PMW 2026-083 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.

Introduction
As noted previously I am working on the book dealing with the two ages in Scripture. These two ages make up the two ages of redemptive history, which is widely misunderstood by dispensationalists and hyperpreterists. I will now provide a brief, two-part series on the two biblical terms that are foundational to the two-age conception.

What are the particular terms framing the Two Age doctrine? Basically two words are used to establish the concept, one from Hebrew/Aramaic texts, the other from Greek texts. Those words are: ôlâm in Hebrew and aiõn in Greek. I will consider the lexical meaning of the older term first. Later we will see how it functions in specific contexts as a theological construct.

The Key OT Term
The “two ages” is not actually presented as a theological construct in the Old Testament. However, the key Old Testament term that eventually comes to designate the two ages concept in late Second Temple Judaism is ôlâm. This common Hebrew word occurs almost 440 times in the OT, with an additional twenty times in its Aramaic portions (TDOT 10: 531). But what is the meaning of this term?

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TDOT (10:531) offers the following translations: “long time” or “farthest, remotest time.” Additionally, TLOT (2: 852, 853) states that it speaks of the “most remote time,” even noting that it can refer to the most remote time “either with a view to the past.., to the future, or to both.” TWOT (2: 672) agrees, noting that it speaks of “most distant times,” declaring that it “came to be used to refer to a long age or period.”

Thus, not surprisingly NIDOTTE (3: 345) agrees, noting that ôlâm can express large expanses of time. It begins its definition with: “long time, constancy, for all time.” It can even speak of “unceasingness or perpetuity” (3: 349), signifying eternity, forever — which is quite a long time!

So as we can see, ôlâm lends itself easily to our modern understanding of the English word “age” as a long period of time. This will become significant in late Second Temple Judaism even into Rabbinic Judaism (e.g., Pate 1995: 44; see ch. 2 below). This takes on an important theological use as Judaism begins developing its Two Age theology from seemingly contradictory statements found in the Old Testament.

And though ôlâm almost universally carries a temporal significance, it eventually develops a spatial meaning as well. So, in TDOT (10: 543, 544) we read that in Daniel, it “acquires the meaning of ‘world/age of the world’ … something then developed further in early Jewish literature.” Indeed, in Sirach 3:18 (ms. A) it “means something like ‘world’” (see also Wis. 13:9). Consequently, around 175–90 BC “Sirach stands clearly in a transitional situation with regard to the development of the term ôlâm, with traditional meanings continuing, new ones announcing themselves, and many texts clearly hovering between the old and the new and thus eluding unequivocal determination.”

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NIDNTT (3: 829) agrees, pointing out that this development comes to full expression shortly thereafter:

“it is only in rabbinic Judaism at the turn of the era and in the apocalyptic of the 1st cent. A.D. (e.g. 2 Esd.) that one finds a quite new use of ‘ôlâm, which exhibits a spatial significance as well as a temporal one…. The OT statements concerning primal and final time (Isa. 24–27; Joel 2) are here systematized into a doctrine of the two worlds (aeons).”

Vos (2024: 19) observes that “in the Similitudes of Enoch several times ‘the creation of the world’ occurs. Here the idea of creation forbids us to think of ‘age.’ The passages are 48:6–7; 69:16–18; 71:15.” These texts read:

Similitudes 48:6–7: “And for this reason hath he been chosen and hidden before Him, / Before the creation of the world and for evermore. / And the wisdom of the Lord of Spirits hath revealed him to the holy and righteous; / For he hath preserved the lot of the righteous, / Because they have hated and despised this world of unrighteousness, / And have hated all its works and ways in the name of the Lord of Spirits.”

Similitudes 69:160–18: “And these are the secrets of this oath, and they are strong through this oath, and Heaven was suspended, before the world was created, and forever. And through it the earth was founded upon the water, and from the hidden recesses of the mountains come beautiful waters, from the creation of the world and perpetually. And through that oath the sea was created, and as its foundation, for the time of anger, he placed for it the sand, and it does not go beyond it, from the creation of the world and for ever.”

Similitudes 71:15: “He shall proclaim peace to you in the name of the world that is to become.”

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Gaffin (2019: 284) notes in this regard that “the two-aeon distinction as it emerged in Second Temple Judaism involved a semantic development experienced by the Hebrew ôlâm … and aion [see next article] in Hellenistic Judaism…. What in each instance was originally a time word took on a spatial meaning…. These words, as they are employed in the two-aeon scheme, can mean either ‘age’ or ‘world.’” DJBP (p. 9) agrees.

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