The problems with Greek translation.

[excreationist]

DBT: what do you think of #15?

 

[Politesse]

An alternative perspective on the Aeon:

Aeon (Gnosticism)

Not necessarily a measure of time at all. The term in question could therewithin be seen as a promise of an angelic body or existence; Jesus himself was believed to be an angel of sorts by many pre-Trinitarian Christians.

Despite the oddity of Gnosticism by modern standards, consider that most scholars believe it to have been a firm majority opinion in the Christian world for more than a century.

 

[DBT]

Here's another Christian view on the meaning of the word Aionion as it relates to eternal damnation versus universal salvation.


What Does “Aionion” Mean?


''In the debate about the theological validity of Christian universalism one sometimes finds discussion about the meaning of the word “eternal” in Matthew 25:46. Christ there says plainly that the unrighteous “will go away into eternal punishment”, and the word here rendered “eternal” is the Greek aionion [αιωνιον]. Some suggest that the word simply means “age-long”, indicating that the punishment of the unrighteous will endure for an age and then come to an end, and they point out that the root of the word is aeon [αιων], meaning “age”. What are we to make of this?

Sometimes the word αιων does indeed mean “age” in the sense of a limited duration of time which comes to an end. Thus St. Paul in Romans 16:25: “God…is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages [Greek αιωνιοις] and has now been manifested”. We see here that the word αιων means a limited duration of time, since the ages of time when the mystery had been kept secret came to an end when Christ appeared and was proclaimed by the apostles. Accordingly, one of the meanings of αιων in the Arndt-Gingrich lexicon is “a segment of time, age”. It can also mean “a world” as a spatial concept. Thus Hebrews 11:3: “By faith we understand that the worlds [Greek αιωνας] were created by the Word of God”.

But it can also mean everlasting, and as such it is applied to God and His dominion and power over all the cosmos, such as in 1 Timothy 6:16: “To Him [i.e. God] be honour and eternal [Greek αιωνιον] dominion”. Presumably God’s dominion is unending and everlasting. The debate about the precise meaning of aionion therefore cannot be solved simply by consulting a lexicon. The word varies in its meaning according to its usage''

It's interesting that both of your conservative sources use as evidence their own presumption that the dominion of God must be everlasting and unbounded by the present age. Is this necessarily the case? To many Christians of Paul's day, creation itself was finite; all beings were destined to eventually coalesce back into the oneness of God; this is the fundamental eschatological belief of both Origenism and Gnosticism. You cannot have God as your King if you are also becoming God. What does "dominion" even mean in a universe where all human distinctions of lord and vassal have come to an end?

That's because both universal salvationists and eternal damnationists believe in an eternal God. Their point of dispute being the nature of salvation and whether 'punishment' is forever or just a period of time; αιων.

Even the Torah/Judaism assumes an eternal God because there are verses that clearly imply it, which was not written in Greek using the word aionion.

 

[DBT]

DBT: what do you think of #15?

It seems to be different issue. Even if the penalty for not believers was to be denied eternal life, that is a heavy penalty, a form of eternal damnation. You may have had eternal life, if only you believed but upon judgement this is denied to you. The punishment is harsh even though the dead are not aware that they failed attain immortality. It is essentially the death penalty imposed as a punishment for failing to believe.

- - - Updated - - -

DBT: what do you think of #15?

It seems to be different issue. Even if the penalty for not believers was to be denied eternal life, that is a heavy penalty, a form of eternal damnation. You may have had eternal life, if only you believed but upon judgement this is denied to you. The punishment is harsh even though the dead are not aware that they failed attain immortality. It is essentially the death penalty imposed as a punishment for failing to believe.

 

[excreationist]

DBT: The site in #15 is saying that the unsaved people are tormented for a limited amount of time then die. I don't think that is particularly harsh. At least it is not infinitely times worse where they are tormented for an eternity.

 

[DBT]

Would you be satisfied to be tormented for only a period of time because you did not believe what the bible claims? Then it's hugs and kisses, all good, justice done....brought to you from the God of Love?

 

[skepticalbip]

As there are no Greek words for eternal or everlasting...

Rubbish.
There's no such thing as an untranslatable word.

Words are translatable but meaning is a bit more difficult. One bit of evidence is that, during the "got milk?" campaign, the slogan was translaterated into Spanish as "Tienes leche?". Just fine, an exact literal translation but, in Spanish, it means "are you lactating?". That translation didn't quite meet the goal of the advertising agency to encourage people to drink more milk.

 

[bilby]

As there are no Greek words for eternal or everlasting...

Rubbish.
There's no such thing as an untranslatable word.

Words are translatable but meaning is a bit more difficult. One bit of evidence is that, during the "got milk?" campaign, the slogan was translaterated into Spanish as "Tienes leche?". Just fine, an exact literal translation but, in Spanish, it means "are you lactating?". That translation doesn't quite meet the goal of the advertising agency to encourage people to drink more milk.

Exactly. Or to take my earlier post:

Ich verstehe nur "bahnhof".

An exact translation to English yields "I only know 'railway station'", which is an awful translation - idioms are simply not translatable in that way.

An English speaker seeking to convey the same meaning that a German would express as "Ich verstehe nur 'bahnhof'" would say "It's all Greek to me" - not one word of which is the direct translation of any of the words in the German phrase, but which conveys the EXACT same meaning.

There are, of course, plenty of untranslatable words; But worse still for people seeking the Truth^TM, there are also plenty of untranslatable concepts. What is the ancient Greek for 'laser disc'? What's the ancient Latin word for 'kangaroo'? If you found yourself in Rome in 200AD, what Latin word would you use to mean 'Internet'?

And words change their meanings - often dramatically. A typewriter used to mean 'a person who type writes' as well as the machine with which she did so; A computer was (until the 1940s) a person whose job was to make computations.

Many English people today struggle to understand Shakespeare, and most struggle with Chaucer - despite both writing in English, and only a few hundred years ago. To assume that even a fluent speaker of modern Greek would be able to accurately understand a text written in Greek thousands of years ago is absurd. To assume that that ancient Greek text could be reliably translated into modern English while retaining all of the meanings and subtleties of the original author's intent is even more absurd. Even to make a half-baked attempt will necessitate a deep understanding of Greek history and culture at the time that the original text was written.

 

[lpetrich]

The Bible should have included a translation guide.

In any case, I think that the arguments seem like an effort to demonstrate that the Bible does not refer to infinite amounts of time, the usual translation of aiônios. I've found Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, αἰώνιος, and it does include "eternal" as a translation.

 

[Lion IRC]

As there are no Greek words for eternal or everlasting...

Rubbish.
There's no such thing as an untranslatable word.

Words are translatable but meaning is a bit more difficult. One bit of evidence is that, during the "got milk?" campaign, the slogan was translaterated into Spanish as "Tienes leche?". Just fine, an exact literal translation but, in Spanish, it means "are you lactating?". That translation didn't quite meet the goal of the advertising agency to encourage people to drink more milk.

Sure.
But that's an observation which applies even within one single language.
Hence...synonyms, contranyms, amphibologies, emojis.

 

[steve_bank]

the problem is the colloquial meanings of words going back to ancient Hebrew. Imagine 200 years from now trying to derive meanings from a Jay Leno monologue in a translation to a future language with only literal meanings of Englis

Someone who identifies as a Jew in the past said 40 meant a while. It rained for 40 days and nights. Jesus went walking in the desert for 40 days.

Look at how Mary Magdalene in the gospels transformed imto a prostitute in Christian tradition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Magdalene

During the Middle Ages, Mary Magdalene was conflated in western tradition with Mary of Bethany and the unnamed "sinful woman" who anoints Jesus's feet in Luke 7:36–50, resulting in a widespread but inaccurate belief that she was a repentant prostitute or promiscuous woman

 

[skepticalbip]

Words are translatable but meaning is a bit more difficult. One bit of evidence is that, during the "got milk?" campaign, the slogan was translaterated into Spanish as "Tienes leche?". Just fine, an exact literal translation but, in Spanish, it means "are you lactating?". That translation didn't quite meet the goal of the advertising agency to encourage people to drink more milk.

Sure.
But that's an observation which applies even within one single language.
Hence...synonyms, contranyms, amphibologies, emojis.

But then, as far as I am aware, the ancient greek texts didn't include emojis to help us understand what they actually meant. We can only guess that they used the meaning for the words and phrases as we believe they did. Surely there are a few "got milk/tienes leche" type errors in our translations from the Greek.

 

[excreationist]

Would you be satisfied to be tormented for only a period of time because you did not believe what the bible claims? Then it's hugs and kisses, all good, justice done....brought to you from the God of Love?

Well if the Bible is true then I'd be relieved that the church tradition isn't true and that I'd miss out on eternal torment. A limited punishment for a limited crime is fair. Christians would also say that God is just and that sin needs to be punished.

 

[skepticalbip]

Would you be satisfied to be tormented for only a period of time because you did not believe what the bible claims? Then it's hugs and kisses, all good, justice done....brought to you from the God of Love?

Well if the Bible is true then I'd be relieved that the church tradition isn't true and that I'd miss out on eternal torment. A limited punishment for a limited crime is fair. Christians would also say that God is just and that sin needs to be punished.

So it is just for someone who is punished by the government with a life sentence in prison then needs to be punished after they die with torment in hell?

Sounds a bit sadistic to me.

 

[bilby]

Would you be satisfied to be tormented for only a period of time because you did not believe what the bible claims? Then it's hugs and kisses, all good, justice done....brought to you from the God of Love?

Well if the Bible is true then I'd be relieved that the church tradition isn't true and that I'd miss out on eternal torment. A limited punishment for a limited crime is fair. Christians would also say that God is just and that sin needs to be punished.

So it is just for someone who is punished by the government with a life sentence in prison then needs to be punished after they die with torment in hell?

Sounds a bit sadistic to me.

Particularly given that the list of "sins" includes a number of activities that are both legal and moral, such as eating bacon or shellfish; Wearing mixed fabrics; or Having consensual sex outside a very narrow set of circumstances.

Punishing people for these things seems pretty fucking evil to me.

 

[DBT]

Would you be satisfied to be tormented for only a period of time because you did not believe what the bible claims? Then it's hugs and kisses, all good, justice done....brought to you from the God of Love?

Well if the Bible is true then I'd be relieved that the church tradition isn't true and that I'd miss out on eternal torment. A limited punishment for a limited crime is fair. Christians would also say that God is just and that sin needs to be punished.

So for the trivial reason of a lack of faith you would consider it a matter of justice to suffer a hundred years of torment in hell, after which you would love the Lord your God with all your heart?

 

[excreationist]

So it is just for someone who is punished by the government with a life sentence in prison then needs to be punished after they die with torment in hell?

Sounds a bit sadistic to me.

Particularly given that the list of "sins" includes a number of activities that are both legal and moral, such as eating bacon or shellfish; Wearing mixed fabrics; or Having consensual sex outside a very narrow set of circumstances.

Punishing people for these things seems pretty fucking evil to me.

Actually in Christianity the crime is not being perfectly righteous and not getting Jesus to save you.

 

[excreationist]

So for the trivial reason of a lack of faith you would consider it a matter of justice to suffer a hundred years of torment in hell, after which you would love the Lord your God with all your heart?

After the torment people would cease to exist. It is merciful compared to eternal torment.

 

[skepticalbip]

So for the trivial reason of a lack of faith you would consider it a matter of justice to suffer a hundred years of torment in hell, after which you would love the Lord your God with all your heart?

After the torment people would cease to exist. It is merciful compared to eternal torment.

And no torment would be even more merciful. So rather than a merciful god, you praise a god that is only a bit more merciful than the evil SOB he could be?

 

[excreationist]

So for the trivial reason of a lack of faith you would consider it a matter of justice to suffer a hundred years of torment in hell, after which you would love the Lord your God with all your heart?

After the torment people would cease to exist. It is merciful compared to eternal torment.

And no torment would be even more merciful. So rather than a merciful god, you praise a god that is only a bit more merciful than the evil SOB he could be?

“A bit more”? It is infinitely more