The latin Bible, Vulgata, was pretty much the origin of the eternal hell doctrine, but its translator was a universalist
"Jerome only revised an existing Latin version as far as I know, the Latin speaking Tertullian who lived long ago before Jerome, also taught everlasting hell (as did many of the "Latin fathers" unlike the Greek)
Jerome himself was an universalist, later secretly; but in Jerome's writings are very many hints that he was an universalist as far as i know.
Latin aeternum didn't meant necessarily endless in Jerome's days, but I agree the Latin translation had a bad influence on later translations. But I think it's not true, that Jerome willfully corrupted the bible. He was only responsible for a revision of an already existing Latin bible."
(from this forum, in the comments thread below the headline "John MacArthur on hell (beliefs, pray, sinners, disciples)", the comment 13.6.2009, 03:29, by SvenM)
My comment: This comment above was an important confirmation of what I once wrote about the spirit seer Swedenborg, that aeternum (endless or aeonian/age-abiding in classical latin) does not seem to signify, or have to signify "endless time" in his writings, and this may explain why he in his later writings seems like a believer in eternal, endless punishments (so many Swedenborgians believe), while he clearly was a universalist in his early life (especially in his Spiritual Diary), and got revelations from heaven back then, of universal salvation, pure and simple apocatastasis, which he wrote down. Swedenborg seems to have read a lot of classical latin writings (he wrote all his published books in classical latin[1]), and therefore he could have used aeternum like the classical latin authors did, like the church father Jerome in his Vulgata translation did, because Jerome was clearly a universalist and more or less an "origenist" all his life (Origen was the greatest defender of apocatastasis/universalism in the time of the church fathers).
But for some reason, and this is a big mystery, which needs its own detectives, the readers of Vulgata began. little by little, to read "endless time" into the word aeternum. Maybe it could be interpreted in that way back then, or then a change in the culture and the latin language simply took place. All we know is that the great beginning of the official doctrine of eternal hell was when Augustine misunderstood the word aeternum in the Vulgata latin translation of Jerome, and (he could not read Greek) interpreted it to mean "endless time", and then we know that from Augustine on, the doctrine of eternal hell went from being heretic or heterodox, to becoming the only orthodoxy in the matter, in the West and in the western Catholic Church, the Latin church.
For deeper reading on the topic, see the article "How Eternal is Eternal?--Part 2" by Dr. Stephen Jones (I quote the most important from it here below:)
"The more important question is how Jerome viewed the meaning of the word aeternum. Being fluent in Greek, Jerome certainly knew the meaning of aionian. He must have known that the Latin word aevum, which (letter for letter) was almost identical to aion, was used to denote "lifetime, life, an age." According to Alexander Thomson's book, Whence Eternity?, page 20, "Aevum is never found in Latin standing for endless time."
On page 17, Thomson writes,
"Farrar says that even the Latin Fathers who had a competent knowledge of Greek knew that aeternum was used in the same loose way, for an indefinite period, in Latin writers, as aionion was used in Greek." "
[1] "SWEDENBORG'S LATIN I. We turn now to the Latin we find in Sweden borg's theological works. It may first be observed that this is not medieval Latin, but is a conscious revival of or return to classical Latin in vocabulary, morphology, and syntax." (from this book by G.F.Dole)
