The phrase "unto the ages of ages" expresses either the idea of

eternity Eternity, in common parlance, is an Infinity, infinite amount of time that never ends or the quality, condition or fact of being everlasting or eternal. Classical philosophy, however, defines eternity as what is timeless or exists outside tim ...

, or an indeterminate number of aeons. The phrase is a translation of the original Koine Greek phrase (), which occurs in the original Greek texts of the Christian

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

(e.g. in Philippians 4:20). In the Latin

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, the same phrase is translated as .

Meaning and translations

The phrase possibly expresses the eternal duration of God's attributes, but it could also be an idiomatic way to represent a very long passage of time. Other variations of the phrase are found at (e.g. Ephesians 3:21), as εἰς πάσας τὰς γενεὰς τοῦ αἰῶνος τῶν αἰώνων, ἀμήν, here referring to the glory of

God the Father God the Father is a title given to God in Christianity. In mainstream trinitarian Christianity, God the Father is regarded as the first Person of the Trinity, followed by the second person, Jesus Christ the Son, and the third person, God th ...

; this may be translated as "from all generations for ever and ever, Amen", "for ages unto ages", or similar phrases. The translation of ''aiōnes'' can be temporal, in which case it would correspond to the English "ages". Then again, it can be spatial, translated as "world" or "universe", and then one would need to translate in spatial terms, describing the cosmos so as to include both the heavenly and earthly world. According to scholar David Bentley Hart: “Much depends, naturally, on how content one is to see the Greek adjective ', ''aionios'', rendered simply and flatly as "eternal" or "everlasting." It is, after all, a word whose ambiguity has been noted since the earliest centuries of the church. Certainly the noun αἰών, ''aion'' (or aeon), from which it is derived, did come during the classical and late antique periods to refer on occasion to a period of endless or at least indeterminate duration; but that was never its most literal acceptation. Throughout the whole of ancient and late antique Greek literature, an "aeon" was most properly an "age," which is simply to say a "substantial period of time" or an "extended interval." At first, it was typically used to indicate the lifespan of a single person, though sometimes it could be used of a considerably shorter period (even, as it happens, a single year). It came over time to mean something like a discrete epoch, or a time far in the past, or an age far off in the future", and also " John Chrysostom, in his commentary on Ephesians, even used the word ''aiōnios'' of the kingdom of the

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specifically to indicate that it is ''temporary'' (for it will last only till the end of the present age, he explains)".

New Testament

In the New Testament, the phrase occurs twelve times in the

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alone, and another seven times across the epistles, but not in the Four Gospels: * Galatians 1:5: "... δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων, ἀμήν." * Philippians 4:20: "" * 1 Timothy 1:17: "" * 2 Timothy 4:18: "" *

Hebrews The Hebrews (; ) were an ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic-speaking people. Historians mostly consider the Hebrews as synonymous with the Israelites, with the term "Hebrew" denoting an Israelite from the nomadic era, which pre ...

13:21: "" * 1 Peter 4:11: "" *

Revelation Revelation, or divine revelation, is the disclosing of some form of Religious views on truth, truth or Knowledge#Religion, knowledge through communication with a deity (god) or other supernatural entity or entities in the view of religion and t ...

1:6: "" *5:13: "" *7:12, 10:6, 11:15, 15:7, 19:3, 20:10, 22:5: ""

Hebrew Bible

Some verses in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Psalm 90:2), or ( Jeremiah 25:5), or ( Nehemiah 9:5). All these slightly different variations mean more or less the same: "(and) from (the) age to (the) age". The Hebrew , which appears in verses such as Micah 4:5, was rendered in Greek LXX as ', in Latin as ', and in English Bible translations usually as "for ever and ever". In translations such as

Young's Literal Translation Young's Literal Translation (YLT) is a translation of the Bible into English, published in 1862. The translation was made by Robert Young, compiler of '' Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible'' and ''Concise Critical Comments on the New Te ...

, it is usually rendered as a finite duration, e.g. Nehemiah 9:5 "from the age unto the age,". In

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

, the same phrase was rendered as (''lalmey almaya'', literally "from the eternity of eternities" or "from the world of worlds"), for instance in the Kaddish, an important prayer in Jewish liturgy.

Christian liturgical use

The formula has a prominent place in Christian liturgies of both the Latin Rite and the Byzantine Rite, in the

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and the

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: Trinitarian doxologies ending with the formula conclude the Psalms (e.g., the '' Gloria Patri''), many prayers spoken by the priest, and hymns such as ' by

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or '' Veni Creator Spiritus''. When it is followed by an Amen, the last two words (''sæculorum, Amen'') may be abbreviated “ Euouae” in Mediaeval

musical notation Musical notation is any system used to visually represent music. Systems of notation generally represent the elements of a piece of music that are considered important for its performance in the context of a given musical tradition. The proce ...

. Vernacular liturgical traditions often do not translate the Greek and Latin formula literally: English translations of Christian prayers issued in 1541 by

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1541 and appearing in the later ''

Book of Common Prayer The ''Book of Common Prayer'' (BCP) is the title given to a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion and by other Christianity, Christian churches historically related to Anglicanism. The Book of Common Prayer (1549), fi ...

'' replace it with the phrase “world without end”; the German

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tradition reads “''von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit''” (“from eternity to eternity”), which is probably based on Old Testament formulas such as Psalm 90:2, Jeremiah 25:5, and Nehemiah 9:5 (quoted in Hebrew, above).

Meaning and translations

New Testament

Hebrew Bible

Christian liturgical use

See also

References

Further reading