The Bible Idea of Time: How Archaic Hebrew Thought Is Constructed Differently than Our Thought Today
Kerry A. Shirts
When we read the Bible, we all try to understand it as we can from our perspective. The assumptions we bring to this table is our ideas are ancient Israel’s ideas. This is false. This is projecting our views onto another age, which is sloppy methodology, and leads to many errors about what the Bible means.
As Gerhard Von Rad notes that our thinking of time is not the same as ancient Israel’s thinking of time.1
"Hebrew thought does not construct the truth as a philosophical system; rather it is essentially the response to an event."2
In the early stages of the Bible, history, time, and reality were not thought of as we think of them, as a linear progression through time and history as one event after another. This is a difficult concept to understand, but one which we must if we are to comprehend what the Bible means and says. One particular difficulty we have is in understanding the Bible ideas concerning the creation, and how and what time is involved with it. It is my firm belief that the entire discussion between science and religion has been largely incorrect on both sides, as neither appear to realize the need of understanding the Bible and ancient Hebrew thought processes on its own terms, rather than those imposed onto the Bible from both scientists and religionists of our day. A lot of wrangling can stop once we realize what it is the ancients thought, and how their writings demonstrates, that for them, there is consistency to their view of reality. It is not, by any means our reality, but then again, our reality changes every day. Our reality of time may very well not be correct, though we live in it every single day. "The attitude of Western man to linear time is, generally speaking, naïve; time is seen as an infinitely long straight line on which the individual can mark can mark such past and future events as he can ascertain. This time-span has a midpoint, which is our present day. From it the past stretches back and the future forwards. But today one of the few things of which we can be quite sure is that this concept of absolute time, independent of events, and, like the blanks on a questionnaire, only needing to be filled up with data which will give it content, was unknown to Israel."3 Our ephemeral outlook is precisely one of the differences with ancient Hebrew thought. Let me try and illustrate this with some examples from the Bible.
In the actual language of Hebrew, the nature of the Hebrew word etymologically is derived from the verb demonstrating that the action has preceded the thinking process of designation. The way Hebrew syntax legislates the order of the phrase puts the verb expressing the action before the consciousness of the thinking subject.4
This is demonstrated perfectly in the Bible with its beginning with the beginning, a non-human event. "The human involvement is described only as a passive reception, or an enjoyed reaction that comes after the event…" (Gen. 2:1-3, cf. Exodus 20:8-11). Likewise the Israelite theology of salvation is based and drawn from the event of the Exodus from Egypt, (Exodus 20:2; Deuteronomy 5:6; Isaiah 40:3). Exodus 24:7 illustrates this rather graphically in Israel’s response to Gods giving of the Law:
(mf#$:niw: h#&e(jna n’aseh venishma’ "We shall do, then we shall obey."
Instead of thinking from cause to effect as we do, the ancient Israelites reason from effect to cause! And Micah 1:10-15 demonstrates this showing that the cities that mourn for the exiles are listed before the cities that gave up exiles. First the effect, then the cause.5 The Hebrews did not say "I think, therefore I am," they said, "I am, therefore I think."6 Interestingly, Descartes, in relation to spiritual thinking had it exactly backwards. He should have said "I am despite the fact that I am thinking."7 This is quite similar to the ancient Hebrew thinking, who believed that experience is the reality, and history and time happens as many events, i.e. experiences.
Knowing something in the ancient Hebrew thought, was not merely observing and analyzing something or someone. Knowing is the result of experience, such as a walk with someone (Ps. 95:10), and the personal commitment one had with that person.
The same thing with intelligence. It was not the ability to analyze, think out, etc., but it was a gift, which was given. Intelligence is the ability to receive to the ancient Hebrew. It is the ability to listen, to be open to the experience which comes first. Significantly, in Hebrew, the seat of intelligence was thought to reside in the ears.
Isaiah 50:5:
Ytig2:w,sn: )2l rw2x)f ytiyrimf )2l ykin2)fw: Nze)2 yli xtap,f hwihy: ynfd2)j
‘Adonai Yahweh patach li’ ‘ozen va’anoki lo’ mariyti ‘achor lo’ nesugoti
"The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears, and I have not been rebellious."
Job 12:11:
Nxfb:ti Nyl,imi Nze)o )lohj
Halo’ ‘ozen miliyan tivechan
"Does not the ears test words?
The important thing to understand with the ancient Hebrews is that intelligence is associated with the word (ma#$f shama’, "listen." This follows the performance of the action h#&(f ‘asah, "to do." Intelligence is not conceived of as the ability of intellectual minds, but is conceived of as a gift from the outside, hence it belongs to the category of revelation. We see this at Psalms 119:25: (cf. also Ps 119:144; Job 32:8)
Kfrebfd:k,I yniy,iIxa y#$ip:na rpf(fle hqfb:d,f
Davaqa le’apar napeshi chayeni kidevarekah
"I am laid low in the dust; renew my life according to your word."8
In order to further help us understand what the ancient Hebrews thought of time, it helps to understand his thought processes of what the world is, which is always tied in with the creation. There is no Hebrew word for denoting what the space is around them so they have the phrase Cre)fwf Myima#$, shamayim va’aretz, "Heavens and earth." This expression is always associated with the creation (Gen. 1:1; Isa. 65:17; Jer. 33:25; Ps 115:15; 121:2; 124:8; 134:3; 146:6, etc.). Hence the world is fundamentally committed to the creation. The expression Cre)fwf Myima#$, Heavens and earth, applies only to the human universe and does not refer to other worlds outside the human experience.This is about the created world that man is a part of. The ancient Hebrew was not being "scientifically objective" concerning the reality of the world at all. It is only the created world that interested him in the Bible. This is from where the Hebrew drew all his theological implications.9
Time, as such, was not an abstract entity having its independent existence with the ancient Hebrew. Time is bound up with its content and is actually identified with that content. Let me explain and illustrate this to clarify what this means.
Actions in the Hebrew verb are determined by the content-aspect of being completed, not by the time categories of past, present, and future. The Hebrew verb really has no tenses. The past is understood as that which is already here, "before" man, whereas the future is understood as something coming after him and not yet experienced. These two dimensions of time do not exist per se. These dimensions are subjectively experienced in relation to the real man in space. The light as only "called" day and the darkness is only "called" night. God marks the time, and the luminaries are created later to hold the same function (Gen. 1:4, 14). This has nothing to do with how long it took. These are not necessarily our perception of literally 24 hour days. When the event of separating the light from the darkness took place (no matter how long it took, whether 3 seconds or 455,888,345 years), then the completed event, the experience, as the Hebrew understood it, was called "day."10
When we examine Genesis and the creation story, it is after an event is completed that it is called the first day, second day, third day, etc. This is not described the earth spinning on its axis every 24 hours at all. It is describing when an event is completed in heaven and on earth. It is the event that defines the day, not the earth spinning that does so. To say this means our 24 hour day is to misconstrue what the Bible says. It is not until verse 14 that God puts the lights in the sky to set them as markers of the seasons, days and years. All the time before, the creating of the ground, the sky, water, vegetation, plants, trees, had already taken place in a time that was not associated with the lights marking the seasons, days and years in our normal sense of 24 hour periods. By the time these markers were set, it was the fourth day. So something is happening here of which we cannot account for. It is not necessary to the ancient Hebrew anyway, to give an exact scientifically correct account of everything going on. As Speiser has clearly noted, "This is not whether the statement[s] is true or false, but what it means. The point here is not whether this account of creation conforms to the scientific data of today, but what it meant to, and how it was arrived at by, the writer concerned."11
We catch a glimpse in another way concerning the idea of time to the ancient Hebrews at Genesis 8:22 wWtb:#:$yi )ol hlfy:lfwf Mwyow: Prexewf Cyiqwj Mxowf rqow: ryciqfw: (raze Cre)fhf ymiIy: lkf d(o
‘od kal yemi ha’aretz zera’ veqatzir veqor vachom vaqitz vachorep veyom valaylah lo’ yishveotu.
"As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease."
Von Rad notes that the words "While the earth remains," are a solemn assurance, an equivilance for "all time." They do not mean to represent a conscious limit or the consciousness of a limit, meaning that the sentence was to be interpreted in the sense of "only" while the earth remains. The only way to convey the idea of the earth remaining in being forever is to construct a series of times having various contents. The words rhythm is not arbitrary, but show a fixed order.12 The Hebrew ymiIy yemi means "as long as," not necessarily a twenty four hour period as a regular day is today.13 The days in Genesis are described as "of indeterminable length."14 In fact, a careful analysis of the Hebrew Bible demonstrates that day has many different lengths of time, even up to an including an entire year and more.
The phrase hwfhy: Mw2y yom YHWH, "The Day of Yahweh," cannot possibly be concluded to be exactly twenty four hours, because the expression is "chiefly as time of his coming in judgment." 15 The Hebrew phrase Myni#$f hze w2) Mymiyf hze zeh yamayim ‘o zeh shanim, "these days, or these years," clearly shows it is an extended length of time.16
Another angle to look at this is comparing the two accounts of the Creation in Genesis chapters 1 and 2. At Gen. 1:27 after all the animals had been created and placed on the earth, then man was formed the 6th day, in the evening. In fact, it states "male and female created he them." So both were created on the 6th day.
In Genesis Chapter 2 however, we notice the length of time it takes between creating man and woman. Adam was put in the Garden, he named the animals, which alone would have taken far and away more time than a mere twenty four hours! There are umpteen tens of thousands of insects alone, let alone all the other truly enormous numbers of species to actual call out and name. It took Linnaeus several decades to classify just the birds in only the European continent alone. He cultivated the trees and shrubs, etc. Then Adam begins to feel lonely. And God makes him an helpmeet, after Adam was asleep.
"As we compare Scripture with Scripture (Gen. 1:27 And 2:15-22), it becomes very apparent that Genesis 1 was never intended to teach that the sixth creative day, when Adam and Eve were both created lasted a mere twnety four hours. In view of the long interval of time between these two, it would seem to border on sheer irrationality to insist that all of Adam’s experiences in Gen. 2:15-22 could have been crowded into the last hour or two of a literal twenty four hour day."17
Yet another aspect of this we ought to realize is in analyzing the Hebrew we find something interesting. The creation was carried out in an orderly manner. There were six major stages of development and creation going on. None of these six creative days bear a definite article in the Hebrew text. The translations come out as "the first day," "the second day," etc. This is an error in the translation from the Hebrew. The Hebrew says "And the evening took place, and the morning took place, day one." (Gen. 1:5). Hebrew expresses the words "The First Day," as hayyom hari’shon, Nw2#$)orihf Mw2y,ha, but the Bible text at Genesis says simply yom echad, dxf)e Mw2y "Day one". Again in verse 8 we read not hayyom hassheni ("the second day", which in Hebrew is yni#$haiI Mw2y,ha), but rather Genesis 1:8 reads as yom sheni, which in Hebrew says yni#$iI Mw2y. There is plainly no definite article used for any of the days mentioned in Genesis in the Creation time. "Thus they are well adapted to a sequential pattern, rather than strictly delimited units of time."18
Another interesting observation is the word yom at Genesis 2:4 "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." The earlier chapter in Genesis had just demonstrated that it took six days to create the heavens and the earth however. So obviously day here, the same word used as in Genesis 1, namely yom, does not refer to a twenty four hour day at all.
And again, the reason seems clear that the phrase "And it was/became evening, and it was/became morning…" at Genesis 1:5, 8, is using the symbolic unit of a day to show when each period of creative activity began and ended. It is the completion of the act that is important, not whether the day is twenty four hours or not.19
In speaking of ancient orders, Mercea Eliade has described the importance of the festivals and shows how they are celebrated as a periodic regeneration of life and time, hence the concept of a new creation comes about. This is the repetition of the cosmogonic event, the act of creation hence the cyclic regeneration of time. This is the abolition of history, or of the past in other words.20
The Jewish festivals were not established as mere holidays either. They proceeded to form the rhythms of ancient Israel in time. Going further, the time of the festivals was the one and only "time" in the full sense of the word. The festival alone supplied Israel with the content of time in the full sense of the word. The observance of these festivals were not by any human arrangement. The festivals, not time, were the absolute data.The Feast of Tabernacles, was the time of joy. It was holy time absolutely. The rhythm of Israel’s festivals was originally determined by the order of Nature’s ordering of the Palestinian year.21
"The historical acts by which Jahweh founded the community of Israel were absolute. They did not share the same fate of all other events, which inevitably slip back into the past. They were actual for each subsequent generation… when Israel ate the Passover, clad as for a journey, staff in hand, sandals on their feet, and in the haste of departure (Exodus 12:11) she was doing manifestly more than merely remembering the Exodus; she was entering into the saving event of the Exodus itself and participating in it in a quite ‘actual’ way."22 It was not in the past, something that had happened to "them then," at all. It was right now, and we are going through the experience. That is how the ancient Hebrew thoght worked with time. It kept coming back and rehappening. Each festival each time it was participated in was not in remembrance of that which had happened long ago and far away. They were actually doing the same thing then and there in the only time that existed for them, in the now. "Time is experienced in the periodicity and rhythm of man’s own life as well as in the life of nature."23
The acts of rituals at the festivals and sacred times in their lives were repeated because they were consecrated as sacred in the beginning ("in those days" in illo tempore, ab origine) by the Gods.24 Everything man does is simply a repeat, a ceaseless repeating of what had been done before, his gestures imitated by others.25 For the ancient Hebrew, as well as archaic man in general, "reality is a function of the imitation of a celestial archetype, and meaning is to be had only because they deliberately repeat such and such acts posited ab origine by the gods, heroes, or ancestors.26 This repetition of time is essentially the "New Creation."27 The mystic event of the battle and defeat of Rahab by Yahweh was actually present when they participated in the rituals and drama of the event. (Isaiah 51:9).
The akitu festival was a series of dramatic elements which intended to abolish time, restore primordial chaos, and repeat the cosmogonic act, that is create the New Creation. Israelite festivals fell into the same definitions, categories, and thinking as her neighbors.28 Hence the creation is reactualized each year in their lives. It is not something they try and imagine, or think back on as a golden time. It is happening now as they participate in the ceremonies and rituals of repeating events causing the New Creation.
Many prophetic oracles in the Bible shows this close association of the redemptive work with Gods creation, or other past events in the "salvation history," such as the Exodus.
Isaiah 40-55 which uses the Hebrew word )rfbf bara as often as Genesis does, declares that God’s redemptive work, of which Exodus is a type, is to be understood in light of the creation. The end of the exile is guaranteed by the Creator. The act of creation is the determining factor of Israel’s history which is yet to come. It is Creation and Exodus which distinguishes Israel’s God from idols of other nations.29 Other scriptures of using this prophetic device for creation are at Isaiah 11:6-9; 35:5-10; Jeremiah 4:23-26).
This takes us to yet another level of understanding the ancient Hebrew Thought. Human life is made of a succession of times. There is a time for everything. That is, each thing, whatever it is, has its own particular time. Therefore the Hebrew speaks of times, in the plural, such as "my times are in your hands" (Ps. 31:15; Job 24:1). Time (t(iI) "et" is the moment at which something happens, perhaps a festival, or perhaps an event. (2 Chronicles 25:27; 1 Kings 11:4; Jeremiah 50:16). This means that everything has its time. There is a time to gather cattle (Genesis 29:7), a time when kings go out to battle (2 Sam 11:1), a time for the tree to give its fruit (Ps. 1:3), a time to be born, a time to die, etc. (Eccl. 3:2ff), a time for every purpose (Eccl. 8:6).30
In line with this thought in Ecclesiastes, his teaching is not about cyclic time as such, so much more about rhythms of time. The contniuity of what he sees is seen as identical. What he observes is not cyclical but static. "There is nothing new under the sun" (Eccl. 1:9). This idea should be understood from within the framework of his thought basically dealing with the concept of vanity. His point is that history is not moving, nothing new happens and is therefore a non-sense, a vanity. It is death. History is not reproducing itself, new events always occur. The Hebrew word d(iIw2m, Moed, has the meaning of "appointed time." This conveys the nuance of such a specific time with an emphasis on the sameness of the content. (Gen 1:14, Hosea 9:5). These appointed times are not created by men.31 Again, this leads us to understand the Hebrews when the Sabbath actualizes the past event of Creation (Exodus 20:11). The past event of wandering in the wilderness is actualized in the Feast of Tabernacles (Lev. 23:43). And likewise, the future event of God’s salvation may be actualized in the Sabbath, the sabbatical year or even in the institution of the Jubilee (Ps. 92:4; Jeremiah 25:9-12; Isaiah 61:1; Dan 9:2, 24-27). Creation was also actualized by the return of the exiles (Isaiah 42:5-9. The past event of the return from the exile will be reactualized in the final salvation (Ezekiel 37:21-28). This phenomenon of actualization is actually seen in the Hebrew language itself with the perfectum propheticum. In Jeremiah 32:37-41, the Perfect tense is used to express the certainty of the hope of the restoration. This future event is so sure that it is perceived as if it were already accomplished. "Behold, I have already gathered them of all countries…I have already brought them back to this place, and I have already caused them to dwell safely…"32 In other words, the future and past event may be perceived as their own in the present (Deuteronomy 29:9-14). This is further seen in the actual structure and way Hebrew behaves. Hebrew grammar has the capacity to reverse the two categories of timeby the use of the so-called "consecutive-conversive vav." So, the tense of the Perfect, which is commonly used for action of the past, is suddenly reversed, and points instead to a future event as at Jeremiah 32:44. It is through his identification with the past and future events that the ancient Hebrew placed himself in the historical perspective.33
Nahum M. Sarna, one of the foremost Hebraists of Biblical literature, has noted that "The theme of the creation, important as it is in the (Hebrew) Bible, is nevertheless only introductory to what is its central motif, namely, the Exodus from Egypt. God’s acts in history, rather than His role as Creator, are predominant in biblical thought."34 The hope for we humans for salvation did not end up resting in Platonic dualism, trying to escape our bodies, or this perverse world at all. In terms of the creative power of God who transforms the world and human life within it, that was the reason the Hebrew scriptures were written as they were written, and why life was lived with its ancient rhythms and eternal processes ever living out the New Creation and understanding of God.35
So looking at how the ancients thought, and what they wrote, and how they lived helps us realize the importance of not placing our own understanding, as if that is what is best for the Bible for it to make sense, back onto the Bible, but to let the internal consistencies and inconsistencies exist on their own right, and appreciate the fact that there were numerous ways of interpreting and understanding their own heritage, even back in their own contemporary times. This was the archaic Hebrew thought in the earliest parts of the Bible. Israel gradually did come to view time differently than they originally did, and in fact, came around to thinking in a linear fashion of sorts. But there probably never was a unified thought with all ancient Hebrews on these things, anymore than there is in the world today. It helps us understand many of the Bible expressions and wordings as we read the scriptures, to understand their different concepts and thinking.
Endnotes