Post
by TheEditor » Mon Dec 30, 2013 12:07 am
Hi Robby,
The source I have is RC Trench, and he quotes from some Latin and German scholars. Unfortunately, he uses many Greek and Latin and German words, so I will cut and paste as written, and then I will include his footnotes on the page I am quoting from. The idea that it isn't so much a "time" but a "spirit" or "construct", space age and digital age come to mind. Now the quote:
We must reject the etymology of αἰών which Aristotle (De Coel. i. 9) propounds: ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀεὶ εἶναι εἰληφὼς τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν.Etym. Note. 29 It is more probably connected with ἄω, ἄημι to breathe. Like κόσμος it has a primary and physical, and then, superinduced on this, a secondary and ethical, sense. In its primary, it signifies time, short or long, in its unbroken duration; oftentimes in classical Greek the duration of a human life (== βίος, for which it is exchanged, Xenophon, Cyrop. iii. 3. 24; cf. Plato, Legg. iii. 701 c; Sophocles, Trachin. 2; Elect. 1085: πάγκλαυτον αἰῶνα εἵλου: Pindar, Olymp. ii. 120: ἄδακρυν νέμονται αἰῶνα); but essentially time as the condition under which all created things exist, and the measure of their existence; thus Theodoret: ὁ αἰὼν οὐκ οὐσία τις ἐστίν, ἀλλ᾽ ανυπόστατον χρῆμα, συμπαρομαρτοῦν τοῖς γεννητὴν ἔχουσι φύσιν· καλεῖται γὰρ αἰὼν καὶ τὸ ἀπὸ τῆς τοῦ κόσμου συστάσεως μέχρι τῆς συντελείας διάστημα—αἰὼν τοίνυν ἐστὶ τὸ τῇ κτιστῇ φύσει παρεζευγμένον διάστημα. Thus signifying time, it comes presently to signify all which exists in the world under conditions of time; ‘die Totalität desjenigen was sich in der Dauer der Zeit äusserlich darstellt, die Welt, sofern sie sich in der Zeit bewegt’ (C. L. W. Grimm; thus see Wisd. 13:8; 14:6; 18:4; Eccles. 3:11); and then, more ethically, the course and current of this world’s affairs. But this course and current being full of sin, it is nothing wonderful that αἰὼν οὗτος, set over against ὁ αἰὼν ἐκεὶνος (Luke 20:35), ὁ αἰὼν ἐρχομένος (Mark 10:30), ὁ αἰὼν μέλλων (Matt. 12:32), acquires presently, like κόσμος, an unfavorable meaning. The βασιλεῖαι τοῦ κόσμου of Matt. 4:8 are βασιλεῖαι τοῦ αἰῶνος τοὺτου (Ignatius, Ep ad Rom. 6); God has delivered us by his Son ἐξ ἐνεστῶτος αἰῶνος πονηροῦ (Gal. 1:4); Satan is θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου (2 Cor. 4:4; cf. Ignatius, Ep. ad Magn. 1: ὁ ἀρχὼν τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου); sinners walk κατὰ τὸν αἰῶνος τοῦ κόσμου τούτου (Ephes. 2:2), too weakly translated in our Version, as in those preceding, “according to the course of this world.” This last is a particularly instructive passage, for in it both words occur together; Bengel excellently remarking: ‘αἰών et κόσμος differunt. Ille hunc regit et quasi informat: κόσμος est quiddam exterius, αἰών subtilius. Tempus [== αἰών] dicitur non solum physice, sed etiam moraliter, connotatâ qualitate hominum in eo viventium; et sic αἰών dicit longam temporum seriem, ubi aetas mala malam aetatem excipit.’ Compare Windischmann (on Gal. 1:4): ‘αἰών darf aber durchaus nicht bloss als Zeit gefasst werden, sondern begreift alles in der Zeit befangene; die Welt und ihre Herrlichkeit, die Menschen und ihr natürliches unerlöstes Thun und Treiben in sich, im Contraste zu dem hier nur beginnenden, seiner Sehnsucht und Vollendung nach aber jenseitigen und ewigen, Reiche des Messias.’ We speak of ‘the times,’ attaching to the word an ethical signification; or, still more to the point, ‘the age,’ ‘the spirit or genius of the age,’ ‘der Zeitgeist.’ All that floating mass of thoughts, opinions, maxims, speculations, hopes, impulses, aims, aspirations, at any time current in the world, which it may be impossible to seize and accurately define, but which constitute a most real and effective power, being the moral, or immoral, atmosphere which at every moment of our lives we inhale, again inevitably to exhale,—all this is included in the αἰών, which is, as Bengel has expressed it, the subtle informing spirit of the κόσμος, or world of men who are living alienated and apart from God. ‘Seculum,’ in Latin, has acquired the same sense, as in the familiar epigram of Tacitus (Germ. 19), ‘Corrumpere et corrumpi seculum vocatur.’
It must be freely admitted that two passages in the Epistle to the Hebrews will not range themselves according to the distinction here drawn between αἰών and κόσμος, namely i. 2 and xi. 3. In both of these αἰῶνες are the worlds contemplated, if not entirely, yet beyond question mainly, under other aspects than those of time. Some indeed, especially modern Socinian expositors, though not without forerunners who had no such motives as theirs, have attempted to explain αἰῶνες at Heb. 1:3, as the successive dispensations, the χρόνοι καὶ καιροί of the divine economy. But however plausible this explanation might have been if this verse had stood alone, 11:3 is decisive that the αἰῶνες in both passages can only be, as we have rendered it, ‘the worlds,’ and not ‘the ages.’ I have called these the only exceptions, for I cannot accept 1 Tim. 1:17 as a third; where αἰῶνες must denote, not ‘the worlds’ in the usual concrete meaning of the term, but, according to the more usual temporal meaning of αἰών in the N. T., ‘the ages,’ the temporal periods whose sum and aggregate adumbrate the conception of eternity. The βασιλεὺς τῶν αἰώνων (cf. Clement of Rome, 1 Ep. § 13: ὁ δημιουργὸς καὶ πατὴρ τῶν αἰώνων) will thus be the sovereign dispenser and disposer of the ages during which the mystery of God’s purpose with man is unfolding (see Ellicott, in loco).2 For the Hebrew equivalents of the words expressing time and eternity, see Conrad yon Orelli, Die Hebräischen Synonyma der Zeit und Ewigkeit, Leipzig, 1871; and for the Greek and Latin, so far as these seek to express them at all, see Pott, Etym. Forsch. ii. 2. 444.
Footnotes:
1 Origen indeed (in Joan. 38) mentions some one in his day who interpreted κόσμος as the Church, being as it is the ornament of the world (κόσμος οὖσα τοῦ κόσμου).
2 Our English ‘world,’ etymologically regarded, more nearly represents αἰών than κόσμος. The old ‘weralt’ (in modern German ‘welt’) is composed of two words, ‘wer,’ man, and ‘alt,’ age or generation. The ground-meaning, therefore, of ‘weralt’ is generation of men (Pott, Etym. Forsch. vol. ii. pt. i. p. 125). Out of this expression of time unfolds itself that of space, as αἰών passed into the meaning of κόσμος (Grimm, Deutsche Myth. p. 752); but in the earliest German records ‘weralt’ is used, first as an expression of time, and only derivatively as one of space (Rudolf yon Raumer, Die Einwirkung des Christenthums auf die Alt-hochdeutsche Sprache, 1845, p. 375). See however another derivation altogether which Grimm seems disposed to favour (Klein. Schrift. vol. i. p. 305), and which comes very much to this, that ‘world’ == whirled.Etym. Note. 30
Synonyms of the New Testament, London, 1961, pp. 202, 203
Regards, Brenden.
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