios image of Aiónos. Exactly what so obscure an author may mean here is not apparent, but one thing is perfectly clear, he cannot mean eternity and eternal by aiónios and aiónion, for nothing is wider from the fact than that fluctuating, changing Time, beginning and ending, and full of mutations, is an image of Eternity. It is in every possible particular its exact opposite.

In De Mundo, Aristotle says: "Which of these things separately can be compared with the order of the heaven, and the relation of the stars, sun, and also the moon moving in most perfect measures from one aión to another aión," - ex aiónos eis eteron aióna (Cap. 5, p. 609 C). Now even if Aristotle had said that the word was at first derived from two words that signify always being, his own use of it demonstrates that it had not that meaning then [B.C. 350]. Again, he says of the earth, "All these things seem to be done for her good, in order to maintain safety during her aiónos," duration, or life (Cap. 5, p. 610 A) . And still more to the purpose is this quotation concerning God’s existence: "Life and an aión CONTINUOUS AND ETERNAL, "zoe kai aión, sunekes kai aidios, etc" (Metaph., Lib. xiv, cap. 7). Here the word aidios, [eternal] is employed to qualify aión and impart to it what it had not of itself, the sense of eternal. Aristotle could be guilty of no such language as "an eternal eternity." Had the word aión contained the idea of eternity in his time, or in his mind, he would not have added aidios. "For the limit enclosing the time of the life of every man, . . . is called his continuous existence, aión. On the same principle, the limit of the whole heaven, and the limit enclosing the universal system, is the divine and immortal ever-existing aión, deriving the name aión from ever-existing [aei ón] (De Cælo., i, 9). In eleven out of twelve instances in the works of Aristotle, aión is used either doubtfully, or in a manner similar to the instance above cited, [from one aión to another, that is, from one age to another], but in this last instance it is perfectly clear that an aión is only without end when it is described by an adjective like aidios, whose meaning is endless. Nobody cares how the word originated, after hearing from Aristotle himself that created objects exist from one aión to another, and that the existence of the eternal God is not described by a word so feeble, but by the addition of another that expresses endless duration. Here aión only obtains the force of eternal duration by being reinforced by the word immortal. If it meant eternity, the addition of immortal is like adding gilding to refined gold, and daubing paint on the petal of the lily.

In most of these the word is enlarged by descriptive adjectives. Æschylus calls Jupiter "king of the never-ceasing aión," and Aristotle expressly states in one case that the aión of heaven "has neither beginning nor end," and in another instance he calls man’s life his aión, and the aión of heaven "immortal." If aión denotes eternity, why add "neither beginning nor end," or "immortal," to describe its meaning? These quotations unanswerable show that aión in the Classics, never means eternity unless a qualifying word or subject connected with it add to its intrinsic value.

Says Dr. Beecher: In Rome there were certain periodical games known as the secular games, from the Latin seculum, a period, or age. The historian, Herodian, writing in Greek, calls these aiónian games, that is, periodical, occurring at the end of a seculum. It would be singular, indeed, to call them eternal or everlasting games. Cremer, in his masterly Lexicon of New Testament Greek, states the general meaning of the word to be ’Belonging to the aión.’" Herodotus, Isocrates, Xenophon, Sophocles, Diodorus Siculus use the word in precisely the same way. Diodorus Siculus says ton apéiron aióna, "indefinite time."

THE CLASSICS NEVER USE AION TO DENOTE ETERNITY

It appears, then, that the classic Greek writers, for more than six centuries before the Septuagint was written, used the word aión and its adjective, but never once in the sense of endless duration.

When, therefore, the Seventy translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, what meaning must they have intended to give to these words? It is not possible, it is absolutely insupposable that they used them with any other meaning than that which they had held in the antecedent Greek literature. As the Hebrew word meaning horse, was rendered by a Greek word meaning horse, as each Hebrew word was exchanged for a Greek word denoting precisely the same thing, so the terms expressive of duration in Hebrew became Greek terms expressing a similar duration. The translators consistently render olam by aión, both denoting indefinite duration.

We have shown, p. 18, that the idea of eternity had not entered the Hebrew mind when the Old Testament was written. How then could it employ terms expressive of endless duration? We have now shown that the Greek literature uniformly understands the word in the sense of limited duration. This teaches us exactly how the word was taken at the time the Septuagint was prepared, and shows us how to read understandingly the Old Testament.

When at length the idea of eternity was cognized by the human mind, probably first by the Greeks, what word did they employ to represent the idea? Did they regard aión-aiónion as adequate? Not at all, but Plato and Aristotle and others employ aidios, and distinctly use it in contrast with our mooted word. We have instanced Aristotle, "The entire heaven is one and eternal [aidios] having neither beginning nor end of a complete aión, [life, or duration]" (De Cælo, Lib. ii, cap. i). In the same chapter aidiotes is used to mean eternity.

Plato (Quoting from Timæus Locrus) calls the gods aidion, and their essence aidion, in contrast with temporal matters, which are aiónios. Aidios then, is the favorite word descriptive of endless duration in the Greek writers contemporary with the Septuagint. Aión is never thus used.

When, therefore, the Seventy translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek they must have used this word with the meaning it had whenever they had found it in the Greek classics. To accuse them of using it otherwise is to charge them with an intention to mislead and deceive.

Mr. Goodwin well observes: "Those lexicographers who assign eternity as one of the meanings of aión, uniformly appeal for proofs to either theological, Hebrew or Rabbinnical 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. I do not know of an instance in which any lexicographer has produced the usage of ancient classical Greek, in evidence that aión means eternity. ANCIENT CLASSICAL GREEK REJECTS IT ALTOGETHER . . . ". By ancient he means the Greek existing in ages anterior to the days of the Seventy.

Thus it appears that when the Seventy began their work of giving the world a Greek version of the Old Testament that should convey the exact sense of the Hebrew Bible, they must have used aión in the sense in which it then was used. Endless duration is not the meaning the word had in Greek literature at that time. Therefore the word cannot have that meaning in the Old Testament Greek. Nothing can be plainer than that Greek Literature at the time the Hebrew Old Testament was rendered into the Greek Septuagint did not give to Aión the meaning of endless duration. Let us then consider the Old Testament Usage.