Good to know. Since I know how words can be used in many different ways even contrary to their literal meaning, I'm uncomfortable having to rely on a concordance; but it's all I have.
they are useful tools, just not always as dictionaries. it's not even an issue of "contrary to their literal meaning" but more of how that literal meaning gets rendered in another language. a lot of our idioms wouldn't make sense in other languages, just like if they wrote "to the world" in english we wouldn't understand the implications.
The idea of quality, I think, is more related to the usage of aion as an adjective in the NT. I haven't had time to sit down and investigate other usages in the NT.
i'm utterly unqualitifed to critique an argument about greek.
So it means the planet itself or the planet and its inhabitants as a whole? Of course if the inhabitants are gone, then not much to have a covenant with.
ah, yes. sorry for not being more specific. the inhabitants as well. it's like when we say "the whole world" we don't just mean the physical ground, but the cultures therein as well.
Or to be a covenant as long as the planet exists?
So it does really deal with a very long period of time, not a time without end.
well, more literally, it's until the world ends. less literally -- and by far the more common usage in modern hebrew -- it means "forever." that's not to say, however, that this is what the original authors meant. modern hebrew is largely based off biblical hebrew, and the traditions of what certain things meant could concievably have affected the modern idioms. i'll look a bit later tonight (going out in a bit) and see if i can find an specific usage that demands it mean one or the other.
Even our own word doesn't mean without end.
well, yes and no. it does mean "without end" because that's how we read it. to origin of the word may have meant something else.
So given what you have told me about olam, when the OT was translated into the LXX, they used the word aion, which supposedly means age. From my viewpoint that would show that the translators didn't understand the usage of olam to mean time without end. Is this a logical conclusion?
i'm not sure. as i said, i know very, very little about greek. it might simply be that there is no comparable word in greek? it's bit of a hard phrase to translate. but, should the greek word specifically NOT mean eternity, and CANNOT mean eternity, AND there is another word that would have been better fit for eternity, it would be a rather strong indication that "ad-olam" and "l'olam" were not read as "forever."
I couldn't find "olam" being used as an adjective the way that "aion" is in the NT.
while a lot of hebrew grammar is pretty straightforward, there are some weird little exceptions. i posted on above, where olam was being used
like an adjective as part of a noun phrase.
But the word used for eternal is "qedem".
that's actually a different idea. it might actually be closer to the greek "age." qedem is the word for "east" but is also used repeatedly to mean "ancient." in the strictest sense, i suppose we could say it's from the beginning of creation, or before. but implication,
i think is like eternal but in reverse (when applied to god, anyways). i'll have to check...