In his great book The Idea of the Holy, R. Otto analysed what he regarded as the ‘a priori’ category of holiness. Holiness properly belongs, he argues, to the sphere of religion. The word ‘is, indeed, applied by transference to another sphere—that of ethics—but it is not itself derived from this … if the ethical element was present at all at any rate it was not original and never constituted the whole meaning of the word’. As Israelite religion develops, the ethical element gains prominence ‘The venerable religion of Moses marks the beginning of a process which from that point onwards proceeds with ever-increasing momentum, by which the numinous is throughout rationalised and moralised, i.e. charged with ethical import, until it becomes the “holy” in the fullest sense of the word. The culmination of the process is found in the Prophets and in the Gospels.’

The problem which is pursued in this essay can be expressed in the following question: to what extent and in what form is the idea of the promise of land and progeny to be traced to the patriarchs? This is a problem of the History of Religion, and stems directly from the post-Wellhausen estimate of Hebrew history and religion which was facilitated by external archaeological data and internal biblical research inspired and informed by the principles of Formgeschichte.

The twin themes of life and death are far more moving than the vast impersonalities of time and space. All four of these concepts represent primary categories in the sphere of philosophical thought. The former two, however, have an intensely personal quality about them. Funerals and births remind us that such realities cannot be ignored. For those who have the means to measure it, time can become a signpost pointing to the approach of death.