The literal mirror translation of the phrase "εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων" is "
into the age the ages." The Wiktionary definition of αἰώνων
(aiónon) m[masculine] genitive plural of αἰῶνας
aionas. 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; 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 devil specifically to indicate that it is temporary'' (for it will last only till the end of the present age, he explains)". ==New Testament==