BMCR 2009.02.16, Ilaria Ramelli, Terms for Eternity

Ilaria Ramelli, David Konstan, Terms for Eternity: aio^nios and ai+dios
in Classical and Christian Texts.  Piscataway, NJ:  Gorgias Press,
2007.  Pp. viii, 257.  ISBN 9781593336943.  $103.00.

Reviewed by B. N. Wolfe, Wolfson College, University of Oxford
([email protected])
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The work under review, by two distinguished scholars whose combined
fields of interest cover nearly all of the Classical and Late Antique
periods, examines two Greek adjectives meaning 'eternal'.  Where
'ai+dios' is a philosophical term strictly meaning "eternal" (with
subtler connotations dependent upon the philosophy in which it is
employed), 'aio^nios' can have a range of meanings, mostly connected to
'aio^n', "lifetime, age, epoch".

According to the introduction, this study was undertaken as a tangent
from work by Ramelli on apocatastasis, the doctrine of eventual
universal salvation.  It has been widely noted that while eternal life
is called 'ai+dios' in the New Testament, the future punishment of the
wicked is never termed anything but 'aio^nios'.  Does this provide
evidence for the apocatastatic view that punishment (viewed as
corrective, not retributive) will come to an end, and those punished
will also pass into eternal life?  Or is some other point being made
(for example, that the punished could simply lose their property of
being altogether)?  Or is it mere co-incidence?

The question turns on the meaning of the words, which may be determined
in two ways.  First, the composition of the forms may provide some
clue, and secondly, the deployment of the words in other authors may
indicate if there are any strict differences between 'aio^nios' and
'ai+dios'.  Ramelli and Konstan dispose of the formal question quickly
(p. 5).  'Aio^nios' is derived from the noun 'aio^n';  the adverb
'aiei' "always" gives rise to 'ai+dios'.  The rest of the book is
occupied with the second approach, cataloguing and excerpting every use
of either word in Classical (Archaic to Hellenistic, pp. 6-36),
Biblical and contemporary (pp. 37-70), Early Church and contemporary
(pp71-128), and post-Origen Patristic (pp. 129-236) authors.  The
volume's conclusion is less than three pages long.  For real
conclusions, readers will have to await the findings of Ramelli's
larger investigation.

Evidence such as that in 'Terms for Eternity' is difficult to present
at the best of times.  Since providing the context of each use of the
word is among the chief aims of the exercise, the material does not
lend itself to charts or tables.  Any organization beyond author and
chronology imposes some kind of hypothesis on the material, which
Ramelli and Konstan seem keen to avoid.  Still, this volume would have
stood better on its own if its authors had categorized the usages in at
least some way, even if only in a cross-referenced appendix.