ABSTRACT
Any discussion regarding whether the world is eternal depends on the meaning we assign to the terms “eternal” and “world.” The usual historical sense assigned to the concept of an “eternal world” is that which Aristotle used: a world without beginning or end, so that our world may be said to have an eternal past and an infinite future. Many pagan Greeks, however, were prepared to believe that our world, and any other world that might exist, had a beginning but that the matter from which it was formed had neither beginning nor end and was, therefore, eternal.
