In 1 Chron 16:36 we read:
Blessed be the Lord
God of Israel forever and ever. And all the people said, Amen, and praised the
Lord.
The Hebrew for "forever and
ever" is מִן־הָעוֹלָם וְעַד הָעֹלָם (literally,
"from the 'olam and until the 'olam"; cf. "ἀπὸ τοῦ αἰῶνος καὶ ἕως
τοῦ αἰῶνος" ["from the aionos and until the aionos" in the LXX).
Why is this interesting? As D. Charles
Pyle noted:
In this 1 Chronicles
passage, it speaks of blessing God forever and ever. But God was not praised in
this way by men on earth before those praising him ever began to praise
him, so we see the inherent limitation placed on the meaning of the phrasing
found there. (D. Charles Pyle, I
Have Said Ye are Gods: Concepts Conducive to the Early Christian Doctrine of
Deification in Patristic Literature and the Underlying Strata of the Greek New
Testament Texts (Revised and Supplemented) [North Charleston, N.C.: CreateSpace, 2018], 220)
Such has implications for the common abuse
of Psa 90:2 and even Moroni 8:18 among many of our critics as, at least in the Chronicles text, there is a temporal "beginning" to the 'olam and it is not inherently "timeless." For more, see the
listing of articles at:
