eternity

While in the popular mind, eternity often simply means existing for an infinite, i.e., limitless, amount of time, many have used it to refer to a timeless existence altogether outside of time. There are a number of arguments for eternity, by which proponents of the concept, principally Aristotle, purported to prove that matter, motion, and time must have existed eternally.

Eternity as a timeless existence
Saint Augustine of Hippo wrote that time exists only within the created universe (see creation), so that God exists outside of time; for God there is no past or future, but only an eternal present. One need not believe in God in order to hold this concept of eternity: for example, an atheist mathematician can maintain the philosophical tenet that numbers and the relationships among them exist outside of time, and so are in that sense eternal.

The biblical word eternal is used in place of the Hebrew word qedem קדם Strong's H6924 (east, antiquity, front, that which is before, aforetime), with an early reference in the biblical book of Job:

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