Does ‘all’ mean ‘all’?
A few posts ago we looked at Romans 3:23-24 ('since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift'). The question addressed was. are 'all who have sinned' likewise all justified? If you remember, I stated that 'the "All" language could be used in Qumran in such a way that it didn't actually mean "all individual people"', and in this context referenced Gudrun Holtz. Since then I posted on Romans 11:26, 'all Israel will be saved' in which I noted an article that argues the 'all' doesn't quite mean 'all'.
Chrys Caragounis, Professor in New Testament Exegesis at Lund University, read our discussion relating to Romans 3:23-24 and kindly sent me his thoughts on the matter which I have uploaded here: Caragounis_Universal_Salvation.pdf. It is a single page pdf file, and I thought it best to leave it as such because of the variety of fonts.
I think he makes an important point, one which is rather strikingly obvious now he has pointed it out: 'all' doesn't always mean 'all' – though not on the basis of the use of כֹּל at Qumran, but on the flexible usage of πᾶσα, πᾶς, ὁλος, and ὁλη in Greek. Give his short note a read see what you think.