Time&Eternity

258 notes to chapter 2
playing a role. Von Rad’s account of the epochal, unique, and inestimable nature of Israel’s
conceptions of time does not appear to be completely free of a triumphalistic undertone.
By using non-biblical writings, Albrektson shows that the antithesis (which can also be
found in Mowinckel, Noth, Vriezen, etc.) of Israel’s God as the god of history and the surrounding
gods as nature gods is untenable and that the belief in historical events as divine
acts, which reveal anger or goodwill, is part of a common legacy in the Near East. The exaggerated
emphasis on historical events as the principal medium of revelation must therefore
be modified to the effect that divine revelation through the word is to be regarded as
something specific to Israelite thinking (Albrektson, History and the Gods, 11ff. and 120ff.).
Whitrow also believes that the claim of the uniqueness of Hebrew historical thought must
be revised by a positive reevaluation of Sumerian, Babylonian, and Persian (Zoroastrian)
influences (Time in History, 53f.). Instead, he attaches the linear concept of history—no
less exclusive, as it appears—to the New Testament, in particular to the unique event of
the crucifixion. “This essentially historical view of time, with its particular emphasis on
the non-repeatability of events, is the very essence of Christianity” (57).
35. According to Otto, one can easily find at least a dozen words in Egyptian that correspond
to our term time and thus mark different aspects of this concept (“Zeitvorstellungen
und Zeitrechnung im Alten Orient,” 744).
36. Morenz, Ägyptische Religion, 83; Egyptian Religion, 79. Cf. also Whitrow, Time in
History, 21–36: “Time at the Dawn of History” (prehistory of Egypt, the Sumerian and
Babylonian Kingdoms, and Iran).
37. Morenz, Ägyptische Religion, 79; trans., 76.
38. “.l.l. nicht oder jedenfalls nicht nur als absolute und quantitative Größe gegenüber,
sondern gibt ihr Relation und damit Qualität,” ibid., 80; trans., 76.
39. “Zeit wird Gefäß für eine erfüllte Gegenwart,” Hornung, Geist der Pharaonenzeit,
75. Cf. here also the pictorial depiction of time as an endless, two-strand rope that is being
unwound out of the mouth of the divinity: Time emerges from hidden, divine depths; it
unfolds into an ordered and structured continuum and falls back into the depths from
which it came (70).
40. “Die Jahre sind in seiner Hand,” Pap Berlin 3049 xiii 2, cited here according to
Morenz, Ägyptische Religion, 79; trans., 66.
41. “Der du die Zeit in Händen hast,” EG 64,1 [= GL 157,1], text from 1938.
42. Morenz, Ägyptische Religion, 84; trans., 80.
43. “.l.l. jeder hat seine Nahrung, und seine Lebenszeit ist berechnet.” From
Amenophis IV’s (Akhenaton) “Hymn to the Sun,” ca. 1370–1352 b.c.e., in which it is also
said of Re: “Du bist die Lebenszeit selbst, man lebt durch dich” (you are life [time] itself,
one lives through you), which is cited here according to the sources collected by Eliade,
Geschichte der religiösen Ideen, vol. 4, 37ff.; From Primitives to Zen, 179. Even if the religious
movement of Akhenaton remains a parenthesis in Egyptian history and thus lacks general
validity, it may well be justified to cite the “Hymn to the Sun” in this context due to the
commonalities with Ps. 104.
44. Otto, Zeitvorstellungen und Zeitrechnung, 749. Otto’s belief that a concept of time
is partially shaped by the spatial conception of the world can hardly be repudiated. But his
assumption that, in the case of Egypt, the geographical shape of the country affected the
understanding of time appears to be more speculative. On the Egyptian perspective, cf.
also Assmann, “Das Doppelgesicht der Zeit.” Colpe offers interesting comparative material
in Die Zeit in drei asiatischen Hochkulturen.
45. Gese, Geschichtliches Denken, 127–45.
46. Ibid., 142–44.
47. Rochberg-Halton and Vanderkam, “Calendars,” 816f.