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The Biblical View of Time

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

James Muilenburg
James Muilenburg
Affiliation:
Union Theological Seminary, New York, New York
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Extract

It is by no means fortuitous that our contemporary world is deeply occupied with the problem of time. The literature which has gathered about this problem is not only abundant but also notable for the ways in which various disciplines have sought to wrestle with it. The natural scientist, the philosopher, the theologian, the historian, the sociologist, the poet, and the writer of fiction and drama have all engaged in a common encounter with the mystery of this basic givenness of our human existence. Yet, while it is true that periods like our own incite reflection on time's meaning, the problem plays a role in the history of human thought quite beyond that of the pressures and hazards of eras of social crisis.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , October 1961 , pp. 225 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1961

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References

1 Cf. Minear, Paul, Eyes of Faith (Philadelphia, 1946), p. 97Google Scholar: “The pivotal category in every philosophy of history is the concept of time; the pivotal reality in every perspective of life, whether or not it has been articulated in a conscious and systematic philosophy of history, is the sense of time.”

2 H. and H. A. Frankfurt (editors), The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (Chicago, 1946), p. 23Google Scholar. The words are from Frankfurt's opening chapter.

3 Erich Frank, Philosophical Understanding and Religious Truth, p. 65: Marsh, John, The Fulness of Time (London, 1952)Google Scholar. Cf. his words on p. 1: “Time is perhaps the focal as it is certainly a pressing problem of our age. It may seem simple and harmless enough to study its nature, but the results can be revolutionary. Einstein has brought about a revolution in our understanding of the universe, and Marx has provoked a series of revolutions in history. To study time is more than to seek a definition for a word; for while time is not itself, as we believe, the ultimate reality, it cannot properly be discussed unless questions of ultimate reality are asked, and, as far as may be, answered.”

4 William Wordsworth, “Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.”

5 Compare Psalm 39:4–6:

Lord, let me know my end,

and what is the measure of my days;

let me know how fleeting my life is!

Behold! thou hast made my days a few handbreadths,

and my lifetime is as nothing in thy sight.

Surely every man stands as a mere breath!

Surely man goes about as a shadow!

Surely for nought are they in turmoil:

man heaps up, and knows not who he will gather.

See also Psalm 144:4; Job 7:6; 13:25; 14:1–2.

6 So RSV. Cf. Greek, Syriac, and Targum.

7 The familiar line appears twice in Faust, first before Faust makes his pact with Mephistopheles:

Werd'ich zum Augenblicke sagen:

Verweile doch! du bist so schön!

Dann magst du mich in Fesseln schlagen,

Dann will ich gern zu Grunde gehn!

In the second part where Faust finally meets his destiny he says:

Zum Augenblicke dürft' ich sagen:

Verweile doch, du bist so schön!

Es kann die Spur von meinen Erdentagen

Nicht in Aeonen untergehen —

Im Vorgefühl von solchen hohen Glück

Geniess ich jetzt den höchsten Augenblick.

8 Physics, IV, 14, 223b21 cited by Erich Frank, Philosophical Understanding and Religious Truth, note 41, p. 82. See the detailed discussion. For a corrective to this somewhat partial and one-sided view, see Boman, Thorlieff, Das hebraeischen Denken im Vergleich mit dem griechischen, Second Edition (Goettingen, 1954), pp. 111 ff.Google Scholar; English translation, Hebrew Thought Compared with the Greek (Philadelphia, 1960), pp. 125 ff.Google Scholar, and Rudolf Bultmann's review of Boman's work in Gnomon (Band 27, 1955), pp. 55 ff. For the Platonic view of time as the moving image of a static and unmovable eternity, see the remarkable passage in the Timaeus (J. H. Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, Third edition, 1931, Vol. III, p. 456): “Wherefore he resolved to have a moving image of eternity, and when he set in order the heaven, he made this image eternal but moving according to number, while eternity itself rests in unity; and this image we call time. For there were no days and nights and months and years before heaven was created, and when he constructed the heaven, he created them also. They are all parts of time, and the past and future are created species of time, which we unconsciously but wrongly transfer to the eternal essence; for we say he ‘was,’ he ‘is,’ he ‘will be,’ but the truth is that ‘is’ alone is properly attributed to him, and that ‘was’ and ‘will be’ are only to be spoken of becoming in time, for they are motions, but that which is unmoveably the same cannot become older or younger by time….”

9 The Idea of Nationalism (New York, 1945), p. 31Google Scholar.

10 Heschel, A. J., The Sabbath (New York, 1951), p. 6Google Scholar; see also “Space, Time, and Reality,” Judaism (Vol. I, No. 3, July, 1952), pp. 262–273Google Scholar.

11 See especially Augustine's discussion in his Confessions, Book XI.

12 It is significant that we owe our measurement of clock time to Mesopotamia with its sexigesimal system of reckoning: a 360° circle with degrees each of 60 minutes, and minutes each of 60 seconds. Gordon, Cyrus H., Introduction to Old Testament Times (Ventnor, N.J., 1953), p. 1Google Scholar.

13 The road is understood only in relation to those who walk upon it, to those who know their starting-point and their destination, who pursue a course in life, and are called to decision at the crossroads. There are many different kinds of walking and of going; the Hebrew is careful to differentiate each.

14 Robinson, H. Wheeler, Inspiration and Revelation in the Old Testament (Oxford, 1946), pp. 109 ffGoogle Scholar. Note especially Appendix A on “The Vocabulary of Time.” The basic work on the terminology of time in the Old Testament is still von Orelli's Die hebraeischen Synonyma der Zeit und Ewigkeit genetisch und sprachvergleichend dargestellt (Leipzig, 1871). While some of his linguistic observations have been superseded, his understanding of the different movements of time is perceptive and illuminating (see esp. pp. 13–40).

15 John Marsh, The Fullness of Time, p. 20. But this must not be taken to mean that Israel does not know chronological time. Cf. Burrows, Millar, “Thy Kingdom Come,” JBL (LXXIV [1955], pp. 2 ff.)Google Scholar.

16 Compare the Gezer calendar from the latter part of the tenth century B.C.:

His two months are (olive) harvest,

His two months are planting (grain),

His two months are late planting;

His month is hoeing up flax,

His month is harvest of barley,

His month is harvest and feasting;

His months are vine-tending,

His month is summer fruit.

17 Compare the ancient Stoic who sought to eliminate temporality from life; his Entweltlichung is Entzeitlichung. Since he sees his own being in a timeless logos and concentrated completely upon the logos-being, he extricates himself from all conditions (Bedingungen) and thus negates the future for himself. His present is no true present, because it knows no decision before the future. See Rudolph Bultmann, Das Urchristentum, p. 161; English translation, Primitive Christianity, p. 144. See also pp. 149 ff.

18 Johannes Pedersen, Israel: Its Life and Culture, I–II, p. 488.

19 Pedersen, ibid., p. 488.

20 A. J. Heschel, The Sabbath, p. 9. In the Accadian creation myth, The Enuma elish, the epic culminates in the erection of the temple to Marduk at Babylon.

21 Pedersen, ibid., pp. 276–279, 475–479. Note p. 476: “When the Israelites speak, of their ancestor, then it is not as a remote figure which has disappeared long ago. He constantly shares in what happens, the history of the people is his.”

22 In the first nine chapters of I Chronicles Israel's generation history is illuminatingly comprehended in successive generations from Adam to David. “All Israel was enrolled by genealogies” (I Chron. 9:1). Compare Wheeler Robinson, Inspiration and Revelation in the Old Testment (p. 106): “But history, gathering the story of many generations, can show the depth of meaning in the divine will and at the same time its dynamic force. It can show the inner and outer worlds in their ceaseless interaction (cf. Amos iv. 13), creating the very values by which history will eventually pass judgment upon itself. History can show the working out of the divine pattern of which Nature is the warp and man the woof. It is no local accident and no provincial or racial idiosyncrasy that the revelation which holds the greatest place in the world's history should itself have been made through history.”

23 Hans Kohn, ibid., pp. 32 ff.

24 The relation of hearing to time is now increasingly understood. Cf., Boman, ibid., p. 142: “The sense which is plainly made for successive impressions is hearing. We see the spatial and hear the temporal.” See also pp. 206 f. With this judgment, compare Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism, pp. 30 ff.; Edmond Jacob, Theology of the Old Testament (English translation, New York, 1958) and especially the perceptive article by Erwin W. Straus, “Aesthesiology and Hallucination,” in Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology (Edited by Rollo May, New York, 1958). His discussion of the spectrum of the senses is important for an understanding of Hebraic mentality. Note his words on p. 158: “The eye is the agent for identification and stabilization, the ear an organ for perceiving the actuality of happenings. There exists in phenomena a temporal co-existence of sound and hearing, whereas the visible is peculiarly time-less with respect to the gaze which can rest on it, turn from it, and return to it. Cochlearis and vestibularis … are both parts of one organ, the actuality organ…. The cochlea informs us how our environment is at the moment directed toward us, the vestibularis directs us at the moment toward our environment.”

25 See the article on “The Faith of Israel,” by G. Ernest Wright in The Interpreter's Bible, Vol. I, pp. 349–389 for an application of this confessional history to a statement of biblical theology.

26 For an important statement of the relationship of time to the cult, see Rad, Gerhard von, Theologie des Alten Testaments, Vol. II (Munich, 1960), pp. 115 ffGoogle Scholar. “Ja man koennte vielleicht noch einen Schritt weiter gehen und die kult-ische Festzeit als die einzige Zeit in vollen Sinn des Wortes bezeichnen; weil doch nur sie im hoechsten Sinn des Wortes ‘gefuellte Zeit’ war …,” p. 116.

27 Walther Eichrodt, Man in the Old Testament, p. 27.

28 Jer. 29:11; cf. also 31:17: “There is hope for your future, says the LORD, and your children shall come back to their own country.” It should be added that both of these passages are considered late by some scholars. See Walther Eichrodt, “Heilserfahrung und Zeitverstaendnis im Alten Testament,” Theologische Zeitschrift, 12 Jahrgang (1956), pp. 103–125. “Das enge Verhaeltnis von Offen-barung und Geschichte bekommt seinen unmissverstaendlichen Ausdruck in der Beschreibung des Handelns Gottes als Ausfuehrung eines Heilsplanes, durch den die Offenbarung in der Geschichte zu ihrem Ziel gebracht wird. Von Gottes Heils-plan aber kann nicht anders geredet werden als durch den Hinweis auf bestimmte Punkte in der Zeit, die sich durch ihre besondere Bedeutung aus dem allgemeinen Zeitlauf herausheben und zu Marksteinen eines fortschreitenden Handelns Gottes zur Erreichung seines Zieles werden” (p. 106).

29 Burrows, Millar, An Outline of Biblical Theology (Philadelphia, 1946), p. 247Google Scholar.

30 Wheeler Robinson, Inspiration and Revelation in the Old Testament, p. 118, quotes with approval Sasse's words in Kittel's Theologisches Woerterbuch zum N.T., Vol. I, p. 202: “This doubled meaning which aion shares with ‘olam points back to a conception of eternity in which eternity and the duration of the world are identified.” It is very doubtful, however, whether ‘olam has the meaning of world in the O.T.; rather it represents a later development.

31 Jenni, Ernst, Das Wort ‘olam im Alten Testament (Berlin W 35, 1953), p. 25Google Scholar.

32 Geschichtliches und Uebergeschichtliches im Alten Testament. Theologische Studien und Kritiken. Beitraege zur Theologie und Religionswissenschaft. Band 109. 2. Heft, p. 28: “Bewusst hat der Prophet hier die Praeditake “Ewig” und “Schöpfer der ganzen Erde” nebeneinander gestellt, weil beiden zusammen erst die ganze, von allem Irdischen grundverschiedene Art und Machtfuelle seines Gottes zum Ausdruck bringt: die Raueme, Gott hat sie geschaffen, und die Zeit, Gott steht ueber ihr. Wichtig ist … diese Stelle auch darum, weil sie zeigt, dass Gottes Ewigkeit nicht etwas ist, was er fuer sich behalten will, sondern ein Wert, der seinem Volk, also Menschen, zugute kommen soil.”

33 Christ and Time, p. 63.