Oddly enough, as the author points out, there has so far been no full-fledged study of time in early Christianity. This claim is borne out by the massive bibliography. This striking and sorry fact only highlights the urgent need for a global study of the major shift in conceptions of time in late antiquity and its huge impact on Western attitudes to time up to the modern world. The book under review is a first step in fulfilling this desideratum.
Although he is a prolific scholar, endowed with broad interests in diverse aspects of the Classics’ Nachleben, Simon Goldhill remains primarily a student of Greek literature. As is well-known, classicists do not usually invest much effort in working on Christian literature of late antiquity. This book amply demonstrates how regrettable this common attitude is. Through his many suggestive discussions, Goldhill shows how much new light, on a large range of topics, a classicist can shed on topics traditionally discussed only by specialists, namely New Testament specialists, ecclesiastical historians and patristic scholars. Goldhill, moreover, is cognisant of both Hebrew and late antique Rabbinic literature, a fact which permits him to draw highly interesting comparisons between Christian and Jewish texts and traditions. Like other fields, early Christianity is too important to be left only in the hands of professionals. As is the case here, a view from outside may often suggest an important corrective to common (and deformed) perceptions.
The book is divided into two parts, more or less equal in scope. The ten chapters (the author refers to them as ‘essays’) of the first part are thematic, dealing with various aspects of time, or more precisely of its transformation in early Christianity. A brief listing of these essays’ titles may give at least the gist of the themes discussed: ‘God's time’, ‘the time of death’, ‘telling time’, ‘waiting’, ‘time and time again’, ‘making time visible’, ‘at the same time’, ‘timelessness and the now’, ‘life-times’ and ‘the rape of time’. Goldhill approaches these aspects as a literary scholar, calling attention to a vast array of texts taken from Christian, Greek, Roman and Jewish literatures. Such a broad contextualisation permits him to display not only the breadth of his knowledge, but also his great literary sensitivity. Indeed, the semantic shifts in attitudes to time represent something larger (and more difficult to clearly identify) than the transformation of mythological, theological or ritual patterns. Paul, the Revelation, the Gospel of John, Melito, Tatian, Origen, Eusebius, Benedict's Rule – and, of course, Plato and Aristotle – are among the authors and texts discussed. As expected, no one appears more often than Augustine, in different contexts, and from a number of viewpoints. As the author stresses, this book does not offer a detailed study of the birth of Christian time, as well as a chronological analysis of its early development in late antiquity.
The five studies in the second part deal with a number of texts from Christian authors. Chapter xi, on Nonnus’ Paraphrase of the Gospel of John, discusses the Nicene Creed's implicit perception of temporality and timelessness. Chapter xii considers Nonnus’ Dionysiaca and the concept of eternity implied in the figure of Aiōn, as well as questions raised by astrology and astronomy. In chapter xiii, a close reading of Gregory of Nazianzus’ Second theological oration offers Goldhill the opportunity to focus on rare words in order to understand better Christian narrative and performance. Ambrose's Hymns and their influence on Prudentius form the core of chapter xiv, which treats liturgical times of the days and of festivals. Finally, chapter xv examines Sulpicius Severus’ Life of Saint Martin of Tours, and scrutinises conceptions of the ages of humanity (rooted in the four empires of Daniel), for instance as expressed by Orosius. Christianity indeed changed history, and the historiographical project it formed would last throughout the Middle Ages. Goldhill is at his best in suggesting, through examples and literary textual analyses, the many ways in which Christianity transformed conceptions of time. These suggestions are appetising, and one wishes for more.
As a historian of religions, the present reader, however, hopes future research will take another approach to the problem at hand. A number of times, Goldhill refers to ‘the messianic religions of late antiquity’. He essentially refers, of course, to Judaism and Christianity. One might have expected ‘the Abrahamic religions’, today a more customary term to refer to late antique Judaism and Christianity (as well as, later, to Islam). Since Justin Martyr in the first half of the second century, Jews and Christians have both claimed to be Abraham's true children. Messianism points to the future, while Abraham points to the past. Both elements are necessary to understand the various ways in which Christians, as well as Jews, have understood the present in relationship to both illud tempus and to the (second) coming of the Messiah. With Constantine, the eschatological paroxysm at the core of nascent Christianity became neutralised, and the Parousia asymptotic. As to Gnosis, an important phenomenon not discussed by Goldhill (and which Harnack called ‘the acute Hellenization of Christianity’), it reflected a radical revolt against time.
In order to fully understand the complexity of early Christian attitudes to time, the self-definition of early Christianity as Verus Israel is crucial. It lies at the core of the duality of its Scriptures, New as well as Old Testament, both linked in an intricate web of intertextual reading. In his seminal study on the concept of figura, Erich Auerbach (who does not appear in the bibliography) showed how in the Christian mindset the past announces the present, and the present refers to the past. Auerbach's Mimesis, one will recall, starts with the two oldest texts of Western literature, the Iliad and Genesis. Just as members of other religious communities, early Christians functioned at once in a number of time systems. Understanding this fact more precisely remains a task for the future.
