In his recent translation of the New Testament, David Bentley Hart offered this translation for Matt 25:46:
And these will go to the chastening of that Age, but the just to the life of that Age.
This differs from the KJV and other translations which render the verse thusly:
And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
The Greek reads:
καὶ ἀπελεύσονται οὗτοι εἰς κόλασιν αἰώνιον, οἱ δὲ δίκαιοι εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον.
The note for this verse reads as follows:
The word κολασις (kolasis) originally meant “pruning” or “docking” or “obviating the growth” of trees or other plants, and then came to mean “confinement,” “being held in check,” “punishment,” or “chastisement,” chiefly with the connotation of “correction.” Classically, the word was distinguished (by Aristotle, for instance) from τιμωρια (timōria), which means a retributive punishment only. Whether such a distinction holds here is difficult to say, since by late antiquity kolasis seems to have been used by many to describe punishment of any kind; but the only other use of the noun in the New Testament is in 1 John 4:18, where it refers not to retributive punishment, but to the suffering experienced by someone who is subject to fear because not yet perfected in charity. The verbal form, κολαζω (kolazō) appears twice: in Acts 4:21, where it clearly refers only to disciplinary punishment, and in 2 Peter 2:9 in reference to fallen angels and unrighteous men, where it probably means being held in check” or “penned in” [until the day of judgment]. (David Bentley Hart, The New Testament: A Translation [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017], 53 n. w)
Elsewhere, commenting on the meaning of the term αἰώνιος, Hart writes:
Aiōnios is an adjective drawn from the substantive αιων (aiōn, or aeon), which can sometimes mean a period of endless duration, but which more properly, throughout the whole of ancient and late antique Greek literature, means “an age,” or “a long period of time” of indeterminate duration or even just “a substantial interval” . . . the adjective aiōnios, unlike the adjective αιδιος (aïdios) or adverb αει (aei, never clearly means “eternal” or “everlasting” in any incontrovertible sense, nor does the noun aiōn simply mean “eternity” in the way that the noun αιδιοτης (aïdiotēs) does; neither does aiōnios mean “endless,” as ατελευτος (ateleutos) or ατελευτητος (ateleutētos) does; and, in fact, there are enough instances in the New Testament where the adjective or the noun obviously does not mean “eternal” or “eternity” that it seems to me unwise simply to presume such meanings in any instances at all . . . A perfect example of the word’s ambiguity can be found in Romans 16:25-26, where in successive verses it is used first of “times ages past” or “times ages-long” (χρονοις αιωνιος [chronois aiōniois]) and then of “the eternal God” or “the enduring God” or even perhaps “the God of Ages” (του αιωνιου θεου [tou aiōniou theou]), though practically no translation gives any clue that the same word is being used in both formulations . . . Late in the fourth century, 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) . . . Late in the fourth century, for instance, Basil the Great, bishop of Caesarea, reported that the vast majority of his fellow Christians (at least, in the Greek-speaking East with which he was familiar)assumed that “hell” is not an eternal condition, and that the “aiōnios punishment” of the age to come would end when the soul had been purified of its sins and thus prepared for union with God. (Ibid., 538, 539)
