126 Apokatastasis: Four Meditations
New Testament. Take, for example, the Greek phrase EL'> Tov
aLwva (eis ton aiona), which is typically rendered into English
as "forever," as is correct if one is pedantically precise about
the etymological presence of the Latin word aevum in the En-
glish word "forever," but which might better be rendered today
as something like "unto the age" or "for the age." This is the
equivalent of the Hebrew le-olam or ad-olam, whose principal
connotation would be something like "from now till the end of
this age." Or take the phrases EL-, Tov-; aLwva-; Twv aLwvwv (eis
tous aionas ton aionon)-often translated as "forever and ever,"
but literally meaning "unto the ages of the ages" -and o aLwv
Twv aLwvwv (ho aion ton aionon)- "the age of the ages." These
are standard Greek correlates of such Hebrew phrases as le-
olam va-ed ("unto an age and beyond") or le olamei-olamim
("unto ages of ages"), which perhaps indicate something like
eternity, but which also might be taken as meaning simply an
indeterminately vast period of time.
No matter how we interpret the discrete terms, however,
we must never forget that today the entire ensemble of refer-
ences that we bring to these phrases is wholly detached from
the religious world of Christ's time, and particularly from its
eschatological expectations. It seems absolutely certain, for
instance, that the words aion and aionios are frequently used
in the New Testament as some kind of reference to the 'olam
ha-ba, "the Age to come," which is to say the Age of God's
Kingdom, or of that cosmic reality now hidden in God that
will be made manifest at history's end. It seems fairly certain,
at least, that in the New Testament, and especially in the teach-
ings of Jesus, the adjective aionios is the equivalent of some-
thing like the phrase le-olam; and yet it is no less certain that
this usage cannot be neatly discriminated from the language
of the 'olam ha-ba without losing something of the special sig-