The “divine interchange” principle of Bible interpretation: Otis Q. Sellers on olam’s control of aion, Part 1

Otis Q. Sellers, Bible Teacher (1901-1992)

As some of you know, my current project is a study of the life and thought of independent Bible teacher Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992). Many times on this blog I’ve written about him and his eschatology (“end times” theology; see list of links at the end of this post), but there was much more to his thought. He brought to his study of “what comes next” insights not immediately related to how the present administration (or dispensation) of grace will end or the inauguration of the next one, the Premillennial Kingdom of God.

Sellers spent decades correcting popular misunderstandings of Biblical terms and phrases—e.g., “soul,” “hell,” “church,” “born again”—and these corrections informed his understanding of the Premillennial Kingdom (specifically the Day of Lord). This post is the first of a series on one of his principles of Bible interpretation, namely, that of Divine Interchange.

An 1875 study perpetuating the mistranslations.

When you read or hear the word “eternal,” what comes to mind? Timeless? What about everlasting? Something that never expires? These are common translations of the Hebrew word עוֹלָם‎ (olam) and the Greek αἰών (aion) in English Bibles.

But they are mistranslations.

It was Sellers’s considered opinion that αἰών (aion) is the divine equivalent of עוֹלָם‎ (olam). In “The Divine Interchange Principle,” Sellers began by critically examining a common practice of many Bible students.

Those who interpret the Bible without being guided by clearly defined principles usually end up by making God’s Word to mean what they want it to mean. It seems that many interpreters want it this way. They operate without any laws, principles, or rules of any kind. This allows them to force the Word to yield to them and frees them from any obligation to conform to the Word. There are those who will adopt principles of interpretation up to a certain point, but when they get into a bind and the Word does not say what they want it to say, they ignore the principle and interpret as they please. (“The Divine Interchange Principle,” Seed & Bread, 125; hereafter, SB125)[1]

And so he offered a principle that guided his work:

Many years ago, I came upon the . . . Principle of Divine Interchange. It was not new; many had seen it before me, but I found it for myself, gave it a name, and put it into use . . . :

Hebrew and Greek words that are used interchangeably by the Holy Spirit are identical in value and meaning.

The Hebrew word as used in the Old Testament is the primary word and the Greek word used in its place in New Testament quotations means exactly the same, no matter what nuances of meaning it may have had among the Greeks. The Greek word must conform to the Hebrew, and not the other way around. (SB125)

The principle follows from Sellers’s presupposition concerning the nature of the Bible. He believed that whoever affirms the divine inspiration of Scripture must accept hades as the equivalent of sheol in that New Testament verse. Therefore, he reasoned, what we understand about the latter holds for the former, for “if sheol and hades are not equivalent in meaning and value, then David did not say what he is said to have said in Acts 2:27.”

A theology of divine inspiration, not a secular theory of linguistics, determined Sellers’s thinking.

Sheol is a word of divine origin, and its true meaning can be gathered only from its divine usage in the Old Testament. . . . If the meaning of a word cannot be obtained from sixty-five sentences in which it is found, then there is no way of obtaining its meaning, and it may as well be excised from all languages as a nonsense word.

The Greek word hades is a word of human origin and it comes to us surrounded by all kinds of human traditions that had their origins in human imagination. The basic meaning of hades from Homer on down was “the state of the dead.” However, the Greeks with their Platonic ideas of the soul and immortality began to build ideas into this word about the state of souls, bliss, punishment, etc. All this foolishness may have clouded its true and basic meaning, but it could not wipe it out. Its basic meaning was entirely congruent with the basic meaning of sheol, so it was the word selected by the Holy Spirit to express what David had said. . . . Thus, by the Principle of Divine Interchange sheol and hades mean the same, they have the same value. (SB125)

Unfortunately, a culturally reinforced inhibition works against the use of this principle. The “proper way to make a study of sheol,” Sellers thought, “would be to begin with this word in the Old Testament, examining every passage, then carrying on through every occurrence of hades, treating these as if they were the same word.” But most “men want to start with the English word ‘hell,’ attach to it all the wild meanings that men have devised and imagined, read all of this into the words sheol and hades, wherever it is convenient, then insist that this unholy mess of ideas is the true meaning of these words.”

Sellers developed his meaning with the parallel he discerned between olam/aion and the Hebrew word qahal and the Greek ekklesia.

These [latter] two words are used interchangeably by the Holy Spirit, and true understanding of the word ekklesia must come out of an understanding of the word qahal. . . [T]here are reverent scholars who insist that Jesus Christ, a Hebrew, speaking to twelve men who were also Hebrews, said to them, “Upon this rock I will build my qahal.” I am inclined to agree with this.” [Sellers then quotes Psalm 22:22 and Hebrews 2:12:]

I will declare Thy name unto My brethren, in the midst of the congregation (qahal) will I praise Thee.

I will declare Thy Name unto My brethren, in the midst of the church (ekklesia) will I sing praise unto Thee.

Certainly “since ekklesia, a word of human origin, is used in the New Testament as the equivalent of the Hebrew word qahal, a word of divine origin, the meaning of ekklesia should be obtained, not from human philosophies and imaginations, but from the divine usage of qahal in the Old Testament.”(SB125)

Again, Sellers would argue, if qahal and ekklesia are not equivalent, then the Psalmist did not say what Paul took him to have said in Hebrews 2:12.

Sellers noted an inconsistency in how some Bible students approach this problem. “There are those who will accept the Principle of Divine Interchange in regard to some words such as sheol and hades, but refuse to even consider that ekklesia was the word chosen by the Holy Spirit to express the truth of the word qahal.” Such consideration involves spadework: “. . . I have written notes on each of the 123 occurrences of the noun [qahal] and the 39 occurrences of the verb [qahal].” (SB125)

Sellers then draws an inference that pertains to God’s future global Kingdom:

In understanding the word qahal we need to recognize that if one nation is given by God a mediatorial position in regard to all other nations, then that nation becomes a qahal or ekklesia. When Isaac sent Jacob to Padan-aram to seek a wife, his parting words were: “And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be an ekklesia (qahal) of peoples” (Genesis 28:3). This is the first occurrence of qahal in the Old Testament. (SB125)

There are other telling examples:

In the second occurrence [of qahal] (Genesis 35:11) God declared that a nation, even an ekklesia (qahal) of nations would come out of Jacob. In Genesis 48:4, Jacob declared to Joseph that God had promised to make him (Jacob) an ekklesia (qahal) of peoples (note the plural).

In Genesis 49:6 qahal is translated ‘assembly.’ This had to do with the tribal council of Simeon and Levi. They were heads of their tribes, and they had appointed men to regulate all tribal matters. However, Jacob was superior to them as he was head of all twelve tribes. This councilor ekklesia represented Simeon and Levi, but Jacob avowed that it did not represent him.

Interestingly, in “Numbers 10:7 the noun [qahal] and the verb [qahal] are found in the same sentence. The noun is translated “congregation” and the verb is translated “gathered together.” (SB125)

There is yet another parallel, and this time the pair is the Hebrew word nephesh and the Greek psyche. These two words, traditionally translated “soul,” are “interchangeable [as] demonstrated by comparing Psalm 16:10 and Acts 2:27”:

For thou wilt not leave my soul (nephesh) in hell (sheol); neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.

Because thou wilt not leave my soul (psyche) in hell (hades), neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.

Also, respectively, we have Genesis 2:7 and 1 Corinthians 15:45:

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (nephesh).

And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul (psyche); the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.

Nephesh occurs 754 times in the Old Testament; psyche, 105 times in the New. “A consideration of every occurrence,” Sellers writes, “will show that ‘soul’ is a term applied by the Spirit of God to all beings that have sensory capacity. This is the primary and foundational meaning of both the Hebrew and Greek words.”

Its primary meaning can be seen in its first occurrences (Genesis 1:20-21, 24, 30) where it is applied to animal life. Then it is applied to man in Genesis 2:7 when the breath of life gave him all sensory capacities and he became a living soul. But it is never used in any way in any occurrence that violates its primary meaning. This is one of the glories of the Word of God and positive proof of its divine authorship. . . . [T]his one word is used consistently and accurately with the same fundamental meaning all the way from Genesis 1:20 to Revelation 20:4. (SB125)

Again, if nephesh and psyche are not equivalent, then Moses did not say what Paul took him to have said in 1 Corinthians 15:45.

Back to aion. First, Sellers says he’ll take the English transliteration “eon” as “an exact equivalent of the Greek word.” There must, he says, “be a complete and objective study of the Greek word aion along with its related adjective aionios.”

. . . this word [aion] is translated “ever” in 71 of its 128 occurrences. . . . [T]he Bible has a vast amount to say about this thing that is called “ever.” However, both the Hebrew and Greek words usually translated “ever” are nouns, and since a noun is the name of a person, place, or thing, then the question naturally arises, “What is this thing called ‘ever’?” (SB125; my emphasis—A.F.]

Sellers bluntly asserts that the “word ‘ever’ in many passages is an absurdity. . . . One does not need to be a scholar to realize that when in a translation a noun is treated as if it were an adverb, something is wrong.”

Yes, aion is rendered “age” in some translations of Ephesians 2:7 and Colossians 1:26, but for Sellers this merely cashes in “one enigmatic word for another.” Many interpreters are sure they have an answer. “An age,” they confidently assert, “is an indefinite but relatively long period of time.”

The Concordant Version Lexicon defines aion as being “the longest segment of time known in the Scriptures.” . . . . This is a mistake, for an eon is not a period of time. This can be easily demonstrated by substituting the idea of “period of time” into the passages where aion is found, especially those where the double plural occurs. These certainly do not set forth any such idea as “the long periods of time of the long periods of time.”

. . . The King James Version shows this by giving thirteen different translations of this word [aion] ranging from “ever” to the circumlocution “while the world standeth.” [Richard Francis] Weymouth . . . translated aion consistently by “age” and the adjective aionios by “of the ages.” [Joseph Bryant] Rotherham used “age” and “age-abiding,” but these renderings, while consistent, provide no help in a search for the truth. (“The Problem of Aion,” Seed & Bread 126; hereafter, SB126)

Although Sellers believed aion exactly rendered olam, he did not believe that any one English word exactly translated aion. What to do?

There are those who think that since an eon is spoken of in Scripture as having a beginning and an end, it has to be a period of time. In my [Sellers’s] opinion this is shallow thinking. It is based upon the following syllogism:

All things that have a beginning and an end are periods of time.

An eon has a beginning and an end.

Therefore, an eon is a period of time. (SB126)

The syllogism is valid (the conclusion follows from the premises), but unsound: the major premise is false. A man has a beginning and an end, but a man is not a period of time. The presidential administration of Abraham Lincoln, for example, corresponded to (took place in) a period of time, but to define it as such tells us nothing at all about those four years:

Since everything in existence except the Deity is linked up with and subject to time, it is quite simple to relate anything to time if one wishes to do so. . . . [I]t is my opinion that the word “eon” has nothing to do with time, either long, short, or endless. An eon may exist, be active, or take place in a period of time, even as a war takes place in a time period, but a war has nothing to do with time as such. . . . [E]ven when a period of time is called an eon, it still leaves us with the puzzling question: “What is an eon?” (SB126)

To be continued.

Notes

[1] Seed and Bread is Sellers’s series of four-page leaflets that set forth his research. He produced 196 of them in late 1970’s and early 1980s. They are freely available online. In this post I cited SB125 and SB126. Clicking on their links at seedandbread.org will download the pdf of that issue.

Links to previous posts on Otis Q. Sellers