On the Myth of the Latin mistranslation of Greek perpetuity (reblog)

 In this post, I'll simply make a link to a very good blog post about the controversy about the translation of 'aionios' and 'aion' related words in the Bible. I quote an excerpt:

"Augustine's analysis was remarkably cogent. He doesn't even speak of αἰώνιος unequivocally indicating permanence — rather, of it ordinarily or usually being understood this way, solent. This leaves room for exceptions, while correctly recognizing that αἰώνιος doesn't semantically reflect some uses of its root noun: e.g. "time," "life," and probably "age" itself.

If it seems surprising that Augustine could have such a sophisticated understanding of this phenomenon from a language that he otherwise didn't know, this is more comprehensible when it's recognized that this had a perfect counterpart in his native language: the word aeternum. While, like αἰών, the root noun aevum on its own was multivalent and could indicate "time," "life," "age," or "perpetuity," the derived adjective aeviternum — which appears in contracted form as aeternum, from which the word "eternity" itself comes — was used only in relation to permanence and perpetuity." 

Here is the link: https://indoeuropa.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-myth-of-latin-mistranslation-of.html

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