Talk:Unto the ages of ages

Old Testament usage of World Without End
I understand that this article is about the latin phrase, but I feel like it would be useful to mention that the most famous English translation ("world without end") does occur in the KJV Old Testament (Isaiah 45:17), but I don't really know where best to work it in, so I'll leave it to anyone else later who has enough expertise :) biggins (talk) 00:06, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, Genesis 49:2 is "Gather yourself together, and hear, ye sons of Jacob; and hearken unto Israel your father", and Deuteronomy 6:4 is "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord". Neither has "for ever and ever", or anything similar. Where did those references come from, anyway? 85.140.243.214 (talk) 22:32, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

The phrase in aeternum et ultra does occur in the vulgate, such as exodus 15:18, psalm 144:1 (145:1), but not in the places indicated in this article. Eric Schiefelbein (talk) 10:17, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Also in Septuagint Psalm 83.5 we read εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. Maybe someone with Hebrew skills could add it together with its Hebrew equivalent? (I know it's technically "original research", but I guess those texts are sufficiently obvious and undisputed that it's safe to add it here).--Oudeís talk 16:14, 17 January 2020 (UTC)


 * In the Hebrew Bible Ps. 83.5 can be found as follows: "אמרו לכו ונכחידם מגוי ולא-יזכר שם-ישראל עד". (Unfortunately, I am not used to type Hebrew on the Computer, so I could not manage to copy the masoretic vocalization). I would translate it approximately like this: "Come on, let's annihilate them away from being a people, and one will not remember the Name of Israel any more." In this sentence, the word "עד" is the one that means something like "not any more" - of course in combination with the negation "לא", that is found before the verb ("ולא-יזכר", and "ו" means just "and"). Actually there is a Hebrew phrase, which is much closer to the "World without end"-thing, at least to it's German equivalent "von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit" ("from eternity to eternity"), although it is not found in Ps. 83,5, but in several other texts of the old testament: "םעולם ועד-עולם", or similar forms, such as "וםעולם עד-עולם" as in Psalm 90,2; or "למין-עולם ועד-עולם" as in Jeremiah 25,5, or "מין-העולם עד-העולם", as in Neh. 9,5. All these slightly different variations mean more or less the same: "(and) from (the) eternity to (the) eternity". If you want to find more good examples, just search for the word "עולם" ("eternity"). I can also imagine (and I even think, I remember it from somewhere, but I don't know from where), that there is an expression, that fits quite good to the Septuagint quotation above, which talks about "the eternities of the eternities". In Hebrew, the Translation of "εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων" would be something like "עד עולמי העולמים". There are Hebrew figures of speech that function like this, and I would suppose that the Greek use of such a figure is inspired by Hebrew, but in my quick research tonight I have not found any good example.--Heinz (talk) 03:50, 19 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I did not think about the different counting of psalms in Septuagint and Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Text of psalm 84.5 sais: "אשרי יושבי ביתך עוד יהללוך סלה" That means translated: "All hail to those sitting in your house, continuously they will praise you (Selah)." The word here translated with "continuously" is "עוד", which can have a lot of other meanings as well, like "repetition", "again", "still", but I think, in the given context "continuously" is a plausible translation. In this verse, there is no such eternity formula as in the Septuagint. --Heinz (talk) 11:04, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Greek meaning of this phrase
The Greek meaning of this phrase surely forms the basis of understanding this, so I would say that it should be included here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know there are no Greek uses of aionon or aionios that in it contexts shows an meaning of unending, so an honest scholarly approach to this would require that any "eternal" rendering thereof must be rejected. The fact that religious perspectives choose to add this meaning, does not make it true or correct. There are things religion adds to suit it's agenda, but it can never be presented as envince to explain the original meaning.

I suggest that a section be added to include the view that it only means age and not eternity, which has over the years been held by Homer, Josephus, Origen, Basil and many others, and in the modern era by Hansen and others. Lifeboy (talk) 16:22, 22 April 2023 (UTC)