Religion and Time 9004095837, 9789004378773

Table of contents :
RELIGION AND TIME
CONTENTS
Introduction
PART ONE
Phenomenological Time: Its Religious Significance
Existential Time in Kierkegaard and Heidegger
PART TWO
Time in Judaism
Time in Christianity
Time in Islam
Time and the Hindu Experience
Time in Buddhism
GLOSSARY OF SANSKRIT AND PALI TERMS
Index of Names
Index of Subjects
STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS NUMEN BOOKSERIES

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RELIGION AND TIME

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS (NUMEN BOOKSERIES) EDITED BY

H.G. KIPPENBERG • E.T. LAWSON

VOLUME LIV

RELIGION AND TIME EDITED BY

ANINDITA NIYOGI BALSLEY AND

J.N. MOHANTY

EJ. BRILL LEIDEN • NEW YORK • KOLN 1993

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Religion and time / edited by Anindita Niyogi Balslev, J.N. Mohanty. cm.-(Studies in the history of religions, ISSN p. 0169-8834; 54) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 900409583 7 I. Time-Religious aspects-Comparative studies. 2. Time. I. Balslev, Anindita Niyogi. II. Mohanty, Jitendranath, 1928111. Series. BL65.T55R45 1992 291.2-dc20

ISSN ISBN

92-8119 CIP

0 169-8834 90 04 09583 7

© Copyright 1993 by E.J. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands

All rights reseroed. No part of this book may be reproduced or translated in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche or any other means without written permission from the publisher Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by E.J. Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid direct!) to Copyright Clearance Center, 27 Congress Street, SALEM A1A 019 70, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

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To the Memory ef the Revered Swami Paramanandaji

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CONTENTS Introduction ... ........ .. .......... ..... ..... .. ..... .......... ..... ...... ........ ...

1

PART ONE JAMES G. HART, Phenomenological Time: Its Religious Significance .. .. . .. .. . .. .. .. . .. .. . .. .. .. . .. .. . .. .. .. . .. . .. .. .. . .. .. . .. . .. .. . .. . ..

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JOAN STAMBAUGH, Existential Time in Kierkegaard and Heidegger . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . .

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PART TWO P. STEENSGAARD, Time in Judaism ..................................

63

PETER MANCHESTER, Time in Christianity .......................

109

L.E. GOODMAN, Time in Islam .........................................

138

ANINDITA N. BALSLEY, Time and the Hindu Experience ..........................................................

163

G.C. PANDE, Time in Buddhism .......................................

182

Index of Na mes . . .. .. . .. .. . .. .. .. . .. .. . .. .. . .. .. . .. .. .. .. . .. .. .. . .. .. . .. ... . . .. ..

209

Index of Subjects . . .. .......... .... . . . . .. .......... ....... .... . . . . ..............

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At the time of the publication of this volume, Anindita Niyogi Balslev is visiting professor at the University of Kentucky andJ.N. Mohanty is professor at the Temple University, USA. The contributors, L.E. Goodman, James G. Hart, Peter Manchester, Joan Stambaugh and P. Steensgaard are affiliated with the University of Hawaii, Indiana University, State University of New York (Stony Brook), Hunter College (New York) and Aarhus University (Denmark) respectively. G.C. Pande is retired professor, Allahabad University (India).

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INTRODUCTION Two different but connected interests led the editors to plan and put this volume together: these are interests in phenomenology of religion and in a fruitful inter-religious dialogue. It is needless to emphasize that the two can enrich each other. Since a phenomenology of religion-unlike some other branches of philosophy of religion-cannot restrict itself to a specific religion, but has to explore the structure and function of religious consciousness in its multifarious modalities, it can provide the basis on which religions can enter into fruitful dialogue. The latter, on the other hand, will be able to provide the phenomenologist with a much needed corrective to the temptation to either confine oneself to one's favored religion or, to avoid such partiality, to return to one's own interior life of consciousness. For both purposes-for phenomenology as well as for interreligious dialogue-the theme of time, so the present editors think, is of central and decisive importance. It should be noted, however, that 'time' is not the only theme of importance for our purpose. 'Space' and 'causality' are also of equal importance. To see this, one needs to follow a chain of thinking such as this: if, in the long run, phenomenology of religion aims at laying bare the religious intentionalities as constituting religious meanings, and if the religious world is a nexus of such meanings-the structure of the religious world is what we shall be eventually focusing upon. Likewise, the problem of interreligious dialogue may be represented as the problem of communication between such worlds. An essential part of understanding a religious world is understanding how space, time and causality are understood and how, so understood, they structure that world. By no means, these three exhaust the pertinent features of the religious world, but they certainly are of the utmost importance. The concern with 'time' is a step in the direction of that exploration. In this introductory essay, we intend to do several things. First, we lay down the overall problematic of time in the philosophical tradition, so that we can, next, against the background thereby laid down, turn to the essays in this volume representing the major world-religions. A concluding section will emphasize in what respects· a proper understanding of the concept of 'time' in the various religious traditions will facilitate interreligious dialogue.

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I. A.

PHILOSOPHICAL CONTEXT

Three Concepts of Time

The philosophical context is delimited by the range of questions that were asked, the alternatives that were posed, by the philosophical tradition-western and eastern-with regard to the nature of time. As an initial sketch, the range has two extremes: is time subjective or is it objective? This mode of questioning obviously presupposes that philosophy has already come to distinguish between the subject and the object. But even when such a distinction has been made-no matter at what point of time in each tradition, it certainly does not begin with Descartes as has so often been held-that by itself does not provide us with all the different concepts of subjectivity and objectivity that philosophical tradition has, in course of its development, brought forth. Consequently, the two alternatives-is time subjective or is it objective-leave room for an array of sub-alternatives. To these two, modern philosophy has added a third possibility: namely, that time is basically existential, grounded in man's mode of being in the world. Phenomenology of religion has introduced into this discourse a new dimension by distinguishing between sacred time and profane time-a distinction which cuts across all the other possibilities (the subjective, objective and existential). It needs to be seen how various religious traditions operate with different conceptions of time, but also how within a single religious tradition many different conceptions of time emerge at different points-so that sometimes one can regroup religious views according to the conception of time they have. Such regrouping is likely to cut across the religious traditions themselves. But before we do that let us look at the philosophical approaches a little more closely with a view to filling in the labels with some minimal content. It appears that a purely subjective view of time, according to which time originally concerns the inner mental life, was not to appear on the scene first. Time as objective, then, is a sense which understands 'objective' as opposed to 'subjective', must also have been a late appearance. It is perhaps safer to say that the more original understanding of time was 'cosmological'. Plato regarded time as the order of visible nature, but an order which was derived from an everlasting order, "a moving image of eternity". The creator "sets in order the heaven, ... made this image eternal but moving according to number, while eternity itself rests in unity;

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and this image we call time." 1 Time, on this view, is the order of movement of heavenly bodies, the cosmos, and furthermore is measurable by numbers. Thus time is related both to the sensible world and to the intelligible world, and therefore, although a copy of an eternal rational order, is also internally related to the latter. It is, however, to Aristotle that western thought about time has always returned. In Book IV of Physics, Aristotle discusses the nature of time, and some of the difficulties connected with time. The difficulties are by now familiar: if time exists, all its parts should also exist, but the past does not exist any longer and the future does not yet exist. If time is taken to consist of 'now's, does the now remain always the same, or is it always different? What is the relation between time and movement? We measure movement by time, but we also measure time by movement. The view Aristotle seems to have arrived at, in this essay, is that time is the measure of motion and rest. 2 Time, he writes, is a kind of number, but only in the sense that it is what is counted, not that with which we count. 3 It is the 'now' which measures time. Time is a succession of 'now's. The now is the unit of measurement. In the last section, Aristotle turns to the 'now' which, he says, is the link of time and also the limit of time. Another aspect of his idea of time is worth noting: he did not hold that the movement of the heavens is the best measure of time. He regarded natural rectilinear movement as 'irregular', and thought that movement in a straight line to infinity is not possible. Only the circular motion of heavenly bodies is regular, continuous and infinite. Consequently, it seems natural and appropriate to think of time as circular. Aristotle writes: to call the happenings of a thing a circle is saying that there is a sort of circle of time; and that is because it is measured by a complete revolution, and the whole measurement of a thing is nought else but a defined number of units of its measurements. 4

We should add that Aristotle recognizes that the relation of time to consciousness deserves examination. He writes: The question remains, then, whether or not time would exist if there were no consciousness; for if it were impossible for there to be the factor that does the counting, it would be impossible that anything should be counted; so that evidently there could be no number ... And if nothing can count except consciousness and consciousness as 1 2 3 4

Plato, Timaeus. Aristotle, Physics, Book IV, Ch. 12, 221b. Ibid, Book IV, Ch. 11, 219b. Ibid, Book IV, Ch. 14, 223b.

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intellect ... , it is impossible that time should exist if consciousness did not ... 5 Aristotle's thoughts about time have continued to be of permanent importance for western thought. Heidegger finds in this Aristotelian tradition two decisive features: 6 first, that the place for thinking about time is philosophy of nature; and secondly, time is understood primarily with the concept of the 'now'. The latter feature reflects the way the everyday (western) understanding of time is shaped. For a full flowering of a subjectivistic conception of time we have to turn to Augustine. Augustine writes: Though one might perhaps say: "There are three times-a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future," ... these three do exist in the mind, and I do not see them anywhere else: the present time of the past is memory; the present time of _thi~?is present sight; the present time of things future is expectat10n. Time, for Augustine, is not the motion of the heavens, nor is it the movement of any body. The soul has a power of stretching out into the past and future: time is this distantio of the soul. Thus, he shifts attention from time itself to our awareness of time and finds-as Gadamer puts it-"the existential dimension of time in the spiritual tension (distantio animi) between distraction and concentration, fear, hope and repentance." 8 This subjective view of time--developed and securely established by Kant-reaches its final form in Husserl's phenomenology of inner time-consciousness, to which Jim Hart devotes his essay in this volume. In a certain sense, the Husserlian account of inner time-consciousness remains bound-as its reverse side-to a concept of objective time as a linear secession of nows. Starting from such a conception of objective time, Husserl, in his characteristic manner, looks into the inner experience of time for the constitutive source of the objective time series. What he finds, as is wellknown, is that the inner phenomenological time (or rather timeIbid, Book IV, Ch. 14, 223a. Cp. Marion Heinz, "The concept of Time in Heidegger's Early Works" in Joseph J. Kockelmans (ed.), A Companion to Martin Heidegger's Being and Time. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1986, pp. 183-207. 7 The Confessions of Augustine (in: Charles Sherover (ed) The Human Experience of Time, New York: New York University Press, 1975, p. 87). 8 H.G. Gadamer, "The Western View of the Inner Experience of Time and the Limits of Thought", in: Time and the Philosophies. Paris: UNESCO, 1977, pp. 33-48, esp. 41. 5

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consciousness) is not a succession of nows, each now being a dividing line-in Aristotle's language, the ideal limit-between what has been and what is not yet, like a geometrical point without any dimension, but rather a "spacious present" (in the language of William James), a now with a horizon of retention of what is just past and a pretention of what is just coming. In spite of Husserl's undoubted achievements in discovering the structure of inner time-consciousness, there are two respects in which even his close followers took him to task. First, he does not quite give up that primacy of the now which, as we have seen, goes back to Aristotle. He certainly rejected the conception of the now as an ideal limit, but he still had the now at the center of his description. In the second place, Husserl never came to appreciate the distinctive character of historical time, as distinguished from objective, cosmic time on the one hand, and inner subjective time on the other. These two alleged deficiencies in Husserl's philosophy of time were sought to be overcome by Heidegger-in whose thinking the two different strands, existentialist and historicist, came to an unholy alliance. The existentialist strand may be traced back to the early Christian experience of time, to Augustine, and to Kierkegaard, each contributed something to an overall point of view. Returning for a moment to Greek thought about time, we find three different words for time: 'chronos' meaning time intervals; 'aion' used for age, generation, life; and 'kairos' standing for the right time, the unique moment. It is this last that became of decisive significance for an existentialist understanding of time. We will return to the concept ofkairos when referring to the Christian experience of time. For the present, we need to note how this idea enters into Heidegger's thought. In his early course on Phenomenology ofreligion, Heidegger translates 'chronos' as 'Zeit', and 'kairos' as 'Augenblick'. 9 In Sein und Zeit, the authentic present is called the Augenblick, and is characterized as "nothing but the look of resolve, in which the full situation of actions opens itself and is held open." 10 This authentic present, as contrasted with the inauthentic, is inseparable from the future and the past. At this point, Joan Stanbaugh's essay on Kierkegaard and Heidegger is helpful. She knows that Kierkegaard's concern that the eternal must be apprehended at the mo9 Cp. Thomas Sheehan, "Heidegger's "Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion", 1920--21", The Personalist, pp. 213-324, esp. 321. 10 M. Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, p. 224.

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ment, that the eternal must enter in time and transform it. As contrasted with this, Heidegger's interest was in the future, an interest which derives on the one hand from the Judeo-Christian sense for history and on the other from the concern for the possibility for a wholeness of human being. The very mode of existence of man, of Dasein, is being outside of oneself. As being-towards-death, it is oriented towards the future. We have now briefly laid out the contrast between objective time, subjective time and existential time. A religion may be concerned with any, or all of them. Thinking within a religious tradition may focus upon any, or all of them. Before turning to these possibilities, we may indicate the many recurring issues in philosophy of time that emerge against the general background of the above distinction. B.

Other Issues and Possibilities

1. Within the objective conception of time, one may still want to decide, whether time is an absolute reality or merely relational. A Newton or a Nayiyaika looks upon time as an absolute dimension in which all things and events have their positions-such positions and measurements of temporal positions, intervals and distances being constant i.e., independent of who measures, from where and when. Others such as Leibnitz look upon time as a system of relations, or still others, Einstein notably, as relativistic. 2. While being an objective realist with regard to time, one may stop with a cosmological idea of time (where time is identified with the movement of heavenly bodies, as in Aristotle) or with, as in Bergson, one may understand this objectivity in a stronger, metaphysical sense and regard time as having absolute reality of its own (as in Nyaya, Newton, and perhaps even Bergson). 3. As has been noted, the issue whether time is a continuous flow or a series of discontinuous instants, cuts across the larger question regarding the objectivity or subjectivity of time. It is more likely, however, that the subjectively oriented concern with experiential time will reveal that there is no such instant, that what we experience is rather a continuity between the three dimensions of time. Thus, if William James, Husserl and Bergson emphasized the continuity of experiential time, Buddhism and Yoga, in the Indian tradition, emphasized the primacy of the instant (kra1Ja). 4. Within the larger rubric of subjective conceptions of time, one must take note of several distinct possibilities. One set of possibilities arise out of, how one construes the alleged subjectivity. The

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idea of subjectivity may be construed psychologically (as pertaining to the inner mental life of an intra-mundane entity called 'man') or transcendentally (as pertaining to the universal structure of all minds whatsoever). As transcendental, time may be regarded either as the bare form of our inner (and outer) perceptions (Kant) or as the contentful flux of experience prior to, and as the constitutive source of, all objective sense-formulations (Husserl). 5. Is time finite or is it infinite? The question arose within religious traditions-quite naturally, when one reflected on creation and salvation; but it also arose within science and philosophy. If, for example, it follows from Einstein's theory that the world must have had a beginning and will have an end in time, and if time (as well as space) have no meaning apart from the world, then time (as well as space) must be finite according to the world-view of modern physics. 11 6. Is time linear or is it circular? Recognizing that 'line' and 'circle' are spatial pictures, one may still ask: which of the two models-that or arrow or that of cycle-better captures all aspects of our experience and knowledge of time? It has been a commonplace historical wisdom that the Inda-Greek view has been that time is circular, while Judea-Christian (and scientific) view has been that time is linear. This widely held views has in recent times been attacked from many sides. One of the editors of this volume, Anindita N. Balslev, has pointed out that this does not do justice to the enormous variety of views about time to be found in Indian philosophy.12 With regard to Christianity and modern science, Stephan J. Gould has shown that both the traditions use both metaphors-that of arrow and that of circle-in different contexts. 13 As regards Hellenistic thought, as one scholar acutely observes, the so-called 'cyclical' conception of time meant quite different things to different observers, and furthermore, "there is clear evidence for linear as well as cyclical conceptions in Greece." 14 Amongst the various ways of understanding the notion of cycle, the same scholar cites: the idea of years coming round (Homer), "the fluctuations of fortune" (Sophocles), "the cycle of 11 Stephan W. Hawking argues for this in his A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1988). But Hawking adds to the theory that time is finite another thesis, namely, that space-time has no boundary, and so has no beginning. 12 Cp. Anindita N. Balslev, A Study of Time in Indian Philosophy, Weis baden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1983. 13 Stephan]. Gould, Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. 14 G.E.R. Lloyd, "Views on Time in Greek Thought" in: Cultures and Time, Paris: UNESCO, pp. 117-148, esp. 117.

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rebirth" (Heraclitus) and "the recurrence of every single event" (Pythagoras). Some of these images, to be found in Indian writings as well, may be seen as concerned with patterns of specific movements within time rather than with time itself. In modern physics, the idea that time has an irreversible direction has come to be questioned from some perspectives, but affirmed from others. The theory of relativity, by relativizing simultaneity, seems to entail denial of an "objective world-wide lapse of time" as a linear succession of temporal states. For, "the time-order assigned to certain events is not the same for all observers in relative motion," from which it seems to follow that there can be no objective time order for such events." 15 And yet, as Stephen J. Hawking insists, there are three different arrows of time, two of which are physical, the third being the psychological. The physical arrows are the thermodynamical (the increase of disorder or entropy) and the cosmological (the universe expanding rather than contracting). 16 7. An important distinction reaching back to Plato, if not earlier, is that between time and eternity. Plato's forms as much as Aristotle's Prime Mover are not in time. So is the One of Plotinus. This distinction is one of decisive importance for religion. Religions are not only concerned with the temporal order, they are equally interested in what transcends time-call it God or by any other name. However, the religions do not conceive of the relation between time and eternity in the same way, as the essays in this volume amply show. There are at least two conceptions of eternity, from which one may begin to think on these matters: the first being essentially a temporal notion (to be eternal is to be beginningless and endless in time), the second being the idea of a total other to the temporal (to be eternal is to be timeless). When theologians argued if the world was eternal, they were asking, does the world have a beginning and an end in time. When one says in philosophy that numbers or such ideal entities are eternal, one means either that they are just timeless, or perhaps that they are omnitemporal. 17 The eternity of the Divine Being-be it the monotheistic God or the Buddhist fwryata-must then be different from both, so that a third, more positive concept of eternity is called for. Every religion is in need of it in a sense in which the eternal must manifest itself in time. 15 G.J. Whitrow, "Time and the Universe" in: J.J. Fraser (ed), The Voices of Time, pp. 564-581, esp. pp. 573-579. 16 A Brief History of Time, p. 145. 17 E. Husserl, Erjahrung und Urteil, Hamburg: Classen & Goverts, 1948 62c.

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II.

9

"TIME" IN THE RELIGIONS

It is against the background already developed that we turn to the essays in this volume. To begin with Judaism: it is generally acknowledged that the Hebrew thought is nowhere more striking than in its thematization of the historical dimensions of the experience of time. And this is tied to a certain conception of freedom of will which imparts a radical uncertainty into history, which no divine wisdom could eliminate. Steensgaard begins his account of time and history in Judaism by recalling Heschel's insistence upon the uniqueness of historical events. While recognizing that Judaism is a religion of history, Steensgaard corrects the onesidedness of this received view by bringing to light a dimension ofJewish experience of time that is likely to be covered up by the emphasis on history. While the Old Testament testifies to the linear and historical time, the cults bear witness to mythical and cyclical time. The festivals and the rituals repeat the primal events: "the events depicted in the psalm are experienced in the cult." The emergence of the sense of history must have repressed the openness to the "cultic-cyclic repetition". Steensgaard considers various attempts to explain this transformation and even to date it. He also traces the development of Jewish historiography along with the various tensions within it, revealing much more complexity than is usually recognized. In any case, time for Judaism is not uniform, linear flow, it is rather a series ofleaps. Likewise, history is not a linear, continuous progression, but "an eternal improvisation". Following Kierkegaard, Peter Manchester insists that for Christianity time and eternity meet, and it is at this meeting point that Jesus announces his presence. Eternity is thus, for Christianity, withir.. time. Manchester also emphasizes another aspect of the Biblical understanding of time: this consists in the joining of historical time with mythical time-a theme which Steensgaard is also concerned with in his study ofJudaism. One needs to ask: does the figure of the line best represent the Christian understanding of time? Does the Christian understanding of time allow us to separate time from history, or are they inseparable? What position do the very special moments, the kairos, occupy within the historical time? What is the role of the liturgical time in which the history as it is lived by the Christians is represented? In Islam, the pre-Islamic Arabic idea of time as malign destiny is overcome. Time, as Goodman puts it, is moralized and domesticated, subjected to God's purpose. Time's meaningfulness derives

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from God's grace. But God retains His timelessness, and the world its temporality. Temporality is also contingency, making the world completely dependent upon God in His transcendence. Within this general framework-as Goodman shows so well-the philosophers, appropriating the influence of Greek thought, developed various ways of relating time to God's eternity and transcendence. These views range from an occasionalism (time does not create anything new, it is only the occasion for appearances) to Al-Ghazali's Platonism (time is the image of a timeless order); from regarding time as an aspect of God's power to Alfarabi's and Avicenna's denial of temporal creation (time has no beginning, creation is dependence of the temporal world upon a timeless act of God). But through all these philosophical theories, what remains the center of Islamic vision is God's transcendence and timelessness. Like the representation and understanding of time in any great religious culture, the Hindu view of time is complex, many-layered and richly differentiated. One of the purposes of this volume is precisely to bring out this inner complexity within an overarching vision that characterizes each religion's understanding of time (in relation to the central theme, which in the case of Hinduism is the idea of the Atman). Two extremes usually strike the outsider at the beginning, when one looks at the literature on the Hindu views of time. On the one hand, there is the thesis of the utter unreality of time. On the other hand, there is the idea of the beginningless and endless recurrence of cycles-which the PurarJ,as broke up inyugas, mahayugas, kalpas, one full cycle from creation to destruction on one calculation, being equivalent to 4,320 million (human) years. This vast cosmic time consciousness permeates the Hindu consciousness, being divided into the mythical and the historical, the sacred and the profane. However, as Anindita N. Balslev has pointed out in her essay, there is a whole array of philosophical conceptualizations of time in the Hindu philosophical systems. The vast time-consciousness of the Hindu conceptual world needs to be appreciated in the light of the idea of anadi-sainsara, a notion which is unanimously accepted in the Hindu religions and philosophical traditions. A review of the- idea of cosmological cycles 18 stemming from the widespread (but not universally accepted) notion of repeated creation and dissolution (punar-sr.rti and punar-pralaya) should be made with special attention to the question, how the idea is appropriated into the diverse systems of 18 Cp. Anindita N. Balslev, "Cosmology and Hindu Thought," Zygon, 25, 1990, pp. 47-58.

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Hindu philosophy which operate with different views of time. Some of these views have slowly crystallized, abandoning other views along the way. The impact of these contrasting conceptual models of time on such other basic notions as being, non-being and causality make a fascinating reading. As one reads the relevant literature, one comes across many levels of discussions on this central theme. The Atharva veda devotes an important hymn to time-the so-called Kalasuktawhere time is depicted as the all-powerful deity. The Upanisads are strewn with various allusions to time divisions and also document a view which held time to be the sole regulative principle of the universe, the Kalavada. For bold mythological treatment of human time experience in the context of the idea of cosmological time, one has to turn to the Puranas which weave an intriguing picture, making use of ideas prevalent in Hindu cosmology and soteriology. The Saiva and the Vai~l)ava traditions are rich in their deliberations on time. The Hindu religious thinking on salvation or mok.ra has focused variously on the idea of the self as transcending time. 19 Time as an aspect of divine power, time as an independent reality, time as non-different from the dynamicity of nature are conceptual patterns that are worked out in various soteriological schemes. The rejection of the idea of time as ontologically real, as in Advaita Vedanta, is also an idea which has soteriological significance. The idea of eternality (nityatva) in Hindu philosophy is complex, the eternal is conceived not only as being without beginning and without end (anadi and ananta) but also as that which remains unchanging and unchangeable (kii(asthanitya) or as the eternal in the midst of change (parirJamznitya). The idea of the eternal as unsublatable in "three times" (trikalabadhya) has been subjected to careful scrutiny in the philosophies. Many important insights into the nature of k~a1J,a or moment are to be found in the Yoga literature. The eternity of Prakrti and the timelessness of Puru~a are ideas which appear in various Hindu systems of philosophy. The idea of krama or sequence also plays an important role in these discussions. Anindita N. Balslev also discusses some of the cliches about Hindu time-experience in an inter-cultural context. She thinks that possibilities for inter-religious communication will be greatly enhanced when the stereotypes about any given tradition will be dismantled in the course of our conversations. 19 Cp. Anindita N. Balslev, "Time, Self and Consciousness: Some Conceptual Patterns in the Context oflndian Thought," Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, V., 1987, pp. l l l-l l9.

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G.C. Pantle gives us a rich account of the views of time within Buddhism, but with special emphasis on early Buddhism i.e., on Theravada, the Sautrantika, the Vaibhasika and the Sarvastivada. As contrasted with the overall tenor of Hindu concern, the Buddhist concern with time (in spite of the Buddha's taking over some of the Hindu ideas about cosmic time) was not, as Pantle insists, derived from cosmology or speculative metaphysics, but from "introspective reflection" on experience. This gave the Buddhist philosopher a sense for the incessant change that characterizes the inner life of an ego, which was represented as a succession of momentary states connected together by a suitably constructed principle of causality. Time and causality thus came to be tied together, while philosophers busied themselves with suitable questions (and disputations) regarding if the present alone is real, or if the past and the future moments are also real. Underlying the controversy, of course, there is the concept of the moment (kia1Ja) which also appears in Hindu thinking. Pantle reviews the controversy thoroughly, while not losing sight of the point that the ultimate interest of the Buddhist was to transcend time in the experience of nirvana.

III.

THE THEME OF TIME AS THE HORIZON OF INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

This volume of essays focusing on the theme of time in diverse religious traditions, it is hoped, will contribute towards an interreligious conversation. The editors believe that an academic involvement in this direction is very important in the contemporary world which, as a net-work of complex and complicated issues, has also its theological dimensions. Religions are, to their adherents, major sources of ideas which provide meaning and a sense of direction for human existence. They provide important factors for continuing power of group identities, consequently, they not only unify, they also divide. Religious pluralism, a phenomenon which can neither be eliminated nor be underscored, calls for a forum where meaningful exchanges amongst those who deal with theology and philosophy of religion can take place. What is at stake is not a simple scholarly search for similarities and differences amongst the various traditions, not merely seizing upon an effective tool for doing what is called "comparative religion", but how to lay bare the distinct experiential phenomena, the profound insights embodied in traditional cores of thinking which are called the religions. In the limited scope of this volume, attempts have been made by various scholars

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to expose to reflective gaze the various strata of complexities of the diverse religious traditions. This is what is needed to convey the traditional messages. A critical exposure to the theme of time-a theme which knows no boundaries-it is hoped will provoke fresh responses leading to a new creative discourse. The future religious thinking, given the character of the contemporary world, cannot ignore or down play the differences, differences which are perpetually influencing our images of self-hood and otherness. Various strategies have been adopted to cope with the situation of encounter. The problems of inter-religious communication are pretty much known. The prospect of success will be greater, the more the partners involved in such a dialogue will take into account that religious meaning is not a set of unchanging thoughts attached to texts, rituals and practices of a community. The situation is much more complex than that. The members of a religious community are engaged in interpreting-making sense of those symbols, and this is an ongoing, developing, historical process. It should not also be overlooked that there is hardly any one, homogenous interpretation, one unique mode of self-understanding in any traditional frame. The discussions on the theme of time provide an example of that. It also helps us to understand the situation of encounter better, if we take into account the fact that tensions and oppositions are not only amongst different traditions, but are amply present within a single tradition. In order to obtain a rich, broad and adequate description of what goes on within a tradition-and eventually its bearing in the encounter with other traditions-these tensions are by no means to be underplayed. They are an important part of a tradition and consequently of the rich conceptual experience which is the pool of ideas created by a certain form of religious consciousness. Perhaps, one major problem of communication amongst religions concerns, how the interpretation of an outsider relates to the historical process of interpretation by the insiders of a tradition. At this point, an important question· arises: When is an outsider's interpretation to be dismissed as inauthentic? Or, is an insider's interpretation always to be regarded as authentic? Perhaps one can take recourse only to a pragmatic criterion and say that authenticity of an interpretation is not a matter which hinges upon whether it is done by an insider or by an outsider, but whether it is grounded in the historical consciousness of a tradition. One of the major hindrances which thwart interreligious communication is perhaps when an outsider's interpretation is in clear conflict with the self-understanding of a tradition. It is also found that a blind

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INTRODUCTION

repetition of stereotyped cliches often vitiates inter-religious communication. Time is a theme, so it seems to the editors, which is pertinent for initiating a conversation amongst participants of different philosophico-religious traditions. No world-view can be grasped without understanding the concept of time that goes into it. This volume should be seen as a preparation for a dialoguewhich needs to be not merely speaking amongst ourselves but also speaking and listening to each other.

In putting this volume together, the editors have not imposed any restrictions on the authors as to how they may want to present their material. Nor have they sought to achieve an editorial cohesion which would make the essays uniform in structure and intent. The idea has all along been to let each author focus on the issues that he or she considers pertinent and important for understanding the time-experience in the tradition he or she is expounding, so that fresh thinking relevant for inter-religious dialogue may emerge (which is not tied to any dominant jargon or rhetoric or to a specific debate of a specific tradition).

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PART ONE

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PHENOMENOLOGICAL TIME: ITS RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE James G. Hart

The literary remains of Edmund Husserl ( 1859-1938), the founder of transcendental phenomenology, contain rich but never fully completed suggestions for a philosophy of religion. This paper will tentatively sketch the way he seems to connect time and timeconsciousness with the familiar ,religious themes connected with time, especially birth, death, and enlightenment or awakening from a metaphysical slumber. 1

I.

SOME PHENOMENOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

Transcendental phenomenology is transcendental in the sense. that the founding whole in which all philosophical considerations are parts is a sense of mind or consciousness. Prior to the achievement of this philosophical position everything seems to look quite the other way around: the world is the basic philosophical consideration and the mind is one of the many parts which comprise it. This prior general attitude Husserl calls "the natural attitude." One begins to move from the natural to the transcendental attitude by way of the insight that the world of perception and the objects perceived as within this world are what we are first of all taken up

with even though the world does not appear to us apart from our engagement with it. That is, typically we live, in our everyday life, directed to the persons, things, events, etc. which comprise the world. The balance and momentum of our life is centrifugal and excentric. The world and its components are that in which and toward which we live. This directedness toward or engagement with the world itself can

1 I wish to thank Professor Samuel IJsseling, director of the Husserl Archives in Louvain for permission to quote from the Nachlafl. I wish to thank also Dr. Ulrich Melle and the archive staff for making available to me at the last minute some relevant manuscripts. I also wish to thank Beth Brown for helping me think through some of the matters discussed in this essay.

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become a theme when the insight is reached that the world, persons, things, etc. are available to us only through aspectival looks. For example, this house is not itself in all of its richness perceptually given to me but rather only this side is given. Of course, I perceive "the house," but what is perceptually-sensuously given is only an aspect of the house. This situated sighting, i.e., sighting from a standpoint, by which we enjoy aspects of something is a perspective (spectare per punctum stans hie et nunc) and there are endless other perspectives, e.g., not only from the sides but also from the top, from the ground, from any number of distances, etc. Thus the presentation of "the house" is through its looks. But the looks are inseparable from my looking or acts of visual perception. We can imagine how the house looks to an Eskimo, to an Aztec, to a student of architecture, to the one who built it, to one who spent one's childhood there, etc. The looks, we see, are tied to acts of looking which themselves will be determined by personal and cultural histories. We can imagine many things, e.g.·, a cyclotron, a transistor, a eucharistic monstrance, etc. which indeed would appear but, depending on the perceiver and the cultural community to which he belongs, would be quite different appearing things in each case. William James expressed succinctly this matter in a way which is proximate to Husserl's own elaborate position. What we say about reality then depends on the perspective into which we throw it. The that of it is its own; but the what depends on the which; and the which depends on us. Both the sensational and relational parts of reality are dumb: They say nothing about themselves. We it is who have to speak for them. 2

In this view perceptual reality ("the that of it is its own") has a facticity which correlates with sensation's engagement and functioning. But what this means, what sense is made of it, is only through the mind's engagement and this is dependent on the background and horizons of interests of the perceivers. Therefore we best think of the self-presentation of the world as hyle or stuff out of which sense is to be made and not as something mindindependent which is evidently so in some aborginal revelation. Considerations such as these serve as partial, if inadequate, motivations for what Husserl calls "the reduction." The reduction is the way we disengage our natural engagement with what appears in favor of how what appears appears. That is, the reduction is the 2 William James, Pragmatism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), 118; the entire chapter, "Pragmatism and Humanism" is of interest to Husserlians for its discussion of the relationship between "Auffassungen" and "hyle."

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means for us to live reflectively with the insight that what appears is inseparable from its appearings or its looking this way or that. Furthermore, the reduction enables us to discover and sustain the discovery that these appearings are bound up with "intentional acts" or the mind's active making sense. Husserl was fond of thinking of the reduction in connection with Descartes' doubt about the existence of the world. But the reduction is not a doubt-which has to be motivated; rather Husserl preferred to think of it as a suspension ofjudgment about the actual existence of what appears. It is like putting something in brackets or quotes. When I say, "John says, 'It's raining,'" I am not saying it's raining nor am I doubting its raining. I have not committed myself to the validity of John's claim and I can entertain, e.g., the meaning of the claim, what would count for reasons for John's making it and what would be involved in the confirmation of the claim. Husserl was also prepared to compare the reduction with a religious conversion as well as the theme of ascetical worldrenunciation in Hindu and Buddhist thinking. 3 It is clear that the purpose of the reduction is to see the origination of the world as a phenomenon. In this sense the reduction is a kind of creation narrative in that it unfolds the finished "product" of what appears "backwards" in favor of the constitutive moments: what appears is seen in terms of how it appears, and this is seen as an achievement of presencing acts. II.

INNER-TIME CONSCIOUSNESS

Of utmost importance for transcendental phenomenology is what founds the awareness of inner-time. What appears perceptually in the world is always something temporal in the sense that it has duration, that it appears now, that it has come to be, that it can change in relation to other things or internally, e.g., by increasing or decreasing, that it can cause change in other things, that it can cease, etc. (Of course we can entertain non-perceptual matters, e.g., those of logic and mathematics, which do not have these temporal features.) Thus Husserl distinguishes what he calls "time itself," along with its filled temporal points, its events and the substrates or enduring objects of events, and the "modes of giveness of time" with their own temporal points and events, and substrates. Time itself is a form of objects which are given in the 3 See especially the Nachlafl BI 21 IV, 35-37; cf.James G. Hart, "Transcendental Phenomenology and Zen Buddhism: The Start of a Conversation," Zen Buddhism Today, No. 5 (1987), 145 ff.

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world and itself is not given, nor is it now, past or future; the time-flow is not the flow of (the form of) time but of the modes of giveness of time. Similarly, as we shall see, the foundation for the modes of givenness of time itself is not temporal and can be said to flow only in an improper sense. 4 With the reduction our attention is directed no longer straightforwardly to what appears but to how it appears. Husserl's discussions of time therefore, for the most part, do not attend to the temporality of what appears but to the temporality of how it appears and to the temporality of the presencing acts. Whereas the natural attitude may well be taken up with, e.g., the melody as produced in the world by a musician, the reduction disengages this attachment so that we are taken up with the sounds as heard. Thus our reflection is brought to bear on both the sound and the hearing or listing. We attend to the sounds in their relation to one another and then to the way the notes appear as related to one another in such a way that we experience sequence and form. That is, we experience this present sounding note as part of a melody, part of a pattern, part of a sequence; or we experience its phases as parts of the duration of this sound. It is of great importance to observe that while hearing a note sounding now we can hear it as sounding in a sequence and pattern, i.e., in conjunction with other past and future notes which are not sounding now. It would be misleading to say that we make present the former notes by remembering them-if we take memory to be the way we make present the past as past. In memory we displace ourselves from our ·engagement with the perceptual present in order to re-present a former present as a former present. In the hearing of a present sound as part of a melody we hear it as following upon preceding notes which, although not attended to as former presents, nevertheless, suffuse the sense of the present sounding note. This way of synthesizing the present sound in terms of what was just heard but which is not explicitly attended to as a past sound, Husserl calls "primary memory" or "retention" to distinguish it from memory in the proper sense which is the act of presencing a former present as a former present. A similar kind of "passive synthesizing" holds for the way we experience the present sounding note in terms of its being a prelude to a not-yet occurent sound. That is, as we willy-nilly hang on to the former presents in such a way that they are enabled to suffuse the sense of the actual present sounding note, so we willy-nilly lean 4

See, e.g., the MS, L I '21, 4 ff.

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into the future anticipatorily to what is about to occur on the basis of the retained experiences of what has already happened. This founds the elemental experiences of satisfaction and surprise. And as the retention is not properly a memorial having of the past as past, so protention is not an imaginative anticipation of the future as future: the willy-nilly tendency toward the future is not a selfdisplacing from the perceptual present and an entertaining of, e.g., the notes or events which will happen ten seconds from now. We thus see that the experience of something "now" is not of a discrete punctual atomic pulse (a "specious present"); rather what is now is distended to include what has just happened and what is about to happen. And in as much as a retention is always a former present which retains former presents, the retention is always a retention of retentions. And, obviously, the melody is only one example. All experiences of the world are temporal. For example, reading this text is a good paradigm for how each occuring impression (syllable or word) which now is presented depends for its sense on the mind suffusing the present with what previously happened, i.e., with what was just read, and with the way things are anticipated to occur on the basis of the retained experiences. But, Husserl observes, we are not only conscious of how the world's appearing is temporal but we can also become thematically aware of how our presencing itself of the world-which is inseparable from this "how"-is an awareness of something temporal. That is, our various acts of presencing (our intentional acts or ways of being conscious of ... ), e.g., perception, memory, imagination, emotion, judgment, etc., themselves are something temporal, and these acts are parts of the whole, more or less unified, stream which is our conscious life. Thus we are aware not only of the temporality of the world and of how it appears but also of the "stream of consciousness" through which it appears the way it does. Husserl in his early writings called that of which we are here aware "inner time." The awareness of "inner time" is the root and most fundamental sense of being-conscious. Every experience is "consciousness," and consciousness is consciousness of ... But every experience is itself experienced (erlebt) and to that extent also "known" (bewuj]t). The being-known (Bewuj]t-sein) is consciousness of the experience ... 5 5 E. Husserl, Zur Phaenomenologie des innem ZeitbewuJJtseins (1893-1917), Husserliana X (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966), 335; for the basic issues see Johan Brough, "The Emergence of an Absolute Consciousness in Husserl's Early Writings on Time Consciousness," Man and World, V (1972), 74-115; Robert Sokolowski,

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The awareness of the stream of our experiences-which experiences are always experiences of ... i.e., they are either intentional acts (acts directed toward an object) or they are sense impressions of a sensible quality-is not itself an experience of ... , i.e., it is not an intentional act or sense impression. Yet this awareness is a pre-reflective, non-intentional awareness of something "pre-given" and upon which we can reflect: the temporal (present, just past, not yet) phases of the acts and sensa. But Husserl holds that the awareness of the phases is not merely the way we grasp "then" or what is about to occur, the Now, or the just now past; it is not merely the way we are conscious of these phases; rather it is the originating constituting of them. Whereas phases of the "stream of consciousness" are pre-given, i.e., unthematically given and capable of becoming an explicit focus, the constituting originating awareness of these, however, cannot be said even to be pre-givenwhich does not make it unconscious but, as Husserl puts it, "selfshining." Therefore as the originary constituting of the primal modes of past, present and future, the original awareness itself cannot be said to be present, past, or future. Indeed, it is not, properly speaking, temporal: My awareness of the present/now of the achieving presencing intentional act is not now; my awareness of the just past of the achieving presencing is not past; my awareness of the just about to be (future) of the achieving presencing is not future. In short, as Husserl often notes, "the I in its most original originating is not in time" (e.g., MS, C 10, 21). Husserl refers to the original being-aware of the stream of consciousness as a "flow"-but scare quotes are here necessary. As the "abiding" awareness of what abides and elapses, i.e., of the crosssections (no-longer/now/not yet) making up the phases of the flow of acts and sensa, the original awareness-which he also calls "the primal 'I,'" "the living present,'' "primal presencing," "source point," "primal impression,'' "primal stream," etc.-cannot be said to flow as if it too were a temporal cross-section or something of which we were aware by its perduring through elapsing phases. It is Husserl's doctrine that this flow exists uniquely "in itself." And, furthermore, it "is of such a remarkable quality that there must be within it a self-appearing of the flow and, therefore, the flow must be able to be apprehended in its flowing." Thus "it is continuously a being-in-itself through its being-for-itself ... Husserlian Meditations (Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1973), 132-168· Rudolf Bernet, "Die ungegenwartige Gegenwart," Phaenomenologische Forschungen' XIV (1983), 1~57. '

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through a self-appearing, through an absolute appearing, in which that which appears necessarily is." 6 This absolute self-appearing, or primal presencing, is not an appearing of ... , as if there were something perspectively given here and of which we had presumptive knowledge. Nor is it an appearing to ... : There is here no need for a more original consciousness to which the primal presencing would appear. Rather it itself is the dative, the "to which" everything appears and it itself is a self-shining, a self-appearing, not in need of a second dative or more ultimate flowing primal presencing. This self-shining primal streaming is the ultimate consideration of transcendental phenomenology. It is also called absolute consciousness because, having assumed the transcendental attitude, everything which appears is necessarily relative to it, but its appearing is not relative to anything else but rather is the sine qua non or the medium of anything appearing whatsoever. And it is also the most basic sense of the transcendental "I." Still it is an equivocal sense of "I" in so far as it alone remains after the reduction of the proper "indexical" or "occasional" sense of "I" which presupposes our being in the world with others. That is, the self-referring of the first-personal pronoun always also refers to the common field of spatial-temporal positions (indicated by demonstratives and pronouns) which are or may become viewpoints and from which any other may also say "I." The existential, doxic claims of the common field, and, therefore, the proper sense of "I" are disengaged in the reduction and appear as constituted for the primal presencing or so-called transcendental "I." Ill.

THE BEGINNINGLESS AND ENDLESS NATURE OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL "I"

From the middle of Husserl's philosophical career (at least since 1908) a recurrent theme usually associated with religious belief is evident: The transcendental "I" neither comes to be nor ceases. What follows sketches the general lines of Husserl's position. All cessation or ending is, and is appreciated as, that which is preceded by everything relevant to this being, event, or process. Furthermore, it is followed by nothing intrinsically necessary and televant to this being, event or process. Similarly all begin6 The quote is from Husserl's Erste Philosophie II (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1951), 412. For an effort to clarify some of the issues here, see James G. Hart, "Constitution and Reference in Husserl's Phenomenology of Phenomenology," Husserl Studies ( 1990).

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nings are, and are appreciated as, that from which or after which everything follows relevant to the being, event or process, and are preceded by nothing intrinsically necessary and relevant to the being, event or process. It is because the mind can experience the "nothing before" and the "nothing afterwards" that we can experience beginnings and endings as such. That is, it is because retentions and protentions are intrinsic parts of the present experiencing, or because in the ongoing present perception prior and subsequent expected experiences actually function, that we enjoy the phenomena of starts and finishes. Thus the experience of the end, e.g., of a musical piece, is an experience of the silence which follows the last note. This experience of silence is (also) a retention of the last note and (also) a protention of "no more." That is, the silence is not experienced as a pause or rest. Rather it is followed by the experience of further silence which retains the concluding silence (which retains the last note) and this silence is a filling of the protention of "no more." Similarly the experiencing of the beginning note of a musical piece involves the retention of the silence which preceded and the protention of the subsequent notes. Without the retained experience of the silence or absence of notes there is no experience of the beginning. Now for the purposes of this paper, what is in question is the conceivability or imaginability of the end or beginning of the primal "flow" by which we experience all beginnings and endings of processes, events, beings, etc. Because even if the "while" of the world should cease to be, the "whiling" (das Wiihren) or the continuous process (Proze.JJ) of "the whiling away" (des Wiihrens) itself cannot cease. Because all beginnings and ends presuppose this process by which we are aware of beginnings and ends, because the experience of durations presuppose the duration of this experiencing-which itself is not experienced as a duration within the stream but as the medium for all experienced durations-we cannot be aware of its beginning and end. 7 Thus although Husserl conceives this ante-partum and post-mortem transcendental life as silent and empty like a dreamless empty sleep, he still claims that it is "an eternal being in becoming" (Husserliana XI, 379-381). This is the general point; some specifics follow. Consider that the transcendental "I" is the incessant streaming of primal presencings, retentions of prior primal presencings, and protentions of what is about to be presenced. To experience the end of experiencing we would have to experience our "last pulse" of the streaming 'I For this discussion, see Husserl's Anarysen ::.ur passiven Synthesis, Husserliana XI (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966), 377-381.

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as such, i.e., in a manner resembling our experience of any ending, e.g., as followed by the nothingness/silence at the conclusion of a musical piece. But then we would be experiencing now the silent nothingness as the end which would involve not only the retention of our "last second" and a protention of "more of the same nothingness," but it would involve that the primal presencing would exist after its ending. Husserl explains the tendency to believe we can conceive or imagine the experience of the end of the primal streaming in this way: In order to experience the end of the primal streaming we would have to presence "and then nothing" which would be (also) a retention of the prior ("last") presencing and (also) a protention of what is to follow. But the presencing of "and then nothing", in this case, foists upon the primal presencing the particular "nothings" (silence, mute dumb haziness, absence of light or motion, etc.) which are always experienced "somethings." The experience of any cessation always presupposes the non-ceasing of the consciousness aware of the cessation, i.e., aware of the "nothingness" whereby the ending is experienced as such, i.e., as the last. Husserl makes here an additional point with respect to the non-thinkability of the cessation of the primal streaming. Whereas it is true that the passive "automatic" expectation of protention has never an apodictic character in terms of what content will be anticipated or filled, nevertheless it is apodictic in its form. Each Now presenced by primal presencing is inseparable from the protended futural horizon which cannot be eliminated; the protentional form cannot be eliminated from the primal presencing: "Each Now has its futural horizon, as we can also say, it necessarily passes over into a new Now ... The I continues. It always and necessarily has before it its transcendental future ... and there is for me as Ego a pre-directed always." Similarly the primal presencing cannot be conceived or imagined to begin or have begun. "It is evident with an absolute necessity that each present comes forth as a fulfillment of a past ... " The retentional form cannot be cancelled or erased. And not only is it the case that each Now leaves retentions behind, there is no Now conceivable which does not have retentions ... As cessation is only thinkable in the process [of the primal presencing] and the cessation of the process Lof the primal presencing] is unthinkable, so the beginning is only thinkable in the process but it is not thinkable as the beginning of the process. 8 8

Ana(ysen zur passiven Synthesis, 378.

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Husserl adds, to his basic point that "the nothingness before the beginning" presupposes something with which it could stand in contrast, that before the beginning "there can be an undifferentiated, monotonous mute dawning, but this itself is something past and has the essential feature of temporality." Before we proceed to discuss what this "monotonous mute dawning" might mean in terms of sleeping and waking as well as death and birth, we must point out how this position best makes sense if placed in relation to Husserl's transcendental phenomenological idealism. "Experiencing," in the idiosyncratic use of the ultimate founding sense of being conscious, cannot experience its beginning or its ending. Because the experience of the end would require an experience of the "nothing afterwards" and the experience of the beginning requires the experience of the "nothing before" it would not be at its end nor at its beginning. But the question arises: Is this not merely to say that the end of experience is not an experienced end and the beginning of experience is not an experienced beginning?9 The beginning and end of the transcendental "I" would be real but not experienced. Eugen Fink, Husserl's assistant at Freiburg, put the objection in the following way: The idea of a cognitive foundation of the I is shaken when we consider that the insurpassible apodictic evidence of the "I am" does not exclude an ontological contingence [or independence from death]. If the I in its being is contingent then clearly it is in no way the "being which is first in itself" which is presupposed as that to which every act of founding must make reference. Self-experience shows with apodictic evidence the factual being (Da-sein) of the I: I am apodictially as long and while I experience myself. If selfexperience occurs, the I must necessarily be. But must self-experience also necessarily be? Can I not some time no longer be? Was I not yet at one time? That self-experience is has no ontological necessity. I discover mtself factually as being; but as mere fact my existence is contingent. 0

Husserl's response to these questions requires a discussion of the various facets of his transcendental idealism-which is out of the question here. Instead we merely note that if the question is about me, the factual human being in the world with all the other factual contingent beings, then there is no question about my contingency, birth and death. But as we move to more ultimate strata of the See W. Cramer, Die Monade (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1954), 89. Eugen Fink, VI. Cartesianische Meditation, Part 2 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988), 154-155. In the lengthy marginal note to this passage Husserl does not directly address the challenge Fink's question raises for his transcendental idealism. 9

10

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phenomenological reduction and regard the I as the streaming world-experiencing, the world's elimination (its disintegration, becoming illusory, etc.) presuppose this primal I as the foundation for all appearings of what appears. And furthermore, here there is a coincidence between esse and percipi and the esse is necessary and absolute, to such an extent that its imaginative or conceptual elimination is inconceivable.

IV.

BIRTH AND DEATH

Birth and death are what we experience in the second and third person. "My death" or "my birth" are never something which I experience, even though Husserl seems to assign a proper sense to "I die" or "I am dying." 11 Death and birth are events for me first of all when I experience the birth and death of others. The other is present to me (according to Husserl's theory) through empathic perception, i.e., through a kind of perception in which I analogously transfer my self-experience to the other experienced body "over there." The realization that this is no longer possible in regard to someone, e.g., that she is irretrievably absent, immobile, decaying, etc., is what first makes death an event, and seemingly a theme. "My death," therefore, would be an event for me through the eyes of others; it would never be something constituted 1by me as a first-order, first-person experience. As my birth expected, perceived and remembered as something perceived only by others so my death is perceived and remembered only by others. Husserl thus can ask, "does not my 'death' as something conceivable for me only from the perspective of others presuppose the being-for-me of others who live?" 12 Yet birth and death belong to the public intersubjective sense of the world for us all. The personal members and co-subjects of this world are present as generations. Each is present to each as one who has been born and who will die. Each is a member of a generation propagated by fore bearers and each is present to each as one who will at one time no longer be actually present but will be present only in the memory of subsequent generations. Thus, on the one hand, birth and death as the commencement and cessation of persons seem to be undoubted facts about our life 11 Husserl conceived ofa proper, authentic sense of"I die" which he envisaged as a mode of transition to a universal inactivity, which nevertheless, is not a letting go of the validity of one's life and striving, what one has effected, suffered and overcome. See the MS, E III 6. 12 From the MS BI 21, 9. Cf. Bernard Waldenfels, Das Zwischenreich des Dialogs (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971), 344.

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in the world with one another; yet, on the other hand, from the transcendental phenomenological perspective, the transcendental "I" neither begins nor ceases. Let us begin with the problem of the "life after death" or after the excision from a life in the world with others. First, it may be noted that although Husserl found no saving philosophical conceptualization of personal immortality he personally took great comfort in the thought that although he, Edmund Husserl, would die, the transcendental ego could not perish. 13 He objected to personal immortality for familiar reasons, some of which we will briefly sketch. Being a person for Husserl is correlated to an environing social and natural world. The trouble with many theories of immortality, as with a story like Rip Van Winkle, is that the personal identity's correlation with the environing world's validities, i.e., beliefs, friends and associates, styles of life, social institutions and structures, exemplars, values, etc. is made incidental or of no account. My having this unique personal identity is inseparable from a world with others which I have constituted by judgments, promises, resolves, plans, commitments, etc. How can I wake up as me if my social-historical world no longer is valid and the others who have co-constituted this world with and through me are absent? 14 He makes a similar objection to reincarnation (in the MS C 4, 21 ff.). Here he asks, is it really conceivable that I, leaping out of the unity with humanity and my personal identity, land in a new birth in such a way that the unity and identity are absolutely forgotten and now, having become a new human, remember myself but as another, finding thereby access to another I-existence and I-life as that of this new human? The psychiatric phenomenon of depersonalization, i.e., of someone who suddenly changes his character and loses the personal memories of his childhood, career, etc. and so becomes a different human in this world, must be distinguished from the case of reincarnation. The latter is a case of someone who changes altogether the habituality of personhood in such a way that he no longer experiences himself as a human of this same world but rather finds "himself," in a most difficult sense of an identifiable same "himself," in a completely different world. In the former case there is an enormous amount of continuity in terms 13 See Alfred Schutz' observations in his "Husserl's Importance for the Social Sciences," in Edmund Husserl: 1859--1959 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1959), 87. 14 This seems to be the gist of the objection sketched in Zur Phaenomenologie der lntersubjektivitat III, Husserliana XV, (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973), 608; I will return to this text soon. It is the point ofC 4, 21 ff., to which we now turn.

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of the bodily experiences, the milieu, certain childhood experiences, etc. even though certain layers of experience have suffered a rupture. Yet, in the case of reincarnation there is no such continuity and yet, it is claimed, that it makes sense to say that "I" have become so and so. There seem to be two cases of non-personal immortality which occasioned consolation for Husserl, both of which are mentioned in Husserliana XV, 608 ff. The first case is conceptually the least difficult. The human, like every monad, i.e., every analogous center of consciousness ("I") or will "is immortal in its share in the selfrealization process of the divinity. The human is immortal in the continuing effects of all that is genuine and good." 15 For Husserl the divine is an "entelechy" or an "ideal pole-idea." We initially best grasp this concept by seeing its proximity to Aristotle's prote entelecheia, i.e., as the formal essential actuality and perfection, e.g., that of sycamore tree-ness, which actuates a hyletic (material-stuff) dimension and therefore something which, in respect to this actuation, is not yet complete. Husserl's metaphysics, however, "does not posit, properly speaking, an ideal goal (in the sense of the schema of the completed tree as the limiting goal of the development)" (Husserliana XXVIII, 226). Because the ideal is an infinite regulative one, the divine entelechy may also be appreciated as both a regulative and constitutive idea in Kant's sense. The divine is a formal and ideal constitutive moment of absolute consciousness or what he names, with scare-quotes, "absolute substance." 16 As the infinite idea or teleological pole of the pole of the world and as constitutive of the wakefulness of the transcendental "I" (see below) the divine is not temporal. The divine as formal-ideal moment is not temporal; but it needs the hyletic monadic realm, the co-constituent of "absolute substance" for its self-realization. Indeed, the actualization of the monadic realm from "sleeping" (the scare-quotes will soon be explained) to walking monads, from latent to patent wills, is the medium of the 15 Zur Phiinomenologie der lntersubjektivitiit III, Husserliana XV, 610. Other Nachla.fl texts make the same point. For example: "In everything noble and good, which I realize in me, I am therefore realized God, fulfilled will of God, mere nature which has become God, a fulfilled God. God as entelechy, God as energy" (B II 2, 54). 16 See James G. Hart, "Entelechy in Transcendental Phenomenology: A Sketch of the Foundations of Husserlian Metaphysics", forthcoming in an issue of The American Catholic Philosophical Association journal, edited by John Drummond; also my "A Precis ofan Husserlian Philosophical Theology,: in Essays in Phenomenological Theology, ed. Steven Laycock and James Hart (Albany: SUNY Press, 1986).

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process of the divine entelechy's actualization. 17 Once Husserl formulated this as the absolute's self-temporalization. And he equated this with reason as the absolute temporalizing itself but in need of "unreason," i.e., the hyletic realm, "without which the rational is 'impossible.'" He writes of the latent and/or sleeping mode of monads which, on the one hand, is the presupposition for the patent and wakeful monads; but, on the other, the latent and patent modes are both modifications of the absolute primordial "living present" or primal "I." Thus, ifwe think of the absolute as at once the whole of which the divine is a constitutive moment as well as the medium of the divine entelechy's self-realization, we may understand "the absolute ... [as] nothing other than absolute temporalizing ... infinite streaming, implying infinities of streaming ... iteration of potentialities." 18 17 We see thus that Husserl appropriates one of the senses of entelechy in Aristotle, i.e., as the actuality of soul which achieves "a kind of continuous and enduring motion" (as Cicero rendered it) and which is the actuality which goes in advance of those other derivative ones which may fall into dormancy. Aristotle himself used sleeping and waking to illustrate this sense of entelechy (actuality): "It is obvious that the soul is actuality [entelecheia] in the first sense, viz. that of knowledge as possessed, for both sleeping and waking presuppose the existence of soul, and of these waking corresponds to actual knowing, sleeping to knowledge possessed but not employed, and in the history of the individual knowledge becomes before its employment or exercise" (de Anima, 412a 23 ff.). For a helpful meditation on these matters see Rosamond Kent Sprague, "Aristotle and the Metaphysics of Sleep," Review of Metaphysics XXXI ( 1977), 230 ff. For Husserl, the divine, as the first grade of actuality, is the soul or formal actuality of the universe which never falls into latency because all being as patent being must go through the intermediate state oflatency. Thus in the realm of being, in as much as waking and sleeping are contradictories of one another and one must be present and the other not, sleeping must be a necessity for all beings. But the divine as formal-teleological principle does not "sleep." Yet the divine here need not mean a "self-thinking thought" or quasi-personal consciousness in which there is no capacity for sleep or potentiality for wakefulness or perfection. For Husserl there is a basic "dialectical" tension between the way the actual formal perfection of the divine entelechy needs the hyletic-monadic for its (infinite) completion and the way latent reason presupposes actual patent reason for its disclosure. In this sense "being is not existing prior to 'humans' and reason but only in and through them; but on the other hand it becomes in stages moving from pre-rational to rationalwhereby, however, reason as being is presupposed and true being as pre-rational and as developing presupposes already existing being as 'subsequently constituting.' Reason as ultimate, in an ultimate sense, constituting being ("Sein konstituierende"), the being of all ontological relativities, is in a certain way beyond all being and nevertheless itself a stage of being, as something "recognized" through already existing reason" (E III 4, 22a). But this latter "recognizing," philosophical reason has not always existed, been actual, awake, etc. 18 Zur Phii.nomenologie der lntersubjektivitii.t III, Husserliana XV, 669-670. This student is tempted to elucidate Husserl with Whitehead's categories, i.e., to envisage the "absolute substance" of Husserl as co-constituted by the (hyleticmonadic) creativity (as a blend of prote kyle, Leibnizian indiscriminateness, and Bergsonian duree and elan vital), and the divine primordial nature (which is entelechy,

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In this sense of immortality one's true identity is tied to the telos of infinite perfection of the divine entelechy. Therefore we may take this to mean that authentic desiring by persons cannot be identified with all explict present desires nor can fulfillment be identified with the continuance of the past or present state. This latter would be comparable to the circumstance of a parent's desire for the continued or resurrected life of her deceased child. Typically the parent does not desire the child as a complete and perfected personality; she desires, e.g., that the child continue to exist in heaven. Yet it would not seem appropriate of us that we desire for the parent's sake that the infant should remain an infant for all eternity. What we should desire is the continuation of the true will and true self of the deceased child. 19 Most profoundly understood this might be considered the participation in the "self-realization process of the divinity." The second type of impersonal immortality is the most difficult and its explication will occupy us for the rest of the paper. It is, first of all, suggested in Husserl's view that the human is immortal in so far as the entire 'inheritance" of the all of monads is bequeathed to it when born and abides with it when this monad dies, or rather when it falls into "absolute sleep." "It," subsequent to the absolute sleep, refers no longer to the personal "I" who has ceased to be; but rather to the unbegun and unceasing primal "flow" from which each monad emerges and to which each returns-bearing the monadic inheritance. Monads are born as already having begun through the beginnings of the monads which have preceded and whose lives have left a "sedimentation." Each waking monad therefore is born with a hidden history which is the background of sleeping monads, which is at the same time an aspect of "universal history." (Again, a specially good text is Husserliana XV, 608 ff.) Instinct and all the other drives and rules of cognition and perception which are integral to the specific monadic mode of consciousness are ways species of monads make contact with the ancestors of their own species and perhaps those of others. The appropriate formulation of this transcendental monadic bond, which can only be reconstructed by transcendental reflection because it is not itself a matter of intuitive evidence, is dependent on the positive biological sciences. In any case, the way the particular personal monad the "form of forms," a regulative and constitutive idea, a vis a fronte and a vis a tergo). 19 Cf. B. Bonsanquet, Value and Destiny of the Individual, Leet. IX, where this theme is developed.

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appropriates the monadic inheritance, passes it on, and falls into "absolute sleep" with it is a result of the unique creative synthesis of its life. 20

V.

SLEEP AND ABSOLUTE SLEEP

Husserl, especially in connection with his appropriation of Leibniz' monadology, found numerous occasions to meditate on the ancient inclination to see in sleep an adumbration of death. In German there is the saying, "Sleep is the brother of death." Depending on whether one is prepared to make certain distinctions as well as on one's metaphysics, the use of this metaphor is either treacherous or, as in Husserl's case, consoling. (Clearly Husserl believed that his own proposals on these matters enjoyed the status of a rigorous scientific foundation of Leibniz' constructions.) 21 Before we go into the specifics of Husserl's theory, some commonplaces on the eidetics and poetics of sleep are in order. When we fall asleep, we lose our grasp on things, we are no longer in the world with others, but, as Heraclitus noted, we retire to a private world in which publicity and communication are absent. Although it is not evident that we go anywhere in the sense of local motion it seems that the images of falling somewhere and losing something are appropriate: we "fall" away from the world with others and "collapse" into a realm which lacks the determinateness of whence we were. The one slumbering is typically unaware that she or he is sleeping. The one sleeping cannot say I am sleeping; nor typically can he say I am dreaming; only the one observing can use the appropriate verb characterizing the sleeper in the present tense and, in this 20 Husserl is inclined to see the inner-worldly events of birth and death as "transcendental indices" for an infinite trans-natural (ubematurliche) mode of being of the mon_ads, !nd_ices for ~ style of ~eing for which the methods of knowledge of the world m yr(nc1ple are mappr~pr!~te (see MS, A V 20, 27). In this essay we ~ur~~e only mc1den_tally the pecuhanues of the method of knowing ("reconstruction ) and the details of Husserl's speculation. 21 Because a detailed comparison between Leibniz and Husserl is out of the question we will use the concepts derived from Leibniz in what seems to be the ~.ense intended by Husserl. Ty_pic:tl, a~o1:1g ~umerous passages is the following: Phenomen~logy confirms Le_1bmz d1~tmct10n ?etween sleeping and wakeful monads, which ha~e a consc10usness m a particular sense, and the spiritual human mo_nads. It 1_s also a truth to be confirmed that each higher level includes the others m a certam way. The human contains in itself an other animal soul-life and in the structure at the deepest level of sleeping monads ... " (A VI 26, 42b). H!-1sser\ himself refers ~o the saying "sleep is the brother of death" (K III 6, 399). H1~ as_s1s_tant, E1;1~en ~mki was later to write a severe critique of this analogy and Le1bmtz1an pos1t10n m his Metaphysik und Tod (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1969), especially 34 ff. and 139 ff.

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sense; only the one watching has the advantage of knowing what the sleeper is "doing." Both the sleeper and the one watching may, of course, use the past tense: I was asleep, You were asleep, etc. Because while asleep one is powerless to assert one's rights, sleeping in someone's presence is to trust that oneself and one's bodily place in the world will be respected. Only the one watching knows of the circumstances of the bodily being in the world of the one sleeping. Similarly when I sleep my powers and capacities sleep, i.e., their actual readiness or potency falls into a potential potency. When asleep I cannot (I do not have the power to) act, perform, achieve, etc. I am totally dependent on the other's waking me if my capabilities and agency are to be realized vis-a-vis the world (see MS, CV 17, 20). The (fully) wakeful "I" regards sleep as something it possessessimilar to the way I might regard my bodily members and needs as something I "have," granting that this having presupposes a sense in which I am, and do not merely have, my body. Thus one may say I need my sleep, I lost sleep, You robbed me of my sleep, etc. On the other hand, with the approach of sleep the wakeful "I" does not sense ownership of sleep but rather finds itself embraced by, or in the grasp of, or even submitting to the mastery of sleep. I do not have "it" but "it" has "me"-and here the senses of "I," "me," and "it" begin to lose their definiteness. This resembles the experience of oneself in extreme pain. Here I also not only am removed from the common world with others (and therefore have little memory of these times) but "I" also have no distance from or possession of the pain but am the paining. When asleep the validity of the world's being is disengaged. But this is not through the will act of an epoche or a reduction. Indeed willing to sleep is not a sustained will. During the "being gone" (Entsunkenheit) of sleep there is no will to "be gone." "It is the peculiarity of the will to sleep that it is effective to the extent that it vanishes or to the extent that it also 'is gone'" (E III 6, 7a). Consequently we may here recognize that a "good night's sleep" is a kind of grace because it cannot be willed or forced; rather it is contingent and provides us with a new lease on life. In authentically dying, although we let go of all future achievements and acts of will we do not relinquish, disengage, or say No to what we have achieved and believed. Consciously dying is a mode of being awake: a mode of transition to universal inactivity which is different from the quasi-activity of dreaming while asleep and the quasi-being-awake of sleep. It is also different from the losing hold or falling away of sleep during which we do not renounce the future

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tasks and goals. (See C III 6, 8b.) As we come to see how timeconsciousness is tied to wakefulness and this latter is seen as an ideal synthesis and general will we will be able to see how will and authenticity are inseparably bound up with time-consciousness. · From the waking standpoint we see that being able to sleep requires the capacity to trust that we ourselves and the world whose well-being concerns us will be safe even when our attending to it is inactive. In not being able to fall asleep we seemingly find ourselves unable to disengage our will and perhaps unable to have faith in other wills. Whereas before, in our weariness, we perhaps were unable to appreciate new possibilities and to summon strength to deal with problems, now, after a good sleep, things look different, at least in terms of our resources and the world's possibilities. This kind of consideration enables us to believe that loss of wakefulness is not merely a privation. Not only does one's life seem to continue in an often creative, if not obviously connected way, but some necessary sense of one's life or some condition of life is realized in sleep. The great question, of course, is, what is this sense of life which seems to be, from the point of view of conscious awareness, a privation of life and meaning because it is oblivion, absence of determination and discrimination of the common life with others? Indeed, for the others, we, as asleep, are "gone," and not an actual factor or agent in the appreciation and achievement of the common good. [We here merely mention that Husserl's theory of the death of persons as a sinking into absolute sleep seems to hold that the excised monad returns to the original continuity of the unique transcendental "I" as a primal "flow" in which all plurality is resolved into a fusion ("Verschmelzung") and out of which differentiation unfolds. That is, out of the uniquely unique transcendental "I" there emerges in birth and wakefulness evolution, "monadization" and "mundanization" (Hua XV, 588 ff.); and with death there is return ("involution": A V 21, 42a) to an absolute monadic undifferentiatedness and a de-worlding. Thus for Husserl the modes of non-being of death and prior to birth are not an absolute nothingness but are other senses of being, but a being "out of commission." And thus in a quite different sense this latent being is a "streaming" and functioning even though from the point of view of the world and time it is non-temporal and nonfunctioning (see C 17 V, 40 ff.) And this latent being plays the role of underground and presupposition for all patent wakeful beinganalogous to the way passive synthesis is founding, latent and

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anonymous to active synthesis. And it still functions in the universe of monads through the bequeathal of monadic inheritances and instinct and thereby "concommitantly realizes special functions in the harmony of the world of God," i.e., in harmony with the self-realization process of the divine entelechy; see Husserliana

XV, 608-610.]

It is not the time spent sleeping but our wakeful life which counts for us as our life. When we awake from sleep we begin our life anew from where we left off when last awake. The interim "night-time" hours of sleep do not count as part of "my life." I resume where I left off before I went to sleep, I return to my life and its features as the same as what I was doing before I went to sleep. The particular person I am remains the same; the beliefs I held, the resolutions, decisions, and promises I made, etc. hold their validity. Similarly my surroundings maintain their same basic features. A question arises here. If it be true that my waking life is interrupted by sleep and that when I awake my mind makes a leap over the interim "night time" and makes connection with the time just before I fell asleep, then are not sleep and waking absolutely discontinuous? And if there is a discontinuity, and if sleep and being unconscious are the cessation of my conscious life and of any sense of an awareness of a flow of Nows, do I not have here a phenomenon which challenges Husserl's basic claim? That is, is not the awakening from a dreamless sleep an experience of a truly first Now, a Now for which there is no retention of an experience of "nothing before?" And similarly is the falling into a dreamless sleep not similarly an experience of an ultimate final Now for which there is no filled impression of the protention, "and nothing afterwards?" And if these all be true do we not have phenomenological evidence for the conceivability of the beginning and ending of the transcendental "I" as well as time itself? 22 There are at least two basic issues here: 1) in what sense is a first Now experienced when waking and a last Now when falling asleep? and 2) is there absolutely no experience of time when dreamlessly asleep? It would seem that a possible way of handling the first issue might be simply to say that there is no evidence of a "first" or "last" Now. Although when we fall asleep, what we know we know "this side" of the "land of sleeping" and when awakening what we know we know "the other side" of the sleeping, no one ever finds 22 For all of this see Johannes Vokelt, Phiinomenologie und Metaphysik der Zeit (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1925), 37 ff. and 178 ff. This book, written independently of Husserl, occasions a good dialogue with many of the positions taken by Husserl.

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himself in a position to say when waking began or ceased. And this is not because of the clear discontinuity with the flow of experience, but rather because of the fuzziness of the beginning and ending of wakefulness. I have become awake, I have again self- and world-consciousness as streaming world- and self-present-to which belongs already the streaming of the coming-to-oneself as well as the streaming comingaway-from-oneself in falling asleep. In the one case I find no end; in the other no beginning; Here is a releasing, a letting fall of the interests which move me when fully awake, a deactualization; there [in waking] is a resumption, an actualization, a continuing again (K III 6, 395).

As to the second point: If it is true that there is no clear discontinuity, then do we have an experience of a fuzzy continuity between sleep and wakefulness? What would that continuity be? Or, if the experience of a fuzzy continuity seems undecidable, i.e., one may hold that there is discontinuity but we simply do not know it with certainty and clarity, can we conceive a kind of absolute sleep in which there is still an anonymous unceasing "functioning?" What phenomenological considerations, besides the issues raised in Section III above, may serve to establish such a thesis? These are the difficult matters which we will now address.

VI.

THE NON-TEMPORAL FUNCTIONING OF THE PRIMAL IN ABSOLUTE SLEEP

I

At the outset it must be said that the phenomenological discussion of sleep and death is not an effort to uncover a hidden dimension which has an "in-itselfness" experienceable as such but which we, from our disadvantaged position, cannot well investigate. Rather sleep and death, as modes oflatent being, are not anything original or constituted in themselves. Rather they are to be thought of as intentional modifications of wakeful or patent being. Thus the details of their composition are only accessible through a reconstruction of what patent being reveals. 23 23 The theme of reconstructi0n is touched on in many places throughout Husserl's Nachlafl; for our purposes Husserliana XV, 608 If. again is a good text. Husserl's discussion of latent being as an intentional modification of patent being raises a basic issue of transcendental phenomenological idealism, namely, whether there is not always to be presupposed a prior wakefulness even in the face oflikely evidence that the experienced world once knew nothing of wakeful monads. See especially B IV 6 for this. Part II ofJonathan Schell's best-selling book, The Fate of the Earth (New York: Knopf, 1982), which deals with the question of the meaning of the world if consciousness is extinguished, provides a popular and "existential" introduction to Husserl's problematic here.

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Sleep for Husserl has as a necessary feature the powerlessness of the impressions of the perceptual present to awaken relief, contrast, etc. In this sense sleep necessarily correlates with the absence of a perceptual present. To be awake is, for the "I" in the most elemental sense of the primal flow, to be affected in the perceptual present by the non-egological or the hyletic dimension. The ultimate primal "I" (or primal presencing, living present, etc.) is composed of two inseparable primal moments or sources, an egological source which is affected and a hyletic, non-egological source which is a "primordial stream of temporalization" which, when in contact with a perceptual field, occasions affections for the egological moment. 24 The I-moment is manifest as such and as I-pole only as pole of the affections in unity with the constituted immanent temporal unities which affect the I, i.e., "make a dent," in some way or other. Impressions cannot affect us if they are not delineated; correlative to their being delineated is that they have affected us. In waking life the I is "there" (dabei) in the sense that primal presencing is an affecting, something "makes a dent," "gets through," or is "an eye getter" in the minimal sense of being an item of consideration, something delineated. Husserl's position can be made clearer by considering analogous senses of being asleep. When I am caught up in a reverie or memory, or when I am immersed in a task, the surrounding fields with their "excitement" make no impression. The more we are absorbed or caught up in a focal consideration, the less do the peripheral fields affect us. We may say that we slumber in regard to them and they for us. Similarly sleep itself admits of degrees of depth, wherein the degree and intensity of the affections from the surroundings are inversely proportionate to the impeturbability of the sleeper: the deeper the sleep, the greater the ineffectiveness of the excitation or affection. But sleep is different from the "sleeping" peripheral fields of the entranced or absorbed wakeful I. While awake the will is implicitly attuned to the non-explicit layers of "the world" in terms of the explicit slice to which one is attending. 25 Indeed, as we shall have occasion note, there is an absolute ideal of wakefulness wherein no surrounding area is completely dormant, even though implicit, and where world, as the field of fields and the correlate of the personal will as the synthesis of one's entire life, is profiled or (apperceptual24 This duality of ultimate moments is suggested in several NachlaJJ texts, especially, C 10, 24; cf. my "A Precis ofan Husserlian Philosophical Theology," 132-134. 25 See MS D 14, 39 If.

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ly) intended in each phase ofour task or thought. But in sleep we do not have any active worldly interests; we have put them aside. Yet it is problematic how in fact we have disengaged our will. In so far as we do fall asleep and disengage ourselves we find a kind of explanation for the way the stuff of dreams, for the wakeful I, not the dreaming one, is discontinuous with the spatial-temporal and even causal threads of the narrative of waking life. Yet the dreams themselves, for the wakeful interpreter, often point to a connection with the wakeful will. But what we, from the waking standpoint, judge for the dreamer to be quasi-experiences, e.g., sorrow, joy, anxiety, etc., i.e., as if there was a kind of legitimation of or belief basis for these experiences, only partially fit into the general will of our waking life. It would seem that Husserl would be open to Bergson's suggestion that dreams in many cases do stand in direct correlation to the external impressions of the sleeper but that these, of course, lack the precision that they have for the wakeful person. But what of Bergson's other proposal that "waking and willing are one and the same?" Without pursuing the matter in the detail it deserves it seems to me that Husserl would accept the Bergsonian view that in dream-sleep my will is indeed disengaged and I am disinterested in the world about me. When asleep and dreaming I let go of the horizon of wakeful interests and fall into the wider life ofretentions ofretentions which are beyond the actuality of my wakeful will and which I prescind from through the effort of concentration required by wakefulness. "Waking and willing are one and the same" in the sense that while awake there is active a definite habitual will which focuses me and prescinds from wider reaches of my life; but this is not to say that there are not repressed or potential willings waiting for the opportunity to be activated. The release of will in sleep opens me up to postponed or disengaged segments of my life to which I am not attending in my present habitual wakeful will but which can become active in dreaming. 26 Sleep is the disengagement of will, but it is also the absence of affections in the stream of temporal unities. As the peripheral events do not affect me when I am concentrating on something before me, so as I begin to dose off, the world before me does not affect me; I am slipping away from it. Being awake is to be aware of the flow as such and this requires some differentiation amidst the continuous flux. Thus in the flux of phases there must be some distinguishing features by which we distinguish the phases. For 26

Henri Bergson, Mind-Energy (London: Macmillan, 1920), 98-103.

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Husserl, even if what we are aware of, e.g., the present sounding note middle C, is not changing in any way, we still will perceive it to have duration and will be able to distinguish a flux of Nows. Sleep means there is not anything which gains relief through the temporal flux. There is no sense of a discrimination in the flux or of an identity or sameness which is evident as such through a flux of differents; rather awareness dissolves into fusion, a sameness without difference, but not a sameness as such or a difference as such. Thus there is not any self-present or world-present, i.e., anything present Now to the self, because these require discrimination and the difference of temporal phases of the stream of consciousness. One way to think of the spectrum of death-sleep-awaking-fullywakeful monadic existence is to consider how, at the exemplary extreme of wakefulness, Husserl envisages a life lived in which each temporal phase is appreciated as an identity synthesis with the articulated "absolute ought" or call of our true personal will. (See Section VI I below.) The course of waking life is punctuated with identity syntheses in which distinct and discrete acts come into play: e.g., the geese I am now remembering are the same as those I yesterday perceived. Here I presence something as "the same" and can appreciate it ("the same") as enjoying an ideal existence which is indifferent to its being present or absent. But our life also is pervaded by an endless series of passive identity syntheses all of which are born by and founded in the awareness of inner-time. Indeed we share this with animals who return to the same nest, the same cave, etc. But, Husserl holds, they do not seem typically to have the capacity to convert the passive identity syntheses, e.g., of recognition of the same nest or master, into an active repetition of the same as the same so that the ideality of a proposition or a name is achieved. That is, they do not achieve the constitution of something whose sense is to be indifferent to its being present or absent. And most fundamental for all wakeful monads is the awareness of the primal impression as a filling of the protention and the awareness (retention) of the just past Now as what before was actually Now and protended. 27 In sleep and death we do not even have this most elemental identity synthesis-even though we have, Husserl seems to claim, the non- or pre-temporal "flow" or "process" or "whiling" of the "living present" (see Section III above). 27 For this discussion of passive identity syntheses versus active ones, see, e.g., Zur Phiinomenologie der lntersubjektivitiit Ill, Hua XV, 183-184, 236--237, 349, 543544, 584.

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Thus in dreamless sleep and the absolute sleep of death we do not even have the passive temporal identity syntheses, i.e., here nothing is "pre-givenly" present as having duration, as something which passes; here there is no possibility or capacity to make present what elapses as the same. The sleeping I or monad is, in other words, nothing for itself; but it, as primal presencing or flow is not absolutely nothing but rather must be something. But it is only in being awake that I can make these claims (see MS, A VI 14, 7). On occasion, e.g., in A VI 14, Husserl is at pains to conceive what the passive undifferentiated "flow" of continuity could be; what would such a continuity be like wherein there is a fusion of unities with no distance intervening between them, i.e., where even primal impression, retention and protention are not distinguishable-in so far as these are always a proto-reflection and a proto-identitysynthesis? If we get rid of the flux of continuity of unities we get rid of the experience of the transcendental "I" as beginningless and endless; if we get rid of the absence of distance between the units fused together we make the "I" not asleep or dead but awake. In B III 3, especially 29a-35a, he wrestles with the reconstruction of birth as a happening of the first or primal affection. The egological moment begins with the "contrast" and affection of kinaesthetic or perceptual data: a visual object or sameness emerges out of a background which is itself taken as identically the same throughout the flux of phases. Here burgeons a proper sense of "I" as the pole of affections and this is inseparable from and coaeval with time-consciousness and wakefulness. But, Husserl argues, this original beginning affection itself cannot be the absolute beginning. The first "stream" properly does not begin after the manner of the first affection or original hyletic datum as a duration (or streaming, enduring object). Thus even though the "I" properly is not prior to the first affection it is not absolutely nothing; we must think of it rather as after the fashion of a background or underground whose relief can be diminished to the limit point of zero in which all contrast vanishes. Here there is no temporalizing, no discrimination, no temporality. "The being of the I in untemporality means that 'beginning' already presupposes the I as what can be awakened to a temporalizing living" (B III 3, 326); but this I, because equipped as, e.g., a human monad, begins already with the characteristics of a specific instinctuality and system of regulations of cognition which are inseparable from inner-time consciousness as the origination of temporality (see Husserliana XV, 594). Another consideration helps us to think about sleep and death as

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an absence of discrimination. In experiencing a sound (e.g., the note C) I appreciate it as the same across the flow of Nows, a, b, c, d, etc. When bis present, a is not actually present but is retained as a1 ; when c is present bis not actually present but is retained as b1 and a as a2 • That is, past presencings sink into the past, are retained, profiled in the present and enjoy a delineated discernible unity. Thus a3 functions in my appreciation of d as a phase of C; but the profilings of Cat b, c, d, e, etc. are also different ways of appreciating a. In this incessant transformation former presencings move in the direction of a zero point of relief, where they begin to fuse into a non-discernibility. The former discernible unities pass into a circumstance of becoming residual layers where their individual delineations become increasingly obscure. Thus, e.g., at phase x of C, a will function in the massive temporal sense of C, but not in a clearly discernible way; at x, a will not be appreciated as enjoying a new profile or aspect, as it was at c, d, etc. Husserl on occasion speaks of these residual layers as unconscious and as approaching a zero-degree affectivity in regard to the ongoing present sourcepoint. He also once conceived of this as the "pull of death." 28 Presumably he held this because they approach a state of not being able to be awakened and affecting and because they, like monads who have died, share in an endlessly universal streaming without differentiation. And yet like the monadic achievements of old they seem still to make some kind of contribution ("sedimentation") to the "sense" of the ongoing present. Indeed, Husserl is prepared to use the way the past experiencing functions anonymously in the present sense-making as the basic analogy for appreciating the interplay of the latent and patent monadic modes of being. Thus we find a major difficulty in the phenomenologicalconceptual separation of sleep from death. Aside from the obvious consideration that the one who is dead does not wake up and resume life where he left off, and aside from the consideration that authentic dying renounces a futural will in the way the sleeper does not, there does not seem to be any way to distinguish phenomenologically death from dreamless sleep. Both involve the zero-degree of discrimination. Both involve an absolutely dull circumstance in which nothing stands in relief, nothing affects or is affected, nothing differentiates itself, nothing novel appears, nothing is expected or unexpected. 29 And as the sleeper is not aware that he is sleeping or 28 Zur Phiinomenologie des inneren ZeitbewujJtseins (189~1917) (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966), 365. 29 See Phiinomenologische Psychologie, Husserliana IX (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1968), 486-487. See the formulation also in MS A VI 14, 7 ff.

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dreaming so the deceased monad does not know that it is deceased; nor does it know that it is immortal, i.e., that the primal undifferentiated flow and endlessly continues.

VII.

WAKEFULNESS AND WAKING

Waking and sleeping are not specific acts to which we can be exhorted or which take intentional objects. To wake and to sleep are verbs expressing kinds of "activity." In this regard they are like, e.g., walking and running-which need not take direct objects or express intentions or purposes. But whereas the walker may say "I walk" there is a sense in which the one waking may not say "I wake." That is, although one may, in response to the question, "What are you doing?" answer "I am waking up," there is a sense in which the person is already (more or less) awake and "I am waking" comes too late. But because we can become more awake, i.e., attentive, etc. because there are degrees of vitality of the fundamental "I can," Husserl holds the "fresher," the more vital this capacity is, "the greater the breadth of the affection and the greater the power of the affections to make themselves heard ... " (C 10, 22). Here too the feature of wakefulness as a regulative ideal expresses itself. More clearly, whereas one can answer to the same question, "I am running," no one may answer, strictly speaking, "I am sleeping." And the same holds for "I am waking." Thus it is clear that waking and sleeping are the medium and necessary condition for intentional acts; but they themselves are not such. Wakefulness, like consciousness as the lightsomeness of mind and the diaphanousness of being, is most difficult to define because all things which we might use as explanatory are available through it and presuppose it. Therefore it does not seem to offer, in Aristotle's terms, a proximate or specific differentiating genus. It does offer something approaching a contradictory, namely, its intentional modifications in forms of unconsciousness, as sleep, etc. (Cf. n. 16 here also.) When I awake from sleep I bring my present wakefulness into a synthesis with an earlier wakefulness as a past wakefulness. When "I" am born I have not a past behind me which I have constituted. Rather I have the sedimentation of prior existing monads which constitutes my pre-beginning, i.e., my instincts, drives, inborn dispositions, etc. Except for the fact that the beginning affection is not an absolute beginning, being wakened in birth seems to be an "inconceivable startling" (unbegreijl,iche Anstef]; Husserl uses in quotes this expression of Fichte in Husserliana IX, 487) which results in the transformation of the fusion of indiscriminates into definite im-

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pressions and the beginning of elemental identity syntheses. This wakefulness wherein there is an interplay of sameness and difference and presence and absence, e.g., in seeing, a, b, c, etc. as temporal profiles of C (taken as whatever object or background), is the birth also of the awareness of the stream of consciousness. It is upon this and within this factual flow of the elemental identity syntheses of one's life that the necessary connections of experience are founded and become manifest. Being awake, thus, is an ongoing gathering (retaining) and letting go, presencing and absencing which establishes the elemental durations of the appearing of what appears. Upon these are founded all senses of identity, likeness, goal, causality, etc. That X is experienced "on account of" Y, is rooted in the fact of former experiences working at appropriate times in the present presencing. That every "propter hoc" is founded in this "post hoc" is an occasion for a meditation on the "miracle" of reason, i.e., the remarkable feature of necessity and causality founded on the contingency of inner-time consciousness. This reveals motivations for a theological principle. We can only mention this discussion here. 30 Wakefulness as this ongoing primal presencing, gathering, protending, and letting go is a "taking time." Here taking time does not refer to a worldly event or to taking ourselves in a certain way, e.g., carefully. Rather prior to all such attending to the world and self-reference there is the original wakefulness which saves what it has presenced and, "at the same time," is gathering what it has presenced as having gone before. And "at the same time," it is also ahead of itself in pursuit of what it has already originated as well as in its anticipating what it has not yet actually originated. Thus in order for wakefulness as primal presencing to occur it must "possess itself" enough to be able to count on itself. Elsewhere, following suggestions of Kern, Held, and Landgrebe that here we have a founding "grace," I have proposed that this feature of wakefulness, which is coincident with the awareness of inner-time or the stream of consciousness, may be also considered a kind of transcendental self-trust. 31 Although we can wish someone a good night's sleep we cannot command it or exhort to it. Yet wakefulness for Husserl, as for, e.g., Buddhism, seems to be something in which the "is" is inseparably tied to an "ought"-or at least to a regulative ideal. Although there See "A Precis ofan Husserlian Philosophical Theology," especially 124-129. See "A Precis of an Husserlian Philosophical Theology," 145-159 and my "Transcendental Phenomenology and Zen Buddhism," in Zen Buddhism Today, No. 5 (1987), 156-158. 30 31

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is no intentional act called waking-because it is a medium for intentional acts-wakefulness itself is a process ofacts within which a regulative ideal functions so that exhortation may apply to these acts. Thus "Wake up!" can be urged not only of one slumbering but also of one who is awake. As an ideal it is more precisely indicated in the exhortation to be (more) attentive, sensitive, etc. We earlier noted how we might envisage peripheral fields as analogously slumbering when juxtaposed with the explicit theme upon which we are concentrating. For Husserl the wakeful I in fact is awake to the field of fields or the entire world. Thus implictly in the background there is an abiding universal horizon of which we are aware in even our most commonplace undertakings. What founds this horizon of world-wakefulness is the origin of time-consciousness: we have the horizon world in an encompassing "now" because we retain retentions and protend future presencings. Yet, we may here merely mention, there is a normative style of wakefulness or attunement with this universal horizon at the basis of Husserl's ethical considerations. Again, concentration, attention, and wakefulness disclose an "is" which contains an "ought." Husserl clearly envisages a continuity from the initial waking of the unborn monad to the authentic "will to live" and the ideal self-determination to live in the formation of the ideal We, which Husserl also calls "the absolute ought," and "universal ethical love." 32 In Husserl we find strong echoes of Kant's project of securing a meaningful life with a belief in postulates or a belief in the fulfillment of the necessary conditions for a meaningful life. The immortality of the individual's participation in "the self-realization of the divinity" is such a postulate of action-regardless of what merits it might have as a result of transcendental phenomenological metaphysical reflections. Thus he holds that if a personal I is to live true to itself in consistency there must be a "nature" in which is evident a divine mind_ and creativity which prevents the cosmos from becoming a chaos. Furthermore, "the human being can only be satisfied when he experiences also the ideal of his self as an absolutely perfect being and when he can realize himself actively in infinite striving. He must bear a god in himself" (AV 21, 106a). That is, there must be postulated in humanity a divine immanence as the condition for the earnest hopeful pursuit of the moral life. 32 A hint of this has been published in Husserliana XV, pp. 378 ff; a more elaborate indication is in the discussions of a philosophical culture in Husserliana XXVII. See my The Person and the Common Life: Studies in a Husserlian Social Ethics (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992), chapters 2 and 4.

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Husserl further supports Kant's view that we have the mandate to compose a novel (Roman) to tie together the threads of our many stories into a comprehensive narrative so as to assure maximal motivation for our collective research and action. 33 The "meaning of history" thus can have the sense of the telos or "purpose" as an infinite ideal. "Finding meaning in history" can refer to the experience of fulfillment (the "filling of empty intentions") in the projects which approximately realize the formation of a true will in a true community in a true humanity, i.e., "an all-personal We which (we) ought to be" (MS, C 2 III, 5). Finally, mystical experiences for Husserl may be considered ways in which the ideal of wakefulness graciously takes shape in our lives. On occasion certain things may call into play the retained but dormant commitments and resolves, i.e., the habitual direction, of the personal I. At which time novel organization of our habitual directions and illuminating thoughts may surface out of the depths of our strewn-out disjointed lives. Then new infinites and immense perspectives may open. These horizons are already adumbrated and sustained through the foundation of the awareness of time, i.e., transcendental self-trust. 34

33 See my "From Mythos to Logos to Utopian Poetics: Husserl's Narrative," forthcoming in the /ntemationaljournal of Philosophy and Religion ( 1989), 25, 147-169. 34 For a brief discussion see "A Precis of an Husserlian Philosophical Theology," 152-154; cf. also my "Toward a Phenomenology of Nostalgia," in Man and World, Vol 6., N. 4 (1973), 397-420.

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EXISTENTIAL TIME IN KIERKEGAARD AND HEIDEGGER

Joan Stambaugh The first question to be asked when considering the issue of existential time in Kierkegaard and Heidegger is what is meant by the term existential time? Ordinarily, we speak of several different kinds of time such as a psychological sense of time, aesthetical time and clock time, to name just three. The psychological sense of time is perhaps most familiar to us, or individual, personal perception of the slowness or rapidity of the passage of time. If, for example, I spend a week in Paris, the time probably goes by so quickly that I wonder where it went. Actually, this is a most interesting question, where the time went, which I shall not pursue for now. On the other hand, if I am engaged in some routine drudgery, even an hour can seem interminable. Thus the German word for boredom, Langeweile, means literally a long while, a seemingly long stretch of time. Aesthetic time we could characterize as the very special time indigenous to a work of art, for example, to a drama or a piece of music. We can get so absorbed in a tragedy or a symphony that the

"objective" time measured by the clock becomes irrelevant. Lastly, we must consider this time of the clock, which is what most people mean when they speak of time. Clock time is crucial to everyday existence so that I can get to work on time, meet someone for lunch, catch an airplane, etc. Important as it is, clock time is not really "time", but time measurement. But what is it that is being measured? Most or nearly all discussions of time move between the two possible poles of objective and subjective time. The subject-object dichotomy, which threatens to pervade all contemporary philosophy, seems to provide the exclusive parameters for any consideration of time. Time is either subjective or objective; any possibility between or outside of these two poles is ruled out. Whereas existential time, which I want to consider here, certainly lies closer to the subjective or psychological sense of time, it by no means coincides with it. This brings us back to our initial question: what is existential time? Existential time for both Kierkegaard and Heidegger means the

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time belonging to human existence. It cannot simply be equated with subjective or psychological time without further ado, particularly in the case of Heidegger. In order to answer our question, we must look at what these two thinkers have to say about the time of human existence. While they both maintain the relation of time to human existence, their conceptions soon part ways. Let us consider Kierkegaard first. Kierkegaard's whole discussion of time focusses exclusively on the relation of the moment in time to eternity or eternal happiness. He is careful to underscore the difference between the Socratic and the Christian relation to truth. For the truth in which I rest was within me, and came to light through myself, and not even Socrates could have given it to me, as little as the driver can pull the load for the horses, though he may help them by applying the lash. My relation to Socrates or Prodicus cannot concern me with respect to my eternal happiness, for this is given me retrogressively through my possession of the Truth which I had from the beginning without knowing it. If I imagine myself meeting Socrates or Prodicus or the servant-girl in another life, then here again neither of them could be more to me than an occasion, which Socrates fearlessly expressed by saying that even in the lower world he proposed merely to ask questions; for the underlying principle of all questioning is that the one who is asked must have the Truth in himself, and be able to acquire it by himself. The temporal point of departure is nothing; for as soon as I discover that I have known the Truth from eternity without being aware of it, the same instant this moment of occasion is hidden in the eternal, and so incorporated with it that I cannot even find it, so to speak, even if I sought it; becaus in my eternal consciousness there is neither here nor there, but only an ubique et nusquam. 1

For Socrates, everyone is in possession of eternal truths which they have forgotten. All anyone needs is a teacher like Socrates who by posing leading questions can remind him of what he has forgotten. Socrates describes his function as a teacher with the image of a midwife who helps others give birth; in this case not to physical children, but to spiritual ideas. No one can give birth for someone else; that they must do for themselves. It is otherwise with Christianity. The individual is not in possession of the truth, nor can he learn it from a finite human teacher. Nor is any direct transition from the historical moment of time to the eternal at all possible as was the case with the Greeks. Kierkegaard had great respect and admiration for Socrates, but at the 1 Philosophical Fragments, in A Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. Robert Bretall, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947, p. 157.

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same time took great pains to show the difference between Socrates' spirituality and that of Christianity, which obviously was not accessible to Socrates. Kierkegaard wanted to emphasize what he considered the absolute uniqueness of the Christian standpoint. That uniqueness consisted in the fact that the eternal entered time, that God became man in Christ. This is the absolute paradox. For Socrates, the truth was paradoxical in that a temporal and finite being could be related to eternal truth. For Christianity, the truth is doubly paradoxical and the factor of being double does not just add together two paradoxes, but the truth becomes absolutely paradoxical, totally incomprehensible to any rational understanding. The individual existing in time cannot relate himself directly and immediately to the eternal. The eternal and essential truth, the truth which has an essential relationship to an existing individual because it pertains essentially to existence (all other knowledge being from the Socratic point of view accidental, its scope and degree a matter of indifference), is a paradox. But the eternal and essential truth is by no means in itself a paradox; it becomes paradoxical by virtue of its relationship to an existing individual. The Socratic ignorance is an expression for the objective uncertainty; the inwardness of the existing individual is the truth .... The Socratic paradox consisted in the fact that the eternal truth was related to an existing individual, but now existence has stamped itself upon the existing individual a second time. There has taken place so essential an alteration that he cannot now possibly take himself back Socratically into the eternal by way of recollection .... but if existence has in this manner acquired a power over him, he is prevented from taking himself back into the eternal by way of recollection. If it was paradoxical to posit the eternal truth in relationship to an existing individual, it is now absolutely paradoxical to posit it in relationship to such an individual as we have here defined. But the more difficult it is made for him to take himself out of existence by way of recollection, the more profound is the inwardness that his existence may have in existence; and when it is impossible for him, when he is held so fast in existence that the back door of recollection is forever closed to him, then his inwardness will be the most profound possibility. 2

It is crucial to understand the setting within which Kierkegaard discusses time: the relation of the moment to the eternal. Unlike Heidegger, Kierkegaard does not give us any explicity temporal analyses, but appears to move pretty much within the traditional understanding of time. What is unique about his discussion of time 2

Concluding Unscientific Postscript, in ibid, p. 216--218.

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lies in the emphasis on the existence of the individual, something that tends to elude words. We have seen that for Kierkegaard the relation of the existential moment to the eternal cannot be the Socratic one of recollection. However, and here Kierkegaard becomes consistently adamant and bitingly sarcastic, neither can the relation of the existential moment to the eternal be one of mediation. Here, of course, it is Hegel who is lurking in the background, and not only in the background. Hegel, basically a Christian thinker, stated that the Absolute or the eternal mediated itself in time and appeared in history. I cannot go into the intricacies of Hegelian philosophy nor Kierkegaard's polemic here. Suffice it to say that for Kierkegaard the eternal cannot be directly mediated and related to the moment of existential time. To show the uniqueness of Christianity, Kierkegaard distinguishes different levels of existence: the aesthetical, the ethical, religiousness A and religiousness B, the religiousness of paradox. Each of the "higher" levels includes the "lower" ones. The aesthetical level is perhaps best epitomized by the diary of John the Seducer,3 a Don Juan who admires young girls from afar, observing every detail of their dress and manner, but who never takes action. He watches; he is a kind of voyeur. The ethical level involves action and commitment. Religiousness A, which would embrace all religiousness outside of existential Christianity, outside of Kierkegaard's own version of Christianity, involves a direct relation of man to the eternal. What truly interests Kierkegaard is religiousness B, which combines the pathos of religiousness A with its own dialectic. By pathos or existential pathos Kierkegaard means the existing individual's receptivity to the Idea and ability to be completely transformed by it. Here, as in general, existential pathos is sharply contrasted with aesthetic pathos. In relation to an eternal happiness as the absolute good, pathos is not a matter of words, but of permitting this conception to transform the entire existence of the indvidual. Aesthetic pathos expresses itself in words, and may in truth indicate that the individual leaves his real self in order to lose himself in the Idea; while existential pathos is present whenever the Idea is brought in relation with the existence of the individual so as to transform it. 4

3 4

347.

To be found in Kierkegaard's Either/Or. Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971, p.

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We now need to take a look at the dialectical nature of religiousness Band then to ask what all of this has to do with the question of existential time. Our discussion up to now has been necessary because Kierkegaard himself does not explicitly focus on the question of time per se; it is simply not his major interest. What will interest him about time is the moment. But first I turn to dialectic. The distinction between the pathetic and the dialectical must, however, be more closely defined; for religiousness A is by no means undialectic, but it is not paradoxically dialectic. Religiousness A is the dialectic of inward transformation; it is the relation to an eternal happiness which is not conditioned by anything but is the dialectic inward appropriation of the relationship, and so is conditioned only by the inwardness of the appropriation and its dialectic. Religiousness B, as henceforth it is to be called, or the paradoxical religiousness, as it has hitherto been called, or the religiousness which has the dialectical in the second instance, does on the contrary posit conditions, of such a sort that they are not merely deeper dialectical apprehensions of inwardness, but are a definite something which defines more closely the eternal happiness (whereas in A the only closer definitions are the closer definitions of inward apprehension), not defining more closely the individual apprehension of it, but defining more closely the eternal happiness itself, though not as a task for thought, but paradoxically as a repellent to produce new pathos. 5

By "dialectical" Kierkegaard does not at all mean some sort of Hegelian progression and mediation resulting in a synthesis, but rather absolute contradiction. The word paradox, which actually only means what goes against common opinion (doxa), has for him the same meaning. What is distinctive and unique about religiousness Bis that it breaks through the sphere of immanence and of any possible direct relation to the eternal and requires that the existing individual relate himself to something outside himself, to the determination of God in time as an individual man. For Kierkegaard, it is not possible to even think this, let alone understand it. It is the absurd. In contrast to Camus, who made this word the center of his conception of the world, construing it as meaninglessness, the absurd for Kierkegaard is the source of meaningfulness. For Kierkegaard, in all viewpoints other than religiousness B, the moment in time is swallowed up by eternity. In religiousness B, the eternal can be apprehended only in the moment in time, and nowhere else. One is now prohibited from being, so to speak, uplifted into the eternal; the eternal must enter time, thus profoundly altering and transforming the moment in time. 5

ibid, p. 494.

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In A, the fact of existing, my existence, is a moment within my eternal consciousness (note that it is the moment which is, not the moment which is passed, for in this way speculative philosophy explains it away), and is thus a lowlier thing which prevents me from being the infinitely higher thing I am. Conversely, in B the fact of existing, although it is still a lowlier thing as it is paradoxically accentuated, is yet so much higher that only in existing do I become eternal, and consequently the thing of existing gives rise to a determinant which is infinitely higher than existence. 6 As Kierkegaard himself said, he would not explain the paradox or contradiction, but merely state it. Only within existence can the eternal transform and authenticate existence. In the language of Heidegger, to whom I am about to turn, only the entry of the eternal into the moment of time offers the possibility of authentic existence. Thus it is seen that the moment is not a determination of time, because the determination of time is that it 'passes by'. For this reason time, if it is to be defined by any of the determinations revealed in time itself, is time past. If, on the contrary, time and eternity touch each other, then it must be in time, and now we have come to the moment. 7 For Kierkegaard, time is essentially passing by and contains within itself no possibility of true presence. True presence comes about only when time is intersected by eternity. Time is, then, infinite succession; the life that is in time and is only of time, has no present. ... The present is the eternal, or rather, the eternal is the present, and the present is full. ... Thus understood, the moment is not properly an atom of time but an atom of eternity. It is the first reflection of eternity in time, its first attempt, as it were, at stopping time. 8 Eternity is that which grants presence in the moment. 9 Eternity does not lie in the past as it did for the Greeks; it is not already "therej'. Eternity comes into time, and one enters it forwards, not backwards into the past. As Kierkegaard puts it rather cryptically, repetition is that category by which eternity is entered forwards 10 , eternity is indeed the true repetition. 11 We turn now to Heidegger. Now the concept of eternity drops out of the picture in the interpretation of time. To my knowledge, ibid, p. 508. The Concept of Anxiery, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980, p. 87. 8 ibid, pp. 85-6. 9 Oiblikket, similar to the German Augenblick. 10 ibid, p. 90. 11 ibid, p. 207.

6

7

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the only place where Heidegger mentions eternity in the context of his own thought is in a footnote in Being and Time. We do not need to discuss in detail the fact that the traditional concept of eternity in the significance of the 'standing now' (nunc stans) is drawn from the vulgar understanding of time and defined in orientation toward the idea of 'constant' objective presence. If the eternity of God could be philosophically 'constructed', it could be understood only as a primordial and 'infinite' temporality. Whether or not the via negationis et eminentiae could offer a possible way remains an open question. 12

Heidegger's analysis and interpretation of time is unquestionably more "radical" than that of Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard's interest in time is pretty well restricted to the relation of the moment and eternity. Although Heidegger devotes some effort to a discussion of the moment, his real interest lies in the temporal mode of the future. Why should the future be the decisive mode of time for Heidegger? There are at least two answers to that question. The first is the rather obvious one that Heidegger in the period of Being and Time is basically still within the Judea-Christian framework of time and especially history. History and the future will bring about something that has never yet been. New events come to transpire in the course of history; history is destined to change the world in some fundamental way. This view of history and the future finds its culmination in the philosophy of Hegel. The fact that Marx fundamentally had the same structural interpretation of history as dialectical progress shows that this interpretation is not necessarily a theological one. I am restricting my remarks on existential time in Heidegger to Being and Time since the later, more allusive analyses of "time" can no longer simply be designated as "existential". Turning now to the second, less obvious answer to the question of why the future is so important for Heidegger, we find that this answer lies in his concern with the wholeness of the human being. I shall come back to this important issue. But first I must turn to Heidegger's radically new understanding of time. To most of us, time means what Heidegger would call "clock time". When we speak of time, we mean time measurement or, at best, some vague psychological sense of "keeping track" of time which is again a form of time measurement, albeit less precise. Heidegger does not dispute the fact that clock time is a valid and necessary element in our lives; we could not function without it. 12

Footnote 13 to Section II, ch. 6.

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But this is not existential time. Existential time is the time that belongs to existence, and that means for both Kierkegaard and Heidegger human existence. For Heidegger, human existence has two possible fundamental ways of constituting itself: it can constitute itself either inauthentically or authentically. This "either--or" is not Kierkegaard's either--or which is strictly exclusive: either he passed the exam or he did not. One possibility excludes the other. There are two expressions in Latin for either--or. The exclusive either--or is aut-aut. But the Latin has a non-exclusive expression for either-or: vel-vel. An example of this kind of either--or might be: either I can take a walk or I can go to the movies. If I have enough time, I could do both. The two do not necessarily exclude each other. Human existence for Heidegger potentially involves both inauthenticity and authenticity. In this essay I only want to deal with this intriguing issue insofar as it is bound up with temporality. Inauthentic existence and authentic existence temporalize themselves in fundamentally different ways. I want to focus on the temporality of authentic existence as that which gives access to human being as a whole. In contrast to the traditional understanding of time going back to the Aristotelian conception, Heidegger develops a conception that is specifically existential. For Aristotle, time was basically a natural phenomenon that included the human being as "the numbering soul". If there is no numbering soul to measure and keep track of the time of nature, then we are talking, not about time, but about motion. What Heidegger calls "clock time" is then a further development, becoming more and more sophisticated, of the Aristotelian conception of time as time measurement. For Aristotle, time is what is counted. For Heidegger, time is the very structure of human experience itself. Here Heidegger takes a radical step beyond Kant who had already brought time very close to human experience by saying that time was the form of all inner experience, and thus indirectly of all outer experience as well. Kant showed that all of our experience of the outer world must take place in space; space is the necessary form of outer sensibility (Anschauung). And any experience whatsoever must take place in time; time is the necessary form of inner, and thus of all, sensibility. Even my spatial experience of, say, a landscape, takes time. Heidegger dispenses with the "in time" aspect of Kant's conception which was still caught in the Newtonian conception ofabsolute time as a kind of static container. For Heidegger, we are not in time; we are time. Our sense of time is not limited to counting and

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measuring, which is derivative of the kind of thinking that Heidegger later calls calculative thinking. Rather, time is fundamentally related to the three modes of human experience which Heidegger calls "existentials". Existentials are categories of human being. The ten categories that Aristotle formulated for things, and which basically outline the structure of our Western grammar, are not adequate to express human and existential reality. The three modes of experience to which time is related are understanding, attunement and discourse. These three modes undercut the traditional philosophical distinction of reason and the senses. Relating them to counting and measurement simply makes no sense. Thus, given his conception of the modes of human experience and given time as the structure of that experience, Heidegger is already outside of the traditional conception of man and of time. Understanding (Verstehen), which is not identical with reason, is primarily related to the future, to our fundamental existential "project" with all of its concrete potentialities, and affords us our dimension of transcendence. In Sartre's words, we are always more than what we are. I cannot simply be equated with my present state; I might become something much more and much better than that state. Of course, there is always also the possibility that I might become something much less and much worse. Attunement (Befindlichkeit: literally, how I find myself) is primarily related to the past, to our "thrownness", our having been thrown into the world, and imposes on us the stricture of facticity. There are certain elements in my existence that all the freedom in the world cannot alter. The time and place in which I was born, certain things I have done or left undone, all of these are inexorable factors with which I must come to terms and which I cannot alter. It is truly innovative that Heidegger places attunement and moods squarely in the center of his existential analysis; for two thousand years philosophers have acted as if moods did not exist. Finally, discourse (Rede) is primarily related to the present. By discourse, Heidegger means not only speech and speaking as such, but also and primarily the inner dialogue that we have with ourselves, the inner articulation of our thoughts. Now, we must distance ourselves from the Aristotelian conception of time in which the past is that which is no more, the future is that which is not yet, and the present is a sort of "knife-edged" now that is not even a part of time. Here Heidegger draws on the literal meaning of the German words for his purposes. The future (die Zukunft) is literally what is coming toward me and is already with me. The past (die Gewesenheit) is what has been and still is. The

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present (die Gegenwart) is what emerges from the meeting of future and having-been in the senses of those words discussed. I project myself toward my existential potentialities and, in so doing, come back to the facticity ofmy having-been, what I have done and been thus far. Thus the present is engendered. Time is not conceived as a linear string of unrelated "nows"; future, having-been and present are always inseparably together. The future is not "later" than the past; the past is not "earlier" than the present. This is what is most difficult to understand. We need to take a closer look at what Heidegger says here. What is projected in the primordial existential project of existence revealed itself as anticipative resoluteness. What makes possible this authentic being-a-whole of Da-sein with regard to the unity of its articulated structural whole? Expressed formally and existentially, without constantly naming the complete structural content, anticipative resoluteness is the being toward one's inmost, distinctive potentiality-of-being. Something like this is possible only in such a way that Da-sein can indeed come toward itself in its inmost possibility and perdure the possibility as possibility in this letting-itself-cometoward-itself, i.e., that it exists. Letting-come-toward-itself that perdures the distinctive possibility is the primordial phenomenon of the future . ... Here 'future' does not mean a now that has not yet become 'actual' and that sometime will be for the first time, but the coming in which Da-sein comes toward itself in its inmost potentiality of being. Anticipation makes Da-sein authentically futural in such a way that anticipation itself is possible only in that Da-sein, as existing, always already comes toward itself, i.e., is futural in its being in general. 13

One could say that in Heidegger's conception time is not what is counted, but rather what does the "counting". Time is not a linear series of now-points already there waiting to be counted; nor is it an inert container-framework. The literal meaning of the German words for past and future that Heidegger extracts is that of coming toward for the future and of having-been for the past. Thus the future enters into the present; it is not conceived as a not-yet-now. The word that Heidegger uses for the past is not the usual one, which would be Vergangenheit. In its place he coins a noun from the past participle of "to be", gewesen, having been. Thus the past also enters the present; it is still going on. If I say that I have been ill all week, this means that I am still ill now. In order to distance himself from the conception of time as a string of now-points, Heidegger introduces such concepts as the 13

Being and Time, paragraph 65. My translation.

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datability and significance of time and speaks of its ecstatic and horizontal character. We set forth datability as the first essential factor of time taken care of. It is grounded in the ecstatic constitution oftemporality. The 'now' is essentially a now-that .... The datable now that is understood in taking care, although not grasped as such, is always appropriate or inappropriate. Significance belongs to the now-structure. Thus we called time taken care of world time. In the vulgar interpretation of time as a succession of nows, both datability and significance are lacking. The characterization of time as pure sequence does not let these two structures 'appear'. The vulgar interpretation of time covers them over. The ecstatic and horizontal constitution of temporality in which datability and significance of the now are grounded, is levelled down by this covering over. The nows are cut off from these relations, so to speak, and, as thus cut off, they simply range themselves along after one another so as to constitute the succession. 14

Datability and significance get away from the conception of time as uniform and quantitative. The 'now' of world time is a 'now it is time for lunch', 'now it is time to go home'. The 'now' is not a uniform, indifferent 'now' interchangeable with any other 'now', but is filled with a qualitative content. This content gives to the 'now' its significance. The more datability and significance are involved in the experience of time, the more the idea of quantitative measurement and calculation simply drops away. Time becomes the experience itself, not the measurement of the experience. With the terms "ecstatic" and "horizonal" we arrive at a more technical level of analysis and at the same time at the heart of Heidegger's conception of temporality. We shall also see that, whereas Heidegger mostly states that authenticity is a modification of inauthenticity, in the case of temporality authentic temporality is without exception stated to be more primordial than inauthentic temporality. If you start out with the conception of time as a series of now-points, which is the vulgar, inauthentic conception, you will never get to ecstatic and horizonal temporality, the authentic conception. The term "ecstatic", which in common parlance seems particularly suited to the vocabulary of an overenthusiastic teenager, has for Heidegger a very precise meaning. It is cognate with the term "existence"; both mean literally "to stand out". What does ek-sist, standing out, mean? Here Sartre's well-known, suggestive statement "I exist my body" can be helpful. Even though the sentence is ungrammatical and unusual, since Sartre is using an intransitive 14

ibid, paragraph 81.

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verb transitively, we can have some intuitive sense of what he means. "I exist my body" means that I live in that body in the most concrete and intimate way possible. I can in no way escape it, although I can to some extent transcend it; for example, when people function in spite of pain. Heidegger expresses this by speaking of the existence that I am and have to be. I cannot change my mind and "start over" as someone else. The term "existence" becomes in Heidegger's later writings perdurance (Austrag) and standing-within (lnstandigkeit). Perdurance, a rather uncommon word, means to stick with something, to bear it. This need not have negative connotations, but it does have intense ones. Periods of great joy also have to be "perdured". The term "horizonal" is mostly used in conjunction with "ecstatic" and simply refers to the specific direction, context and finitude of any temporalizing. Both terms, ecstatic and horizonal, serve to indicate what, for lack of a better word, I shall call the "dimensionality" of being. This is not a term used by Heidegger himself, but the idea is there in Being and Time and emerges more significantly in later writings, particularly in On Time and Being. 15 I stated that for Heidegger instead ofbeingwhatis measured, time is rather what does the measuring. Here "measuring" is not meant in a quantitative, calculative sense, but qualitatively and, above all, constitutively. Temporality does not measure something objectively present already there, but first constitutes dimensions. This is Heidegger's way ofelucidating something so close to us that we mostly don't even see it; we just take it for granted. That is what Heidegger means by Da-sein, being there, being-in-the-world as opposed, for example, to the way the animal is in its environment. The animal has a very restricted sense of time. If I tie up a dog in front of the local supermarket, I cannot say to him: "I'll be out in fifteen minutes". As far as the dog is concerned, I am leaving for good. Worse yet, ifl go on vacation, I cannot leave him in the kennel and say: "I'll be back in three weeks". All the poor dog can do is hope. Prior to analyzing the structures of temporality, Heidegger describes the structure of human consciousness or awareness in terms of prepositions. Human beings are essentially concerned about their being, a fundamental characteristic that Heidegger called "Care" and the theologian Paul Tillich later called "ultimate concern". Care and being concerned are made possible by the fact that we are essentially ahead of ourselves. That is the prepositional description of the future of anticipation. 15

Durchmessung, literally, "measuring through".

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The fact that this referential totality, of the manifold relations of the in-order-to, is bound up with that which Da-sein is concerned about, does not signify that an objectively present 'world' of objects is welded together with a subject. Rather, it is the phenomenal expression of the fact that the constitution of Da-sein, whose wholeness is now delineated explicitly as being-ahead-of-itself-in-already- beingin ... , is primordially a whole. 16 Basically future-oriented, human beings project into the future; they are ahead of themselves. There is an aspect to this that Heidegger does not see or is not interested in: the fact that sometimes being ahead of myself can preclude my being where I am. In this limited sense, the animal has the advantage; it always is where it is. In projecting ahead of myself, I do not just wander endlessly into infinity, but come back to my already-being, my having-been or, as Heidegger calls it, my "thrownness". I am always already "in" something. What am I in? I am in a world. Thus, when the aheadof-itself comes back to having-been, the present, being-in-the-world is engendered. Future, having-been and present show the phenomenal characteristics of 'toward-itself', 'back-to', 'letting something be encountered'. The phenomena of toward ... , to ... , together with ... reveal temporality as the ekstatikon par excellence. Temporality is the primordial 'outside of itself in and for itself. Thus we call the phenomena of future, having-been and present, the ecstases of temporality. Temporality is not, prior to this, a being that first emerges from itself; its essence is temporalizing in the unity of the ecstases.17 Far from being locked up within "the cabinet of consciousness", 18 we are always already outside of ourselves, outside in the world disclosed to us. This is the meaning of being there, of existence. When we talk in an ontically figurative way about the lumen naturale in man, we mean nothing other than the existential-ontological structure of this being, the fact that it is in the mode of being its there. To say that it is 'illuminated' means that it is opened upa in itself as being-in-the-world, not by another being, but in such a way that it is itself the opening. b Only for a being thus opened up existentially do objectively present things become accessible or concealed in darkness. By its very nature, Da-sein brings its there along with it. If it lacks its there, it is not only factically not a being of this nature, but not at all. Da-sein is its disclosure. 19 16 17 18 19

ibid, p. 118. ibid, paragraph 65. Cf. Being and Time, paragraph 13. ibid, paragraph 28.

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The letters in this passage refer to the marginal notes that Heidegger made in his own copy of Being and Time. There are not many of these notes throughout the book, and three of them are bunched up in this passage. The notes read: a. after "opened up": A/etheia-openness-opening, light, shining. b. after "the opening": but not produced. c. after "disclosure": Da-sein exists, and it alone. Thus existence is standing out and perduring the openness of the there: Ek-sistence.

These notes are, of course, written from Heidegger's later stance, a stance that emerged from Being and Time and is unthinkable without it. The language in Being and Time points unmistakeably ahead to the later development of the clearing, opening, Lichtung. The ecstatic unity oftemporality-i.e., the unity of the 'outside-itself' in the raptures of future, having-been and present-is the condition of the possibility that there can be a being that exists as its 'There'. The being that bears the name Da-sein is 'opened' .... Ecstatic temporality opens the There primordially. 20

This is Heidegger's description of authentic temporality that can enable us to grasp human being as a whole. Being and Time is replete with descriptions of how inauthentic temporality flattens down the ecstatic and horizonal character of time, temporalizing itself in a series of dimensionless, static now-points. Since he felt that this was not only the common understanding of time, but also the predominant philosophical understanding, Heidegger seemed particularly concerned with showing its inadequacy to grasp the phenomena of wholeness and totality. The fundamental inadequacy of inauthentic temporality lies in the fact that it temporalizes itself as withintime-ness. One of Heidegger's most basic insights in Being and Time

is that we are not in time; we are time, we are temporalizing and temporality. And, paradoxically, it is the very finitude of our awareness, the fact that the ecstatic future simultaneously encounters the ecstatic past and engenders the ecstatic present, which makes wholeness and totality possible. In conclusion, existential time for both Kierkegaard and Heidegger means the time specifically belonging to human beings as opposed to clock time or the time measured by the physicist. However, their conceptions of what or who the human being, human existence and thus also existential time are, differ. Oriented in opposition to Hegel's system, Kierkegaard's conception of human existence stresses its unfinished quality, the fact that we can 2

° Cf, ibid, paragraph 69.

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never do anything once and for all. As long as I am alive, there is nothing settled or finished about my existence. Kierkegaard never tires of Hegel's failure to realize this and constantly pokes fun at him, asking if perhaps the System will be completed by next Sunday morning at ten A.M. Kierkegaard's conception of human existence represents the best of what is compelling about so-called "existentialism". In contrast, Heidegger's conception of Da-sein is outside the parameters of "existentialism" as defined by Sartre. Heidegger might well agree with Kierkegaard's emphasis on the unfinished quality of human existence, but his whole focus is on what he calls "being". Human existence is the "there", the openness for being, the "place" for it to show itself. Accordingly, time cannot be viewed from an exclusively psychological perspective of any sort whatsoever, but must be seen as a function of the unconcealing or truth of being. Thus, Kierkegaard's conception of existential time remains psychological in the best sense of that word, whereas Heidegger's conception claims from the outset to be ontologically oriented.

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PART TWO

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TIME IN JUDAISM P. Steensgaard

I.

INTRODUCTION

In an attempt to make the concept of revelation meaningful for contemporary Jews, the American-Jewish theologian Heschel has tried to investigate the nature of time and history. He concludes that what is decisive is that historical events as such are characterized by the fact that they are individual and unique, that is, are not derivable from any form of law. The truly creative man is thus one who is able to grasp that which is both exceptional and instantaneous. According to Heschel, modern man has become so used to being able to explain everything that occurs as "manifestations of a general rule, every phenomenon as an example of a type," 1 that he is closed to that which is properly temporal, historical, unique. If man were more open to the temporal, he would also be able to relate to the phenomenon or revelation, which is in fact the temporal par excellence, that which is unprecedented, absolutely singular. On the basis of these considerations, Heschel characterizes Judaism in the following manner: Judaism is a religion of history, a religion of time. The God of Israel was not found primarily in the facts of nature. He spoke through events in history. While the deities of other peoples were associated with places or things, the God of the prophets was the God of events: The Redeemer from slavery, the Revealer of the Torah, manifesting himself in events of history rather than in things or places. 2

Although many scholars would subscribe to most of this characterization-certain modifications will be proposed in what follows--disagreement does arise when it comes to the question, how one is actually to understand the concepts of "time" and

A.J. Heschel, God in Search of Man, New York, 1955, pp. 20lf. Ibid., p. 200; cf. idem, The Sabbath. Its Meaning for Modem Man, New York, 1975, pp. 7f. 1

2

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"history". We shall proceed to deal with this problem directly and turn to our investigation of the Biblical writings. It is commonly held that there is a distinctive difference between the Israelite and modern European understandings of time. Thus, for example, G. von Rad 3 characterized the European understanding of time as an endlessly long line along which all events are ranged. It is a sort of "absolute time" which precedes all eventuality. By contrast, the Israelite sense of time was of "gefiillte Zeit" ("filled time"), that is, it was concrete. Time was always the time of some particular thing, it was the course of events itself. It is unnecessary to discuss von Rad's description of European time (what we write in our diaries is also time for particular things); but we should note that there is no logical contradiction between the two views of time, the chronological and the concrete, filled-withevents. The Israelites, too, were able to subdivide time, and genealogy and chronology are important elements of the Biblical writings. A second frequently encountered characterization of the Israelite understanding of time assumes that whereas "the Greeks" had a "cyclical" view of time, time is in the Old Testament understood in "linear" fashion;4 it is goal-directed. This view, however, is problematical. As Van Seters remarks: The supposed contrast between Hebrew and Greek thought has recently been exposed as untenable especially as it relates to the respective historians of these two peoples. For instance, no cyclical view of time is evident in the Greek histories, whatever the philosophers might say, and there is no eschatology in the Israelite histories, whatever prophet and apocalyptist might propose. 5

• 3 _G. von Rad, Theologie des Allen Testaments, Munich, 1968, Vol. II, p. 108f. S1m1larly J. Pedersen, Israel, London, 1946, Vols. 1-11, pp. 48~91. This view is extremely widely entertained. For criticisms, see J. Barr, Biblical Words for Time, London, 1983, esp. pp. 30f. cf. pp. 23ff., and idem, The Semantics of Biblical Language, London, 1960, pp. 72-88, where T. Boman's understanding of the H~J:>r~w concept of time (in, Hebrew Thought compared with Greek, London, 1960) is cnt1c1zed. Boman attempts to support Pedersen's view by maintaining that the Hebrew verbal system is aspectual, in contradistinction to the indo-european temporal systems. 4 E.g., 0. Cullmann, Chritus und die Zeit, Zurich, 1946, esp. pp. 43-45; and K. Liiwith, Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, Stuttgart, 1953, pp. 11-26 and 168-174. 5 J. Van Seters, In Search of History. Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History, New Haven and London, 1983, pp. Bf. Van Seters refers to Barr's Biblical Words for Time (cited above), which raises difficulties for the notion that the Greeks held a cyclical view of time. He also refers to Momigliano, who has shown that such a view is undemonstratable in the work of Herodotus and Thucydides, and also that the Israelite Passover celebration is an example of a cul tic and cyclical understanding of time; see Time in Ancient Historiography, ed. A. Momigliano, Middletown, Conn., 1977, pp. 161-204.

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To put the matter as sharply as possible: we find in the Old Testament the concept of historical ("linear") time, but in the cult we also find mythical time, which has a cyclical character. We shall begin our study with this point.

II.

MYTHIC AND HISTORICAL TIME

In his book The Myth of the Eternal Return, the late Mircea Eliade distinguished between profane (linear and historical) time and sacred time, which interrupts profane time and, through the ritual act, translates the participants in the cult back to mythical primeval time whenever the festival takes place. Life is periodically renewed, as is time itself, through this repetition of the acts of creation. "Every new year is a repetition of the time of the beginning, that is, a repetition of the cosmogony." Eliade's illustrative examples are the Babylonian akitu-festival, as well as the Israelite New Year festival, which also reveals a similar structure. 6 Many scholars 7 have pointed to the fact that one of the aspects of the Sukkoth festival, which was held in the early autumn before the coming of the rains, was a New Year liturgy which follows a pattern known to us from other Near Eastern New Year festivals. These are such festivals as the akitu-festival in Babylon or the Canaanite New Year festival, although, quite characteristically, some elements are lacking in the Israelite version. These are namely the death and resurrection of the god and the sacral wedding (hieros gamos), which were incommensurate with the Israelite concept of God. We do not possess either the ritual or the liturgy of the Israelite New Year festival, but the Biblical psalms, most of which were written during the monarchical period, and which were used as cultic poetry in the Jerusalem temple, contain both fragments and suggestive allusions. For example, there is reference to a cultic drama which the congregation was invited to attend with the words, "come and see." Ps 48, for example, refers to a procession round about Zion and thus proves its liturgical character; in v. 8 we read, "As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of Yahweh of hosts, in the city of our God ... " The most reasonable interpretation of this is presumably to apply the "have heard" to the words of the myth, and the "have seen" to the dramatic actions which were employed to actualize them. 8 New York, 1971, pp. 35f.; 52-55;9f. The quotation is from p. 54. See, above all, S. Mowinckel, Psalmenstudien, I-VI, Oslo, 1921-24 (repr. Amsterdam, 1961). 8 See. H. Gottlieb in B. Otzen, H. Gottlieb and K. Jeppesen, Myths in the Old 6

7

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The creation myth, dealing with Yahweh's battle with and victory over the forces of chaos, was part of the New Year festival; in Ps 89:9-12 these forces are designated Yam (sea) and Rahab: Thou dost rule the raging of the sea, when its waves rise, thou stillest them. Thou didst crush Rahab like a carcass Thou didst scatter thy enemies with thy mighty arm. The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine; the world and all that is in it, thou hast founded them. The north and the south, thou hast created them; Tabor and Hermon joyously praise thy name. This creation-battle, or dragon-battle myth, is alluded to in a number of psalms such as Ps 93 and 74. The participants in the annual New Year festival in the Jerusalem temple, who experienced this battle in the context of a cultic drama, in reality experienced a repetition of the cosmogony, a clear example of what Eliade has termed sacral time. It is not the case here, as it is in Genesis 1-2, that creation is something that took place once and for all; rather, it is a repetition of the primeval event. However, it was not only the forces of cosmic chaos which were conquered in the cult drama. A characteristicJerusalemite variant of the creation myth is one which Mowinckel termed the battle with the peoples. 9 The close relationship between the two myths is shown by Ps 46, in which the threatening forces are, by turn, the forces of chaos (v. 3-4), and then the hostile peoples (v. 6-8). The psalm describes how the kings of the peoples join together to attack the sacred city, but just as the attack is about to succeed God reveals himself and saves the city, so that the enemies flee in terror. So also, for example, in Ps 48, where v. 9 clearly shows that events depicted in the psalm are experienced in the cult. As the one who has vanquished both types of enemies, Yahweh is now able to ascend his throne while nature, peoples and the divine world are invited to celebrate his ascension (Ps 98:4ff.; 96:7ff. and Ps 29). The participants in the cult may therefore face the coming Testament, London, 1980, p. 66. 9 Mowinckel, Psalmenstudien, II, pp. 57ff.

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year in security; God has defeated the forces of chaos, so that rain will come at its appointed times, and Jerusalem will be in peace and be free from her enemies. It is in the sacral time of the cult drama that the repetition of the primeval events takes place. By the same token, however, the cult participant is well aware of profane time. He knows that the Davidic king whose covenant with the deity has just been renewed in yet another stage of the festival (cf. e.g. Ps 110) is a particular king, one whose enemies are different from those his father had to face. But the repetition-experience in the sacral time of the cult drama gives him the confidence to hope that the king, who in the festival is God's adoptive son, and who exercises power on God's behalf (Ps 2:7-9), will also be able to defeat the actual enemies who threaten the land, and thereby by able to maintain security. To put it differently, he is confident that Yahweh will manifest through the king his power over what we would term historical events, that power which was experienced in the cult. To use Mowinckel's words," ... in the cult the salvation, which is going to be effected in time to come is experienced as concentrated present-day reality." 10 But it was not only in this sense that God's intervention in or mastery over history was part of the cult. The forces of chaos, Rahab and the primeval ocean, which we saw in connection with the creation myth in Ps 89, are also employed as code-names for Egypt and the Red Sea, respectively (Ps 87:4 and 74:12-17). Thus creation and the liberation from Egypt (the election of Israel) are, in the last instance, one. The Red Sea miracle, too, is described in mythical categories, so that it, too, was able to form part of, and be experienced in, the cult drama: Come see what God has done: ... He turned the sea into dry land, men passed through the river on foot; now let us rejoice in him. (Ps 66:5--6)

"To the people of Israel their history was naturally integrated with myth. The Creation was really complete only when Yahweh had led his people into their land," as Gottlieb has put it. 11 In addition to the passage of the Red Sea, another psalm adds the crossing of the Jordan and the subsequent conquest:

10 11

Mowinckel, The Psalms in Israel's Worship, Oxford, 1962, Vol. 1, p. 153. Gottlieb, op. cit., p. 70; cf. Mowinckel, ibid., Vol. 1, p. 154ff.

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When Israel went forth from Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language, Judah became his sanctuary, Israel his dominion. The sea looked and fled, Jordan turned back, The mountain skipped like rams, the hills like lambs. (Ps l 14:1-4)

Just as the miracles of Israel's time of formation were reactualized in the cult, so, too, was the making of the covenant on Sinai: "The Lord came from Sinai into the holy place" (Ps 68: 17). The covenant was reexperienced in the festival procession (v. 24--25). The concept of the renewal of the covenant was to assure the people that the coming year would be a year of blessing, characterized by fertility, peace and security from evil powers and hostile peoples. Thus Psalm 99 is introduced by a description of Yahweh's accession to the throne (v. 1-5), and then continues by describing the conclusion of the covenant back in the time of constitution: Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel also was among those who called on his name. They cried to the Lord, and he answered them. He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud; they kept his testimonies, and the statues that he gave them. 0 Lord our God, thou didst answer them; thou wast a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings. (Ps 99:6--8)

The intention of the text is clear: once again, we stand before you like Moses, Aaron and Samuel; now the covenant is to be renewed which you made with theni. 12 Here it will not be necessary to touch on the cultic renewal of the Davidic covenant, the covenant with the Davidic dynasty, which 12

Mowinckel, ibid., Vol. 1, p. 156.

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was also a part of the festival. The understanding of time which is inherent in a large number of Biblical psalms ought to be evident: life was renewed annually in connection with the new year. The forces of chaos had always to be conquered anew; the Lord seated himself once more on his throne and renewed his covenant with the people for blessing in the coming year, which they thus could face with confidence. However, the circularity present in this understanding of time also had room for a conscious distinction between past, present and future. This is clear in such psalms as 82, where the theme is judgement: "God takes his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgement" (v. 1). "The gods are to be judged now for the wretched stewardship which they have exercised, but the execution of the judgement will take place later." 13 This intense cultic experience of the foundation of the new year for peace, fertility and blessing necessarily led to the problem of theodicy. How was it possible to reconcile this experience with war, drought, and so on in the course of the year as it in fact wore on? For the Israelites, the answer was obvious. The renewal of the covenant also entailed a number of prohibitions; thus, for example, the participants in the processions were informed as to which commandments they had to have observed in order to be admitted to the temple (Ps 24:3-4; cf. Ps 15). The commandments were re-emphasized with reference to the people's earlier disobedience (Ps 81; 95). This also enabled the beginning of an "answer" to the problem of theodicy: 0 that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways! I would soon subdue their enemies, and turn my hand against their foes. (Ps 81:13-14)

The same understanding of time which we have seen in conjunction with the New Year festival recurs in the Passover celebration. It is generally held that this festival represented the conjoining of two originally independent festivals, namely an agrarian festival which celebrated the barley harvest, "the festival of unleavened bread", on which occasion bread was baked from flour made of unleavened grain, that is, grain which had not been in connection with grain from the past harvest, and the Passover festival, when a lamb or goat kid was sacrificed and its blood used for apotropaic rites. 14 13 Cf. Mowinckel, Psalmenstudien, II, p. 69; the translation here differs from the RSV and other English Translations. 14 Cf. e.g., J. Pedersen, op. cit., III, London, 1949, pp. 384-414.

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These festivals were combined and their contents were to a certain extent "historicized" by linking them with the traditions of the Exodus. This seems to have taken place in the northern kingdom first, whereas in Jerusalem the Passover was apparently only celebrated in this way after the 7th century (2 Kgs 23:21-23). This process endowed the acts of the festival with a new character. One ate unleavened bread because during their flight the people could only take unfinished (i.e., unleavened) bread with them (Exod 12:34; 39). Similarly, the people were to smear lambsblood on their doorposts in memory of the fact that they had once had to do so back before the exodus, so that the Lord might pass their houses by as he passed through the land to slay the firstborn (Exod 12:12-13). The dramatic character of the celebration is evidenced by the following statement: In this manner you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's passover (Exod. 12:11).

Precisely this dramatic formulation indicates that the Passover events were re-experienced; they were primeval events which repeated themselves in the festival, mythically understood "historical" events. 15 We should note that the cult-mythical understanding of time eventually disappeared. The immediate experience in the cult of the repetition of the primeval or constitutional events in the course of time gave place to a view in which one looked back on the fundamental events and sought to hear in them a message addressed to oneself in the present. 16 There are at least two passages in Deuteronomy which show how the earlier understanding of time had become problematical: 15 Also, the Feast of Booths was historicized. The original significance of the booths lay in a fertility rite which had been adopted from a Canaanite wineharvest festival. They were later understood as reminiscences of the time of the desert wandering (Lev 23:42-43). There is no sign that they had anything to do with a cultic "repetition", as above. The Festival of Weeks (Pentecost) is a festival of the wheat harvest which was only secondarily connected with a historical motif, namely the giving of the Law on Sinai. The first unequivocal reference to the festival of weeks as a commemoration of the lawgiving dates from the 3rd century CE (Pes 686.) However, it probably presupposes earlier development; cf. Shabb 866. 16 Cf. W. Eichrodt, "Heilserfahrung und Zeitverstandis im Al ten Testament", Theologische Zeitschrift, 12 (1956) 103-125. Eichrodt attempts to solve the problem of simultaneity by the assumption of proclamation via seers, priests and prophets; thus the preached word re-established the actuality of the covenant. However, this view only applies to a later period; Eichrodt has completely overlooked the cult-mythical understanding of time.

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The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. Not with our fathers did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive this day (Deut 5:2-3).

Here the primeval events are no longer entirely self-evident in the cult: they threaten to become lost in the mists of time, so that it has become necessary to insure that they will be taken seriously today. The covenant applies to "us", "we" must keep its provisions. The same tendency recurs in Deuteronomy 29:9-14. 17 The very fact that it had become necessary to stress the actuality of the Sinai covenant for the present generation shows that the cultic understanding of time had disappeared. The question remains as to when this took place. To put the matter differently: when did the consciousness of historical time become so strong that it repressed the idea of a cultic-cyclical repetition? Our answer can be hypothetical at best. The formulations which point to the disappearance of this understanding can not be long after 587 BCE, and may in fact have happened before then. Some scholars have attempted to explain why, and to date the happening more accurately. So, for example, van Rad theorized that the Israelite legends of the sacred places were collected at some point (the Jacob traditions from Bethel, the Sinai traditions from Shechem, etc.) and joined into a whole, in the process of which the concept of a linear historical course arose. The view arose according to which Israel did not take her origin in a single event, but through a long process which was characterized by a divine plan, the goal of which was to lead the people into the land. 18 Von Rad found the earliest results of this process of collection of traditions to be the "salvation-historical summaries", as in Deuteronomy 26:6ff. and Joshua 24:2ff. The view of history thus arrived at differed from a modern conception of history in that it saw history as a chain of events which were caused by God for Israel's salvation. According to van Rad this understanding was already present in the age of the Judges (ca. 1200---1025), and it was the reason why historical writing developed so early in Israel, in the form of the historical works which were the sources for the Hexateuch (the Pentateuch plus Joshua). 19 Von Rad dated the oldest of these sources, the Yahwist, to the 10th century BCE. This type of historical thinking, which, according to van Rad, 17 18

19

Cf. G. von Rad, op. cit., Vol. II, Munich 1968, pp. 118--119. Ibid., pp. l 15f. Ibid., 116.

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was unique in the then-contemporary Middle East, assumed that history was irreversible; it stood in a tension-filled relation to the mythic understanding of time which characterized the festivals. The covenant, which had been an unquestionable datum for the participants in the festivals, since they experienced the renewal of the covenant in the cult, became problematical. Its legitimacy had to be founded anew, and van Rad held that it was this feature which we find in Deuteronomy 5:2-3 and 29:9-14. I have cited van Rad's views so extensively here because on a number of points they remain characteristic of scholarship up to the present. In the first place, Israel's understanding of history is held to be unique, at least in a Near Eastern context. We shall see below (section IV) that this was simply not the case. Next, the development of this understanding of history is always traced back to very early times. 20 However, recent scholarship reveals a tendency to date the hypothetical sources of the Hexateuch much later. I shall not here attempt to offer an alternative explanation of the difficulties the mythical understanding of time experienced. But we should note that this understanding is so well attested in the Psalms that it must ha~e existed far back in the period of the monarchy. 21 Furthermore, the development of the new consciousness of history would seem difficult to understand if we did not consider both the tumultuous Near Eastern political events which form the background of prophetism 22 and prophetism itself. Before we leave this section, we must investigate whether there are reminiscences of the idea of repetition in the early Jewish liturgy which arose in the context of the synagogue. There are, if only reminiscences. The Ii turgy of the New Year fes ti val contains three elem en ts which expand on the Tephillah (main prayer). On of these is the Zikronoth ("prayers of remembrance"), which primarily consists of scriptural passages dealing with God remembering his covenants. 20 It is problematic to construct such an edifice on the "credo" texts as von Rad does. The "credo" in Deut. 26:5-9 is found in a text which can hardly be older than the 6th century. Even if one regards it as an expression of a culticallypreserved tradition, it is, with all due respect for the conservativism of cultic tradition, difficult to suppose that it was used all the way back in the 11th century. Moreover, L. Rost has demonstrated that the passage is composed entirely in Deuteronomistic language; cf. Das Kleine Credo und Andere Studien z:.um Allen Testament. Heildelberg, 1965, pp. 11-25. 21 It should be noted that a number of late psalms which list a long series of historical events do not contain the mythical view of time (Pss 105; I 06; 136). Such a series of events, clearly arranged in a linear historical course, could not possibly have been "repeated" in the cult. 22 Cf. Mowinckel, Psalmenstudien, II, pp. 315ff.

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In the introduction to this we find the idea of an annually recurring determination of destiny: This day, on which was the beginning of thy work, is a remembrance of the first day, for it is a statue for Israel, a decree of the God of Jacob. Thereon also sentence is pronounced upon countries,-which of them is destined to the sword and which to peace, which to famine and which to plenty; and each separate creature is judged thereon, and recorded for life or for death.~ 3

This is no doubt a very ancient prayer; it is referred to and quoted in the Palestinian Talmud (5th c.) as having been included in Rav's (3rd c.) New Year prayers. But the idea is more ancient than this. The Mishnah, the Tosephta and the Palestinian Talmud depict it as widely known among Tannaittic sages of the 2nd century CE. 24 The Mishnah even knows the concept in a more extreme form: "At four seasons the world is judged: on Passover in respect of produce, on Pentecost in respect of the fruit of trees, on New Year all that comes into the world pass before him like a troop of soldiers. " 25 The statement allows both judgement and determination of the destinies to take place during the New Year festival, in spite of the fact that it is followed by the Great Day of Atonement, which has to do with forgiveness. A solution to this problem is found in the words of the Tanna Rabbi Meir: "Everything is judged on New Years day, but the judgement is sealed on the Day of Atonement." Or, as another Tannaite had it, "Everyone is judged on New Years day, and every individual judgement is sealed for its time." This view, too, however, gives rise to theological problems, since the individual always has the possibility _to make repentance and pray for forgiveness, which actually presupposes a view like Rabbi Josi's: "Every man is judged every day." 26 Of significance for the present investigation is the fact that we find in the New Year festival liturgy the idea of an annually recurring judgement and determination of destiny. In terms of the phenomenology ofreligion this recalls the determination of the destinies that occurred in the 23 See e.g.,J.H. Hertz, The Authorized Daily Prayer Book, New York, 1965, p. 879; and the poem Un 'sana Tokeph, which is ascribed to Rabbi Ammon of Mainz ( I 2th c.). D. Goldschmidt: Mahzor le-Yamim Noraim, Jerusalem, pp. l 69ff. 24 See the references in E.E. Urbach, The Sages, their Concepts and Beliefs, Jerusalem, 1975, pp. 470f. and 893f. 25 Mishnah, Rosh ha-Shanah, I, 2. 26 See Tosephta, Rosh he-Shanah, I, 13 andjRosh ha-Shanah, 57a. 27 Cf. M. Eliade, The Myth, pp. 58f.; and Mowinckel, Psalmenstudien, II, pp. 40ff. and 74-77.

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Babylonian New Year festival.27 And the very fact that this tradition occasioned problems for the rabbis suggests that it was an old Jewish tradition, rather than a new Jewish idea or a notion which had recently been adopted from without. In some psalms we find the expression shuv sh'vut: "to turn the turning", that is, make a new beginning, change fate, 28 ; Mowinckel may have been right when he claimed that these recall the annual determination of destiny that took place in the Akitu festival. However, we should note that this annual determination of destiny, which was assumed to take place in heaven, was pronounced in the course of worship, but was not re-experienced, as in the cult. Thus is was possible to adapt it to a linear understanding of time or history: it is God who annually reacts to the behavior of the individual in the year gone by, and his reaction will always be a new thing. The pattern repeats itself (in heaven), but the history is new. There is also another passage in the Jewish liturgy where one might ask whether we have to do with a reminiscence of the idea of the cultic repetition of a primeval event. This is in the liturgy which is used in connection with the private meal on the evening of the Passover. We find the following statement in the Passover Haggadah: In every generation let each man look at himself as if he came forth out of Egypt. As it is said: 'And thou shalt tell thy son that day, saying: It is because of that which the Lord did for me, when I came forth out of Egypt. (Exod 13:8). 29

The bit of Haggadah here is based on the Mishnaic document Pesahim X, 5, some manuscripts of which lack the statement. 30 The Talmud, however, refers to the passage, so it is old in any case. 31 It has been ascribed to Rabban Gamliel. 32 Already the expression "as if" (Hehr. keilu) shows that a distance is maintained to the saving event back in the time of constitution; this means that the believer Ps 14:53; 85 and 126. Here quoted from N.N. Glatzer, The Passover Haggadah, New York, 1953, p. 49. Glatzer comments: "Exodus and Redemption are not to be taken as happenings in long bygone days, but as a personal experience." H. Ringgren, Israelitische Religion, Stuttgart, 1963, p. 168, understands the passage as a reminiscence of a cult-dramatic idea. 3° Cf. E.D. Goldschmidt, The Passover Haggadah. Its Sources and History, Jerusalem, 1963 (Heb.), p. 53. 31 Ps 116b. 32 Whether this refers to the elder or the younger, we are still in the first century. 28

29

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did not attempt to enter into the event and re-experience it as a "repetition". It is obvious already in the oldest phases of the Haggadah that the Exodus event was understood as a miracle of liberation which took place once and for all in the past as one of a long series of saving events. What Rabban Gamliel was trying to stress is the overwhelming importance which this event must have for oneself. One is to understand oneself and one's own past as a member of the Jewish people, as well as one's present and future, on the basis of this event and what it has entailed in the past and will entail in the future.

III.

THE WRITING PROPHETS: HISTORY AND ESCHATOLOGY

In the written works of the prophets, however, God is the Lord of history in a way which is different from that to be found in the psalms. Thus, Amos, writing in the middle of the 8th century, was able to say: Did I not bring the Israelites up from Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Aranaeans from Kir? (Amos 9:7)

Similarly, the prophet held that the crimes of Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, and so on would be punished, not because they were Israel's enemies, but because they had committed crimes (l:3ff.). The nations, too, are ethically responsible to God. 33 God accordingly finally directs his anger against Israel herself (the northern kingdom) because of her religious apostasy and social inequalities; dealing in all sovereignty, he summons other peoples to mete out his punishment (3: 11), and we are told that the people will be carried into exile beyond Damascus (5:27). Amos reviews the early history of Israel. God once chose Israel, and this election manifested itself in Israel's liberation from Egypt. But the very fact of election entails that the chosen one must be punished more harshly than others for his sins (3:1-2). God has attempted again and again to get the Israelites to turn back, but with no success. He has sent prophets and Nazirites among them (2:9-11), visited famine upon them, refused them rain, afflicted them with plague and war, but they nevertheless failed to return to him (4:4---13). All hope, however, is not yet lost: 33

A.S. Kapelrud, Central Ideas in Amos, Oslo, 1956, pp. l 7ff.

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Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph (5:15).

It is obvious that history is here seen in a completely linear fashion. Amos is looking back on the liberation from Egypt and the election which it represents. Since then, God has repeatedly made fruitless attempts to get Israel to repent; thus the history of the people is speeding towards its imminent judgement. The latter, however, is not understood as ineluctable fate. Rather, the prophet has appeared precisely in order to call for repentance, and hence for forgiveness, although there is little to suggest that he expects they will do so. History will continue to press on after the event. But if the israelites do not repent, history will continue without Israel (i.e., the northern kingdom). 34 If we now inquire as to which events in the history oflsrael were discussed by the prophets, we discover that they were relatively few in number. Central were the people's constitutive events, the exodus, the wilderness wandering and the seizure of the land (Amos 2:9f.; 3:1; 9:7). Hosea (also mid 8th c.) looks back on this time as the days oflsrael's youth (2: 17), when God loved the people and called his son from Egypt ( 11: lf.). Nevertheless, he adds immediately, they turned away from the Lord as soon as they entered the land; in fact, their entire history was an unbroken tale of apostasy ( 12: 1-14; 1). The pattern, then, is clear enough: I am the Lord your God from the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no sav10r. It was I who knew you in the wilderness, in the land of drought; but when they had fed to the full, they were filled, and their heart was lifted up; therefore they forgot me. So I will be to them like a lion, like a leopard I will lurk beside the way (13:4-7). 34

The prophecy of salvation in 9:8-15 is presumably a later addition.

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Hosea nevertheless found it possible to preach salvation as well. The Israelites are to be punished with exile (8:1-10: 15), but God cannot surrender his love for them ( 11: 1-11). The two ideas are ultimately reconcilable, since the prophet expects that the people will learn by their punishment and so, after a period without a king or a national state, they will return to their God (3:4-5). It is because of the intentions of the prophets that they refer to so relatively few events in Israel's history, and that they concentrate on the constitutive events. We find the metaphor again in the preaching of Micah (8th c.) in a scene in which the entire universe is summoned to attend God's prosecution of faithless Israel. We find listed here the "magnalia dei", ranging from the exodus to the end of the time of the wilderness wanderings (6:3-5), a list which leads up to the question as to how Israel has managed to retain God's love. Israel has been told, "what is good, what the Lord expects of you" (cf. 6:8), but she has nonetheless committed her crimes; therefore the judgement is imminent (6:16). It was likewise possible for Jeremiah (7th-6th c.) to claim that God has done everything: led the israelites out of Egypt, through the desert, into the land-but they made the land unclean (Jer 2:6f.). 35 The prophets did not actually have any real historical or historiographical interest. 36 When they spoke of history, there were four types of events which were of importance to them in conjunction with their message: 1) events of the time of constitution, which reveal God's election of Israel, as well as such events as demonstrated God's punishment when the people failed to respond to the divine love by evincing appropriate behavior (Isa 10:24-26); 2) events which reveal God's power over history, and thus also his ability to chastise Israel through the agency of enemies. Isaiah 9: 17-l l emphasizes this in connection with Aram and the Philistines, cf. Amos 9:7 37 ; 3) events or conditions in the present or the 35 Naturally other events are also mentioned in addition to the ones spoken of here, but they are not numerous, nor is it the aspect of temporal succession which the prophets found interesting, but rather the message which the prophet in question found exemplified in a given event. Note the examples of Sodom and Gomorrah (Isa 1:9), the patriarchs Abraham andjacob (Isa 51:2 and Micah 7:20, rewectively), Moses (Isa 63:ll;Jer 15:1-6; Micah 6:1), etc. My colleague Knudjeppesen has pointed out to me that not even the datings of the prophets' activities which we find at the beginnings of the prophetic writings, and which derive from their disciples, who collected and edited their words, were carried out for historical reasons; rather, their intentions were theological or homiletical. They are merely intended to establish the fact that the word of God had been uttered. 37 Cf. also Zech I :4-5; "Be not like your fathers, to whom the former prophets

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past which document the sins of the people or its leaders, such as Ahaz' lack of faith (Isa 7), or Israel's sins before or after the settlement, or the "days of Gibeah", Hosea 9:9 (cf. 10:9-10, Jdg 19-21); 4) events in the days of the individual prophet which he finds possible to interpret as meaning that God is about to punish, chastise, or save Israel. The Babylonians are interpreted as God's instrument of punishment upon Israel (Jer 25:8-9); while, for Deutero-lsaiah (6th c.), the advance of the Persian king Cyrus revealed him as God's tool for the salvation oflsrael (Isa 45:1-3). The only history that is important to the prophets is that which was relevant to their homiletic intentions: to call the people to repentance, or to assure them that there nevertheless would be a future. These considerations should make us cautious of the claim that the prophets conceived of a divine plan for the course of history as a whole. Lindblom once maintained that, "What distinguishes the prophetic view of history from that of the other oriental peoples is not the thought, that Yahweh works in historical events, but rather that the prophets regarded the history oflsrael as a coherent history, directed by moral principals and in accordance with a fixed plan." 38 Against this, Albrektson has investigated those passages in the prophetic works in which Hebrew words occur which signify "plan", and has correctly concluded that, "Not one of these passages can be quoted in support of the alleged Old Testament idea of the history of Israel as the realization of a fixed plan from its beginning to the end!" 39 There are also theoretical reasons for questioning the notion of a prophetic concept of a divine total plan for history, or at least for the history oflsrael. It is one thing to maintain that God is the lord of history, that he has chosen and desires to save Israel, and that he accordingly intervenes both retributively and savingly in the course of history. But man, who acts in history, is free, so that God acts retroactively with respect to what man, in freedom, chooses. Thus the course of history changes continually, so that it may acquire a zigzag character. The prophets did not have the deterministic view of history of the later apocalyptists. According to Amos, men have the entire responsibility to decide for themselves which course Israel's history will take. In spite of his emphatic proclamation of judgement, Isaiah remained convinced that salvation would arrive: cried out ... Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever?" 38 J. Lindblom, Prophecy in Ancient Israel, Oxford, 1962, p. 325. 39 B. Albrektson, History and the Gods, Lund, 1967, p. 77; he refers to the same quotation from Lindblom in the same context.

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Behold, I am laying in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation. He who believes will not be in haste (Isa 28:16).

In short, the turning-point, salvation, is on its way; the prophet, however, knows that this will happen because he is convinced that "a remnant will repent" (7:3; l0:2lf.). It is on this remnant that the Lord will construct his new Israel. 40 By way of contrast,Jeremiah's understanding of the matter is more reminiscent of Hosea's. He calls for the people to repent: "O Jerusalem, wash your heart from wickedness, that you may be saved" (Jer 4:14, cf. 3:14-4:4). And when Nebuchadnezzar captured the city in 597, Jeremiah admonished the people to accept their punishment and not rebel: "Serve the king of Babylon and live" (27: 17). Later he writes to those who are in exile that they are to dwell in Babylon for 70 years, after which God will include them in his care, as he has made plans for their well-being: Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile (Jer 29:12-14).

In other words, if the people (and not just a remnant of them) will accept the punishment God has sent them in reaction to their sins and fully turn to him, then they will be saved. And the prophet is convinced that they will do so, which further explains his conviction that salvation will ultimately come about. 41 We find different ideas expressed by other prophets, but this does not signify any fundamental difference in the understanding of history. Nahum (7th c.) proclaimed that the sin was now atoned for, so that God was about to allow the liberation to take place (Nah l:12). 42 Deutero-Isaiah also represented this idea when he 40 The idea of the conversation of the remnant is also to be found in Zeph 3:9f., Micah 5:1-8, 7:18-20; Deut-Zech, i.e., Zech 13:7-9. 41 Both prophets conjoin through these ideas their conviction that Yahweh is the God oflsrael, the God of Zion, to the idea that God has to punish infidelity. In Jeremiah, this occurs together with other ideas (cf. 14:20--21) to which we shall return in connection with Ezekiel. 42 A variation on this occurs in Habakkuk (7th c.): God is about to intervene and remove the oppression of the people. Evil cannot win in the long run.

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proclaimed, as Cyrus progressed towards Babylon, that the time of the return, and hence the time of the glory, was imminent: Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her time of service is ended; that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. (Isa 40:l-2)

But the prophet has more to add. Is it really enough that the people have suffered their punishment? Admittedly, it was God himself who sent the suffering, but the Israelites have not correctly understood this (42:25). Some no doubt understood the exile as a sign that the gods of the Babylonians were stronger then Yahweh; others surely were led into doubt. But Deutero-Isaiah, who was the first in Israel's history explicitly to formulate an exclusive monotheism (40:12-31; 44:~20; 46:1-13), proclaims that in the new course of events that is about to occur God will make manifest the fact that he is the lord of all things. He will reveal this to the world by leading the Israelites home (44:23; 45:6f.; 14; 49:3). Israel is described as the chosen one whom God will not relinquish (41:8ff.), and who is dear to him (43:3); indeed, God will never forget his child (49:14f.). But have they really repented? The prophet seems to think that there can be no doubt that they will do so. When, by leading Israel home, God demonstrates to the world that he is the lord of all, so that all will bend the knee to him, then Israel, too, will understand this and come to understand her sufferings in the right perspective. Whether sooner or later, Israel's repentance will come, and everything will be as the prophet formulated it: All your sons shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the prosperity of your sons. In righteousness you shall be established ... " (Isa 55:l3-l4a).

Thus the prophet also finds it possible to say that "for his own sake" God will forget the people's sin (Isa 48:9). God uses Israel for his tool to achieve recognition by the whole world as the one Lord. To summarize for the present: it was not the course of history in itself which interested the prophets, but the fortunes of their people

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in the present and the immediate future. They were convinced that God had chosen Israel and historically visited his love upon her, although Israel did not return it. Thus she had to be punished. God had also shown his power to do precisely this in history, and the prophets find it sufficient merely to offer some examples. However, God's love also contains the desire to save the people, though salvation can only come about if the people freely submit themselves to God's will, that is, if a cleansed remnant or the people as a whole repent. In this context the punishment is not punishment per se, but rather a chastisement which causes that repentance which permits salvation to occur. Some prophets (not including Amos) assumed as a matter of course that the people, or at least a remnant of them, would repent because of the chastisement, but they also saw that the course of history was dependent on whether or not the people really did so. According to the second scheme (Deutero-Isaiah's), the suffering which God has sent as punishment atones for the sins committed, permitting God to show his (love and) power by saving Israel. The prophet takes it for granted that the people will live in accordance with God's will under these circumstances; he cannot imagine anything else. But he nevertheless presupposes that both history and salvation (which comes about in history) are contingent on the people's actually doing so. In other words, we can permit ourselves to use the frequentlyemployed term "salvation history", but only in the limited sense that God acts in history with the intention to save. It cannot be used in the sense of holding that the prophets presupposed a divine plan for the whole of history; they took human freedom too seriously to do so. 43 According to Hosea 12:1-14:1, the history of Israel since the settlement was one of apostasy. This was precisely the way it was not supposed to have been! Seen against this background, it is not surprising that a prophet like Trito-lsaiah, who was active after the return from exile in the 520s, and who experienced the frustration of the expectations accruing to the return, explained this by the renewed sins of faithless leaders and worshipers of false gods (Isa 56:9-57:13). Although the Israelites fast, he remarks, they do so only in enmity and strife (58:4); things should be otherwise: 43 Thus, at least to some extent, Heschel's considerations about history, alluded to in the introduction, are correct. They correspond to the prophets' understanding of the matter.

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It not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the things of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free ... Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily ... (Isa 58:6-8)

The course of history made yet another zigzag. One might perhaps say that there are patterns which repeat themselves. It is insufficient, when speaking of the prophetic understanding of time to say that it is linear, rather than cyclical. There are patterns which recur in history, as understood by the prophets, and the reason for this has to do with their knowledge of the cult and its myths. 44 We have seen that in the cult of the creation battle, in which the primeval sea is pacified and the dragon, Rahab, is cleft in two, sometimes becomes unified in the psalms with the exodus-myth, in which the Red Sea is divided. But the prophets also applied these myths of the advent to the time of salvation, when they depicted the repetition of the exodus and creation. Deutero-Isaiah expressed it in the following words: Was it not thou that didst cut Rahab in pieces, that didst pierce the dragon? Was it not thou that didst dry up the sea, the waters of the great deep; that didst make the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over? And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing ... (Isa 51:9-10)

Here the creation, the exodus and salvation correspond with one another; 45 the earlier events are recapitulated in the act of salvation. Deutero-Zechariah expressed himself in a similar fashion (Zech 10:10-11), and according to Micah the miracles of the time 44 See e.g., the survey by K.Jeppesen, "Myths in the prophetic literature", op. cit. (seen. 8), pp. 94-123. A fundamental study is still that ofS. Mowinckel, He that comes, New York, 1954. 45 Cf. also 43: 16---17 and I 0: 15--16.

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of the wilderness wandering would repeat themselves (Micah 7:15; cf. Isa 43: 19; note that according to Ezekiel the Israelites are led out into the desert to be punished, just as the fathers were in the Egyptian desert, Ezek 20:33-36). God will reconfirm his promises to David (Isa 55:5), or he will make a new covenant with the people (Jer 31 :3 lf.). We have previously seen that in Israel there was an annual repetition of the creation, the exodus and the making of the covenant in the New Year festival. What the prophets did was to take the event that was experienced in the annual cultic drama, and which brought well-being in the coming year, and to transform it into a future event, which thus became a "repetition" of the prehistorical or primeval event. As B.S. Childs, who has delineated this scheme of primeval time = end time, has remarked, this is not to be understood in such a way that, "the final act brings nothing essential new to primeval act." 46 Rather, it is important to acknowledge that in the prophetic writings God will once again do what he did back then, that is, a new event, but with the same structure. In other words, we have to do with a historically repeated pattern. But the pattern which is repeated in the time of salvation surpasses the earlier event in terms of contents, and in so doing, history derives a new stability. Before we expand on this theme, let us look at an example of such repeated patterns in Ezekiel. In ch. 20 the prophet relates how God manifested himself to the people in Egypt and promised them the land (20:5-6)-but they fell away from him (v. 8). He nevertheless led them out of Egypt, "But I acted for the sake of my Name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations among whom they dwelt" (v. 9). In the desert he gave them his laws and commandments, but once again they were disloyal. Then the motif recurs: God's righteous punishment is restrained for the sake of his name. In v. 18-26, the story again recurs; the people rebelled against God, but he did not destroy them, for the sake of his name (v. 21-22). However, he did swear that he would spread them among the peoples (in Ezekiel's time they were in exile), which he finally did do when they crossed him in the land. This pattern repeats itself yet again, and this time the punishment is to be limited for the sake of God's honor:

46 B.S. Childs, Myths and Reality in the Old Testament, London, SCM, 1960, p. 77. We shall shortly ask whether there is reason to suppose that the prophets knew an eschatology per se, as Child's language seems to suggest.

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Therefore say to the house oflsrael, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, 0 house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake ofmy holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them; and the nations will know that I am the Lord, says the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes (Ezek 36:22-23).

We have yet to discuss the character of the phenomenon which we have so far simply called "salvation". It might be appropriate to speak of a sort of proto-eschatology. Although there is a certain aspect offinality about the coming days of happiness, 47 these are nevertheless events taking place within history. The word "eschatology" implies that we have to do with the conclusion of history, whereas the prophetic view is better characterized, with B. Otzen, 48 as dealing with a turning-point in history. This is markedly different from what we find to be the case in at least a part of the later apocalyptic writings. The variety of proto-eschatology which the prophets represent grew out of the mythology of the New Year festival, and not least out of the royal ideology which was enshrined within it. We find in the so-called Royal Psalms a royal ideology which verges closely on those of Babylon and Assyria. 49 The king is depicted as an ideal king; he has just claim to world empire; all kings must bow before him, his reign brings peace and justice in its train, and, since he himself is righteous the land will harvest plenty of crops. To cite Ringgren, "The King is the Anointed of Yahweh, he is set up by him and proclaimed as his son, he shall maintain right and righteousness in the country, he conveys to his people divine blessing, rain and fertility, he defeats in divine power all enemies, he rules over the whole world, and his throne shall stand eternally." 50 In times when the actual facts starkly contradicted this ideal picture, the prophets pointed to the future, to a new king, one who would correspond with the ideal. Thus, for example, we read in Jeremiah 33:15: In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring forth for David['s line]; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. 51

47 See the discussion in B. Otzen, Studien Ubien Deuterozacharia, Copenhagen, 1964, pp. 19~212, and Judaism in Antiquiry, Sheffield 1989 p. 192ff. 48 B. Otzen,judaism in Antiquiry, p. 194. 49 Cf. e.g., Pss 2, 72 and 110. so H. Ringgren, The Messiah in the Old Testament, London, 1967, p. 20. st Cf. K. Jeppesen, op. cit. (seen. 8), p. 116.

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The messianic hope was derived from this. However, in the form in which this tradition has been bequeathed to us by the prophets, it is clear that they expected salvation in the here-and-now, within the framework of history. Of course, there is a great deal of variation between the individual prophets' pronouncements about this future. There· are, however, so many common elements that it is possible to piece together a total impression: Israel will be liberated as a nation-state (Isa 9:3f;Jer 30, 8), the Davidic monarchy will be restored (Isa 9:5; 55:3f.), Israel's enemies will be defeated (Isa 13-23; J er 46-5 l), those who dwell in exile will be brought back (Isa 43:5f.; 14; Jer 3:18). Jerusalem will be restored to her glory (Isa 54:l lf.), true worship of God, justice and righteousness will reign (Isa 1:24-28), the land will be luxuriantly fertile (Isa 4:20; 30:23), the peoples will make pilgrimages to Zion to honor the Lord, the God of Israel (Isa 45: 14; Zech 8:20-24), and violence will disappear, even from the animal kingdom (Isa 11:6-9). 52 Even though many wondrous features appear in these lists, it is nevertheless clear that the subject is this-worldly. History goes on, but in a manner of speaking, it does so within a new framework, one characterized by peace, harmony, and righteousness. We do not have to do with a new creation of the world. Even when the prophets explicitly speak of a new creation, as in Isaiah 42:8f. and 43:15-21, this means merely, as in the New Year festival, that the Lord has become king and has established his kingdom. The same is the case when Trito-lsaiah (Isa 65:17; 66:22) speaks of a new heaven and a new earth. A handful of passages give the immediate impression that man is to be re-created: God will inscribe his law in men's hearts (Jer 31:33), or he will give them a new heart and a new spirit (Ezek 11: 19). But the most probable interpretation of these passages is that, at that time, me will be inwardly motivated to fulfill the Law. 53 There is no new creation in the sense that this will bring about an end to history; the prophets were merely convinced that, at that time, history would confine itself to its new framework of harmony and righteousness.

For more detailed references, see Mowinckel, He that Comes, pp. 145-149. The idea is thus different from the one we find in Rabbinic traditions from as early as Tannaitic times; according to these, in the messianic time God will excise the evil inclination from men's hearts, so that they cannot sin any more. On this, see Sukka 52a, which quotes Rabbi Judah for this view. The prophets' idea is simply that they cannot imagine that man will continue to sin. 52 53

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IV.

ISRAELITE-JEWISH HISTORIOGRAPHY

To write about ancient Israelite historiography is, at present, difficult. Many hypotheses which once enjoyed great popularity have been called into question. Since Julius Wellhausen presented his theories about the sources which presumably underly the Pentateuch in the 1870s and 1880s, it has been widely held that there were four main sources before the Pentateuch came to be in its collected form. It was common to regard the so-called Yahwist54 as the oldest of the four, and, additionally, as the oldest preserved 55 or at least partially reconstructible example of Israelite historiography. The traditions which are contained in the work have been worked together and placed in a framework in which Yahweh's guidance of history is the superordinate concept. The history is structured, beginning with the promises to the fathers of the people concerning the inheritance of the land and the fulfillment of these promises via the historical conquest. A second scheme is attached to this one, namely that of the relation of the covenant with the fathers and the Sinai covenant, a relation which also has the character of promise-fulfillment. 56 Prior to all this there is a primeval history which runs from the story of creation to that of the tower of Babel. As a punishment for their attempt to build this tower, whose top was intended to reach into heaven, God divides men by giving them different languages (Gen 11:1-9). Thus the various peoples arose, and Abraham was called from their multiplicity. The work, which, according to von Rad can be traced through the Pentateuch and into the Book of Joshua, thus covers a period of time stretching from the creation (Gen 2) to the conquest (Josh 21:43f.). Other scholars have attempted to pursue the four abovementioned sources from the historical books: the books of the Judges, Samuel, and Kings; thus they held the Yahwist to have written about the timespan from creation until the establishment of the Davidic dynasty. Although the Wellhausen tradition is still palpable in contemporary research, there are clear signs of new beginnings. In 1977 the German scholar, Rendtorff, attempted to conduct an inventory

Thus called because it mainly employs the divine name Yahweh. Cf. G. von Rad, Das Formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuchs. Stuttgart, 1938, p. 68, who assigns the composition to the 10th century. 56 Ibid., p. 58. 54

55

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of recent results. 57 According to Rendtorff, we must abandon the idea of lengthy written sources in favor of the view that originally independent narrative cycles such as the stories dealing with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were worked together into a larger complex, the patriarchal narratives, to which other originally independent units were added later on. But the Wellhausen tradition was also called into question from other viewpoints. Thus, Van Seters 58 has held that Deuteronomy, plus the so-called Deuteronomistic history, 59 is the oldest preserved example of Israelite historiography-including the material ordinarily called "the Yahwist". The work clearly received its final form after the exile in 587, as we can deduce from the final notice in 2 Kgs 25:21. Given the current lack of any definite consensus, we shall attempt two things in what follows. First, we shall examine Israelite understandings of history in comparison with those of other Near Eastern peoples. Second, we shall study the character of the Deuteronomistic historiography in relation to later historiography, namely the so-called Chronistic History and the work of the later Jewish historiographer, Josephus. We have already mentioned Albrektson's important monograph, History and the Gods. Its subtitle is "An Essay on the Historical Events as Divine Manifestations in the Ancient Near East and in Israel." The work is important for the phenomenology-of-religions understanding of Israelite historiography, since in two important respects it breaks with the view, widely accepted by modern scholars, the idea that Mesopotamian materials have no bearing on the study of the Israelite-Jewish historical consciousness, since in Mesopotamia it was nature, and not, as in Israel, history, that was the gods' field of action; and because time was understood to be cyclical in the relevant mesopotamian works. 60 Albrektson, however, has shown that both Mesopotamian and Hittite sources describe the gods' activity, not only in nature, but also in their intervention into the affairs of men. They intervene in the historical process; moreover, they do so in ways that are strikingly reminiscent of the O.T. We have previously cited Amos 9:7: 57 R. Rend torff, Das Uberlieferungeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch, Berlin, 1977. See also the discussion in JSOT 3 (1977), with contributions by a number of scholars. 58 J. Van Seters, op. cit. 59 That is, Joshua, Judges, the books of Samuel and Kings. 60 The latter point is rejected on pp. 93-95; cf. W.G. Lambert's review article in OR 39 (1970), p. 175, n. 7.

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Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir?

We can likewise point to a Hittite prayer: When the Hattian Storm-God had brought people of Kurustama to the country of Egypt ... 61

We find a corresponding text among yet another of Albrektson's many examples, in a building inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II: The numerous peoples, which Marduk, my lord6 had delivered into my hand, I brought under Babylon's dominion. 2

In other words, the results of such historical events as wars were described as the direct consequence of divine intervention, and these interventions were a reaction to human behavior, pious or impious, an idea which we meet again in Israelite-Jewish history writing. In such contexts, the king in' question is often described as God's representative, the one who enacts the divine will (though he is usually equipped with titles which show his position to be subordinate to the god's); this phenomenon, too, corresponds to what we observed to be the case with the Jerusalemite royal ideology. Albrektson further shows that the deity's words or commands were empowered to control changes in both nature and history. In short, we may speak of revelation through history. We likewise find the phenomenon of divine predication coupled with its fulfillment in the actual course of history in a way that is very similar to the emphasis placed in the Deuteronomistic History on such correspondences. 63 Finally, Albrektson shows that if we can in connection with the O.T. only speak of a divine plan in the limited sense previously mentioned, then on this point,i too, there are considerable similarities between Israel and other Near Eastern peoples. All the texts which speak of the interventions of the gods in history by punishing because of, for example, sacrilege or sin, thus speak of plan-like interventions in history. 64 However, as Albrektson also points out, there is a decisive difference which consists in the fact that in a Mesopotamian or Hittite context we have to do with a polytheistic universe, while in Israel it 61 62 63 64

Albrektson, op. cit., p. 40. Ibid., p. 39. Ibid., p. 64. Albrektson mentions 2 Kgs 9:36f. as an example. Ibid., pp. 89-97.

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is the one God, Yahweh, who has power over history. "The control they (the Mesopotamian gods) could exercise over the human sphere was actually limited by their very multiplicity combined with their human failings. Accounts of divine counsels often portray acute disagreement and even when a common course had been agreed upon it could happen that a particular deity would disapprove and sabotage the plan," as W.G. Lambert says. 65 However, when we consider that the O.T. does not know of a total divine plan for history, this distinct difference cannot be allowed to overshadow the striking similarities. 66 The Deuteronomistic History was subjected to a number of redactions; for the sake of convenience, however, we shall here speak of "the Deuteronomist." He was a successor to the movement which carried out the centralization of the Jerusalem cult in 622. His work is primarily characterized by its anti-Canaanite tendency: the cult on the high places round about the country was to cease. He also placed emphasis on the Sinai traditions. One of the last redactions of the work placed the Book of Deuteronomy at its beginning. The work as a whole accordingly spans a lengthy history, as it starts with a speech delivered by Moses just before his death in the country to the east of the Jordan (the whole of Deuteronomy). By way of introduction, we hear in retrospect of the wilderness wanderings (Deut l-3), and after an injunction to observe the law there follows the law which Moses received on Sinai. The work then goes on to describe the conquest of the land of Israel (Joshua andJudges), the establishment of the monarchy and the reign of David (the Books of Samuel), after which it proceeds to the Books of the Kings to tell about the later rulers, until the final fall of Judah in 58 7. The author regards the history of Israel from his own point of view: the kingdoms of Israel and Judah have succumbed, some of the people have been sent to exile, and the work is, among other things, a theodicy: it all happened because of the people and their kings. For his part, God did what he could to prevent it; he sent his prophets and warned them, but they would not hear (2 Kgs l 7:13ff.). Taken together, the prophecies and their fulfillments give a unity to the narrated work. Sometimes the fulfillment of the prophecies comes shortly after it was pronounced (2 Kgs 1:6; 17), whereas on other occasions it may first take place after the passing In his previously mentioned review (above, n. 60), p. 171. Cf. J. Van Seters, op. cit., pp. 240--242. Van Seters also includes Greek and Egyptian history writing in the compass of his comparisons. 65

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of some generations (1 Kgs 13:2; 2 Kgs 23:16-18). 67 Another feature which contributes to the unity of the work and its narration is the speeches which the author places in the mouth of important persons on significant occasions: Joshua's speech prior to his death (Josh 23); Samuel's farewell address (1 Sam 12); Solomon's speech and prayer on the occasion of the dedication of the temple ( 1 Kgs 8: 14-53). Here the author's (i.e., the redactor's) own understanding of Israel's history is expressed, as it is also in the interjected reflections on such events as the fall of the kingdom of Israel: And this was so, because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs which the kings of Israel had introduced. (2 Kgs 17:7-8).

The selection of events which characterize the reigns of the individual kings is entirely determined by the theological intention of the work. Particularly their relation to religion and the cult is important. It is on this basis that the individual kings are evaluated, which sometimes happens such a way that the evaluation dominates with respect to the history that is in fact related ( 1 Kgs 15: 1-8). Also, the accounts regularly end in remarks of the following type: "Now the rest of the acts ofX, and all that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the King of Israel/ Judah?" 68 In this way the theological interest, which is basically the Deuteronomist's desire to understand his own time, dominates the (in a modern sense) historical interest. In the work we find a pattern consisting of sin-punishmentconversion-salvation. The speeches emphasize the fact that God, who had led the Israelites out of Egypt and given them the land, will remain with them if they are true to him, and that he will punish them if they apostatize (Deut 4). And this scheme is demonstrated in the narrative. In the book of Judges, the scheme of sin-punishment-conversion-salvation divides history into periods. Admittedly, there is a forward-moving (linear, if you will) course of history; but this history consists in patterns that repeat themselves. As long as Joshua lived, plus the elders who survived him, who had seen, "all the great work which the Lord had done for Israel," (J udg 2: 7) the Israelites continued to worship Yahweh. But after their deaths they fell away and worshipped Ba'al and the 67

68

Cf. von Rad, Theologie des Allen Testaments, I, p. 352. See e.g., I Kgs 15:31; 16:5; 14; 20; 27.

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Ashtaroth (2: 11-13). Then the Lord punished them by delivering them into the power of their enemies. Then they called to the Lord, who sent them a judge, so that they could be safe; but after his death they rebelled once more (2:14-19). According to 3:7, the Israelites then began to worship the Ba'als and the Asheroth, and were delivered to a foreign king for eight years (3:8). But then again they called Yahweh, who sent them a liberator, ajudge so that the land had peace (3:9-11). Every time the judge died, the pattern repeated its elf (3: l 2ff.) over and over again. 69 The course of history in the Books of the Kings is more complicated. The material available to the Deuteronomist about the kings of Israel and Judah did not permit such a simplified periodic pattern, although the basic pattern remained the same: the Israelites have sinned, and the punishment will come (and had come about by the time the work received its final redaction). God had sent his prophets, and if the people had converted, they would have been saved. The kingdom was divided after the death of Solomon. When he was an old man he introduced sacrifices to foreign gods on the high places, so that God meted out punishment by dividing the kingdom. God announced that he would take the kingdom from him and give it to "one who is in your service" ( 1 Kgs 11: 11): Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. However, I win not tear away all the kingdom; but I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake ofJerusalem which I have chosen ( l l: 12).

Here the pattern of sin and punishment meshes with the elections of the Davidic dynasty and of Jerusalem. 70 It was only when the much later king Manasseh sinned beyond bearing that the judgement on Jerusalem was pronounced. It was namely Menasseh who constructed altars to foreign gods in the Jerusalem temple itself, "the house of which the Lord said to David and to Solomon his son, 'In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name for ever'" (2 Kgs 21: 7; cf. v. 4). Even the fact that Manasseh was succeeded by the righteous king Josiah was not enough to save Jerusalem (2 Kgs 69 Cf. G. Ostborn, Yahweh's Words and Deeds, Uppsala Universitets Arsskrift, Uppsala/Wiesbaden, 1951, 7, pp. 30--31 and 60ff. It should be stressed that although this pattern looks like cyclical thinking, in reality it is a pattern that manifests itself through a forward-moving history. Cf. von Rad, op, cit., I., p. 343. 7° Cf. 1 Kgs 11 :34f.; l 5:4f.

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23:25f.). 71 Hans-Detlef Hoffmann has in this connection attempted to show that we have to do with a pendulaic course of events; he has especially emphasized the passages in the Deuteronomistic History which refer to "cult reforms", which he defines as "Veranderungen im Bereich des Kultes die die Ausschliesslichkeit der Verehrung Jahwes tangieren." ("Changes in the cultic ambit which affect the exclusive worship of Yahweh.") 72 Hoffmann's investigation results in the oscillation between positive and negative cult reforms which we see below in the first illustration. The scheme, which is based on those texts which explicitly speak of cult reforms, is then correlated with the positive and negative Deuteronomistic evaluations of the rest of the kings of the southern kingdom. This results in the oscillations as depicted by Hoffmann in the second illustration below. 73 Illust. No. l

Illust. No. 2

Southern Kingdom Southern Kingdom Negative Positive Negative Positive ( l)

(3) Rehoboam Rehoboam (4) Asa Abijah (6) J ehosaphat Asa (10+11) Jehoiada/ Jehosaphat Joash Joram (13) Jotham Ahaziah (14) Akaz Jehoiada/Joash ( 16) Hezekiah Amaziah ( l 7) Manasseh Azariah (18) Josiah Jotham Akaz Hezekiah Manasseh Ammon Josiah Jehoahaz Jehoiachim Jehoiachin Zedekiah 71 In the northern kingdom things were a little simpler: all of its kings sinned. The fact that the punishment was delayed for so long is explained by the fact that God does not overlook what little good there '-''as in the kings in question ( I Kgs 21:29; 2 Kgs 10:30). 72 H.D. Hoffmann, Reform und Rejormen, Zurich, 1980, p. 24. 73 From Hoffmann, pp. 30--31. I omit the northern kingdom. It should additionally be noted that there are only two rulers of the southern kingdom, Hezekiah and Josiah, who receive a completely positive evaluation from the Deuteronomist. The approval of the other six is only contingent.

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There are two more features which must be added in order to fully understand the Deuteronomist's view of history. His sinpunishment scheme is not only able to explain Israel's situation in his own time; rather, since the scheme consists of sinpunishment-conversion-salvation, it also opens up a vista of a possible future for the people. It simply presupposes that they convert (Deut 4:26-29). The second feature which is essential to a complete understanding of this type of history writing is that, by incorporating the conquest under Joshua and the judges, plus the description of the establishment of the monarchy and the divine promise to the house of David (2 Sam 7), plus the grounding of the true cult in Jerusalem under Solomon, and by positioning Deuteronomy, with the Sinai legislation at the beginning of the work, the author articulates the identity of the people. The totality of these features makes the Deuteronomistic work a complete basis for self-identification, as J. Van Seters has pointed out. 74 Later, presumably in the fourth century BCE, the Chronistic History (the two Books of Chronicles, plus the books of Ezra and Nehemiah) arose. It was based on the Deuteronomistic History, but encompasses a far greater chronological span which ranges from Adam to Saul, by way of genealogies, and then subsequently relates the story of the founding of the monarchy and the ideal rule of David. The work also embraces the lflter kings and the postexilic period under Nehemiah, the governor, and Ezra, the scribe, in the fifth century. 75 The goal of all this is, not least, to legitimize the existing sacral institutions. Thus, in those passages which speak of "election", the texts actually describe the election of the monarchy, the sanctuary, the tribe of Levi, and the priests. 76 The work characterizes David as the ideal monarch, no doubt because its author was a tradent of Messianic traditions. In spite of its dependence on the Deuteronomistic History, the Chronistic work nevertheless differs distinctively as far as its understanding of history is concerned. Whereas, as we have seen, in the Deuteronomistic History the sin-punishment scheme is employed in such a way as sometimes to allow for generations to lapse before the expected punishment arrives, so that the scheme thus contributes to the unification of the work, in the Chronistic History,

J.

Van Seters, op. cit., p. 320 and pp. 359-361. It should be noted that the literary integrity of the reported Chronistic History has been in serious doubt since the publication ofH.G. Williamson's Israel in the Books of the Chronicles., Cambridge, 1977. 76 Cf. von Rad, op. cit., I., pp. 362ff. 74

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matters are radically different. In the first place, the work is entirely systematic: there is no sin without punishment. In the second place, the author is at pains to show that the punishment falls on the generation that actually sins, or whose king sins. In 2 Kings 21:3ff. God decides to exile the people because of Manasseh's overabundance of sin; we note, however, that Manasseh was nevertheless the longest-reigning of the J udean kings. This is explained in the Chronistic History by the addition of a narrative which informs us that Manasseh himself was actually punished, and that he accordingly repented (2 Chron 33:10--16). Nothing is said about the destruction of Jerusalem or about the exile. Manasseh was succeeded by King Josiah, who is described in 2 Kings as righteous. This was problematical, since he was defeated by the Egyptians and died in the battle at Megiddo (2 Kgs 23:29-30). 2 Chronicles 35:20--33 explains these events by informing us that Josiah, too, was a sinner: he failed to heed God's instructions via the prophet-pharaoh Neco. The exile, in turn, is explained by the sins of later kings (2 Chron 36). The generations are held individually accountable in a way which threatens to fragment the history, or at least that element of it which contributes to the unity of the Books of Kings. There is a good deal of Jewish historiography from the time of the Second Temple. Here, although it entails abandoning the "canonical" books, we shall confine ourselves to examining the understanding of history of Flavius Josephus (ca. 37-100 CE). In the Wars of the Jews (De Bello Judaico), Josephus describes the history of the Jews from the reign of the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes in Judaea in the first half of the second century BCE until the triumphal Roman campaign and the liquidation of the last guerrillas of the Jewish revolt against Rome in 66--70 CE. The Antiquities of the Jews (Antiquitates Judaicae) is a more extensive work which relates the history of the Jews from the most ancient times until the outbreak of hostilities in 66 CE. These works are of interest for our purposes, as they contain a religiously-conditioned understanding of history. Josephus's history writing naturally differs on many points from the varieties we have so far examined. In the first place, he was writing for a Hellenistic-Roman audience. In the second place, he describes very long-range historio-political developments in such a way that his history's religious aim is only rarely evident. It is, however, present and is in fact central to Josephus' thought. Finally, it is fully clear that Josephus had learned much from such historians as Thucidides and Polybios, who were his models. As an

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author, Joseph us belongs to the Greco-Roman tradition of his toriography. Thus he shows at least superficially a rationalistic tendency. Of the quail that fell from the skies to feed the hungry Israelites, he says that they were "wearied by their flight" (Ant 3, 25); and of the miracle narratives he says, "But on these matters let everyone decide according to his fancy" (Ant 1,108 et passim). Josephus's rationalism is, however, only a surface phenomenon. As particularly Bilde has pointed out the concept of the divine providence was decisive for Josephus. God intervenes in history both to punish and to save. 77 In Bell um, the author's central problem is the fall of Jerusalem and the disaster which was thereupon visited on the Jewish people. How could God allow this to happen? Josephus answered that is was because of sin (Bell. 2,455f.; 5, 19). In other words, Rome is seen as a tool in God's hand, a role which the prophets had assigned to a variety of great powers. God himself has given power to Rome; thus, to revolt against Rome is to revolt against God himself. One ought instead to suffer passively, as Josephus himselfand Agrippa II say in their addresses to the inhabitants ofJerusalem in 66 CE (Bell. 5,362-419; 2,345-401). After all, through Moses, God is the legislator (Ant. 2-4). All one can legitimately do against Rome is to demonstrate peacefully with confidence in God and with the will to uphold the law, even if this course should lead to martyrdom. 78 Josephus supports these arguments by referring to the Bible. In his previously referred-to address,Josephus maintains that while in Egypt the Israelites desisted from resorting to violence and confidently put their case in God's hands (Bellum 5,382-383), as they did in the face of the Philistine assaults, and so on; and, it was God alone who led the people home from Babylon (ibid., 389). King Zedekiah's attempt to revolt against Babylon in spite of the warnings of the prophet Jeremiah is accordingly depicted as an example to avoid (ibid., 391-393). This point is very close to Isaiah's insistence on faith: only belief in God can help, not military alliances (Isa 7:3-9; 14:28-32; 30:1-7; 31:1-3). The idea that the people are to obey the law and be secure in their faith in God, even if the consequence is martyrdom, makes sense only if it is presupposed that from its very inception the Roman sovereignty is understood as punishment. Is there, asks Josephus, any sign that the punishment will cease? He is very 77 P. Bilde, Flavius Josephus between Jerusalem and Rome, Sheffield, 1988, pp. 182-191. 78 Ibid., pp. l 86f.

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hesitant to express any hope for the future of Israel. Of course, he was well aware that the Romans had encountered their share of Messianic pretenders during the Jewish-Roman struggle; so he was understandably reluctant to express any hint of messianic expectation. But it is nonetheless present to some extent in his own logic: God rewards the obedient. If they believe and adhere to him, what then? Moreover, the hope is clearly seen by Josephus in his paraphrase of Balaam's prophecy (Num 23), which is a promise of Israel's future power and glory (Ant, 125). 79 All of these are ideas which we have already encountered in connection with both the prophets and the Deuteronomistic History. 80 In his own times, he was closest to that circle ofrabbinic thinkers who were not influenced by the deterministic view of history of apocalyptic. In Josephus's works we find that God intervenes in history which is a nexus of man's free actions, so that history takes on its characteristic zigzag course. The catastrophe could have been averted, if the people had behaved differently. The hints of eschatology to be found in Josephus's writings are most of all reminiscent of the ideas of Rabbi Elliezer hen Hyrkanos, whom we shall shortly encounter. The apocalyptic idea of the determination of history, that is, of its necessary adherence to a pre-established divine plan, was foreign to Josephus. Thus it is significant that he identifies himself as a Pharisee (Vita 12), a statement which recent research has been increasingly willing to credit. Josephus was no doubt deeply influenced by Pharisaicrabbinical thought. 81

V.

ESCHATOLOGY AND APOCALYPTIC. THE DETERMINISTIC VIEW OF HISTORY

In Chapter 3 we described the peaceful realm described in prophetic eschatology as a situation which was expected to be realized within the framework of history. However definitive this condition may have been held to be, its advent was nevertheless understood as a turning-point in history, rather than as its end. This view persisted throughout the entire period of the second temple (i.e., 79 Cf. P. Bilde, ibid., pp. 187f. and F.F. Bruce, "Josephus and Daniel," ASTI 4 ( l 965) pp. 48--62. 80 See also, H. Linder, Die Geschichtsauffasung des Flavius Josephus im Bellum Judaicum, Leiden, l 972, pp. 28--30. 81 As especially T. Rajak (Josephus. Historian and his Society. London/ Philadelphia, 1983, pp. l l-45) has pointed out.

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until 70 CE). It is to be found in Ben Sirach, the Book of Tobit, the Psalms of Solomon, and so on. It was not only to be found in this period, but also in later rabbinical works in the Talmudic literature, although it had not been the only viewpoint for quite some time. Thus, for example, Rabbi Samuel (3rd c. CE) maintained that: The present world differs from the Messianic era only in respect of the servitude (of Israel) to the kingdoms. 82 The fact that the subject is a turning-point in history rather than its end in a supra-earthly realm of peace is emphasized by the fact that we sometimes find powerfully expressed in the Talmudic literature the fear that the "servitude to the kingdoms" will recur after the salvation. 83 As with the prophets, salvation was expected to consist in liberation from the oppressors, in the return of the exiles to the land of Israel, in the righteous and peaceful rule of the Davidic Messiah, in harmony and fertility. Apart from these ideas, we find the same universalistic tendency that we previously noted in Deutero-Isaiah. This comes above all to expression in the New Year prayers. At that time, " ... all creatures (will) prostrate themselves before thee, that they may all form a single band to serve thy will with a perfect heart." 84 The rabbis related this turning-point to Israel's earlier history: they saw it as the fulfillment of the promises of Scripture, which for their part had been grounded in Israel's election. But how and when did they expect these things to occur? Opinions were strongly divided. Thus, for example Rabbi Eliezer hen Hyrkanos and Rabbi Joshua hen Hananiah (2nd c. CE) discussed the relationship between conversion and salvation: Rabbi Eliezer said: If Israel repent they will be redeemed. Rabbi Joshua said to him: If they do not repent, will they not be redeemed? Nay, the Holy One, blessed be He, will raise up a king, whose decrees will be as brutal as those of Haman, and he will thus bring them back to the right path. 85 Both disputants are but perpetuating viewpoints which we observed earlier in the prophetic writings. If one chooses to follow 82 Sanhedrin 91 b, cf. 99a. The idea has been perpetuated and became dominant in the synagogual liturgy. In the Middle Ages it was adhered to by, e.g., Maimonides. See G. Sholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism, New York, 1971, pp. 25-31. 83 See the references in E.E. Urbach, op. cit., p. 690. 84 From the Uvekhen prayer; see J.H. Hertz, The Daily Prayer Book, p. 849. Cf. the Aleinu prayer, ibid., pp. 863-873. Both prayers had been composed by the 3rd century CE at the latest. 85 Sanhedrin, 97b.

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Rabbi Eliezer, it is impossible to say anything at all about when the salvation will come (if it comes at all); in contrast to this, Rabbi Joshua's views allows, at least in principle, the possibility of calculating the time in question.B 6 Moreover, the Talmudic literature also testifies to the fact that many rabbis actually attempted to do so. These attempts at calculation probably resulted from the fact that the rabbis not only knew apocalyptic writings, which were then in circulation; some rabbis will presumably also have been influenced by the contents of such works and thought along similar lines, that is, they embraced such ideas as the concept of a Messianic period as an ideal time immediately preceding the dissolution of this world and the creation of the new. Here it is appropriate to speak of an end of history. In apocalyptic thought it was meaningful to try to pinpoint "the time of the end", since the genre adhered to a deterministic view of history.B 7 Some of the rabbis assimilated quite a number of apocalyptic ideas, although they were selective in this regard. For example, it was possible to adopt the apocolypticists' concept of what the time of salvation would be like and at the same time to reject the deterministic understanding of history by insisting that the presupposition for the advent of salvation was the people's conversion.BB We saw in the course of our investigation of the prophets that they did not operate with a concept of a total divine plan for world history; precisely such a plan, however, was an important element in apocalyptics. The prophetic understanding of history had been abandoned. 89 History had instead become a sequence of events which had been predetermined long before and which was fundamentally characterized by evil. History was "the present evil world" in contrast to the time of salvation in "the world to come": The present world is not the end; the full glory does not abide in it; ... But the day of judgement will be the end of this age and the beginning of the immortal age to come, in which corruption has passed away, sinful indulgence has come to an end, unbelief has been cut off, and righteousness has increased and truth has appeared. 90

There is no room here for God's salvivic intervention in history; God saves by doing away with history. The deterministic aspect, Cf. E.E. Urbach, op. cit. p. 669. Cf. D.S. Russell, The Method and Message ofJewish Apocalyptic, London, 1971, pp. 205-234; and M. Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus, Tiibingen, 1969, pp. 330--35 7. 88 Cf. e.g., E.E. Urbach, op. cit., pp. 682f. 89 On the distinction between prophetism and apocalypticism, see Otzen, op. op. cit., pp. 159ff. 90 4th Ezra (Charlesworth) 7, 112-114 (Composed between 70 and 135 CE). 86 87

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namely the idea that the course of history turns with ineluctable necessity towards its end, was expressed in a number of historical apocalypses. In the seventh chapter of the Book of Daniel (2nd c. CE), the seer has a vision of four animals, symbolizing the four world empires: the Babylonian, the Median, the Persian, and the Greek. These span the era from around 600 to the 160s BCE, when the apocalyptic author was active. In l Enoch ( lsr c. BCE), Enoch sees all of history from Adam and Eve until the final judgement (chs. 85-90). Baruch was allowed to see world history in a dream: 91 an enormous water-filled cloud emerges from sea and takes possession of the entire world. The cloud sends down showers of rain twelve times, six times consisting of dark water and six of light water. Then it sends out extremely black water mixed with fire, which brings about great destruction. Finally, lightning seizes the cloud and casts it down to earth, illuminates everything, heals the destruction, and takes possession of the whole earth. This vision reveals the divine plan for the world from the beginning to the end. The cloud is the world's time, apportioned according to God's wisdom. The twelve alternating light and dark showers correspond to periods in the Biblical description of history. Thus storm number nine is Manasseh's godless reign (ch. 64-65), while number ten (ch. 66) is the wonderful time ofJosiah. In other words, history can enjoy good periods, when light water comes; nevertheless, God has already established his plan as to how history is to proceed until its end. The idea underlying these historical apocalypses and the deterministic view of history as a whole is relatively clear. They provided consolation and encouragement. Admittedly, it was possible to see the world as evil; but the idea of a divine plan which runs with inescapable necessity also contains the promising note that history will finally come to an end and a new world will arise. Nothing can prevent it, as it was so planned in the very beginning by Almighty God. 92 Several apocalyptic works reveal a clear tone of imminent expectation. Daniel (ch. 9) notes that the prophet Jeremiah had said that Jerusalem would lie in ruins for seventy years. After prayer, the archangel Gabriel reveals to him the fact that the seventy signifies the seventy weeks of years (i.e., 490 years) which are to elapse from the time of the prophecy (the beginning of the exile) until Israel has atoned for her sin. Sixty-nine of the "weeks" describe the time from the beginning of the exile until the Syrian The Syrian Apocalypse of Baruch (between 70 and 135 CE), chs. 53-74. Similar considerations apply to the Apocalyptic speculations about chronology; cf. D.S. Russell, op. cit., pp. 205-209. 91

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king, Antiochus Epiphanes. In the middle of the last "week", he will do away with the Lord's sacrifices in the temple in Jerusalem and replace them with the worship of false gods. This assault on the temple brings us down to 167 BCE, to the days of the apocalyptist himself. Thus we have arrived at the "last" time; salvation is imminent (cf. Dan 9:25-26). However, it was not always the case that the historical and periodical speculations were used to provide assurance as to imminent arrival of the "time of the end". The previously-mentioned Syrian Apocalypse of Baruch undoubtedly tries to convince the reader of the proximity of "the end". At the same time, however, it contains statements which must be understood as warnings against precise calculations of the final date: "see, days shall come and it will happen, when the time of the world is ripe ... " (70:2). Time has to be ripe, or "completed", as Fourth Ezra puts it (11:44). In other words, the determination of history and the time of the end are assured; but no man can completely discover just when the divine plan intends things to happen. In Verhangnis und Verheiflung der Geschichte, his most important contribution to the study of apocalyptic, Harnich has correctly noted that, "Beide Formulierungen tragen dem Gedanken Rechnung, daB der eschatologische Termin der menschlichen Kalkulation im Grunde entzogen bleibt, gerade weil er allein der gottlichen Zeitdisposition unterliegt." 93 (Eng.: "Both formulations take account of the idea that the eschatological date ultimately escapes human calculation because it is solely determined by the divine disposition of time.") However, the determination of history did not entail that it was already established as to which men would be pious, and which would not. Man was thought to be free on that point. It was accordingly possible to advise men to examine the times. Second Enoch (1st c. CE) tells us that God made man with eyes to see, ears to hear, a heart to think, and reason to give him council. The work goes on to say: Then the Lord delivered the age for the sake of man, and he divided it into times, and into hours, so that a person might think about the changes of the periods and their ends, the beginnings and the endings of the years and the months and the days and the hours, and so that he might calculate the death of his own life.

93 The subtitle of Harnich's book is, Untersuchungen ;::,um Zeit-und Geschichtsverstiindnis im 4. Buch Esra. und under D'r. Baruchapokalypse, Gottingen, 1969 here p. 276. See also the chapter entitled "Die Neutralisierung der Naherwartudg d., W. Cureton, London: Society for the Publication of Oriental Texts, 1846, 338, where it is called the first of "Proclus' fallacies on the eternity of the world. 20 See Harry Wolfson, "Extradeical and lntradeical Interpretations of Platonic Ideas-Logos, Trinity, and Attributes," in Wolfson's Religious Philosophy, a Group of Essays, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961; "God, the World ofideas, and the Logos," in Wolfson's Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962 (1947).

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and that no foothold or handgrip was afforded in those formulations for the dialectical overthrow of key postures of the faith. The details and complexities of those dogmatics would take us far afield. But their central theme and strength was the assignment to God of an eternal, perhaps uncreated objectification which could no more be walled off from God Himself than human thought can be separated from human identity. With a new infusion of platonism into Islam by the translation into Arabic and adaptation to the Islamic milieu of neoplatonic texts and arguments, the timeless paradigm of God's thought or wisdom mediates the passage to temporality and becomes the abode of Platonic ideas, the intellectual world of the falasifa. A neoplatonic fusion of thought, thinker, and act of thinking that Aristotle's (De Anima I 3, 407a 8; III 5, 430a 20) phenomenology of consciousness seems to invite as a solution to the problem of housing the Platonic forms (De Anima III 5, 429a 27-29) allows them to play the causal role that Aristotle had thought beyond their power: to act as non-temporal causes (or explanatory intellectual principles) behind temporal events. Perhaps even more important for Islam as a way of thought and spirituality which kalam formulations only verbalize and which formal philosophic conceptualizations only abstractly capture, is the penetration into Sufism, Islamic mysticism, of an ontology and ecstatic phenomenology based on the neoplatonically enriched conception of the timeless world, now called by a Quranic (6:75) term that echoes Judaeo-Christian scriptural and theological terminology: malakut, the Kingdom of Heaven. Kalam,falsafa, and Sufism, each in its own way informing the rest by way of surreptitiously cosmopolitan understandings of the intellectual or timeless world, have all conspired, in seeming isolation from each other, to gloss and vindicate, with a structurally identical architectonic, the dictum of the Qur'an (28:88): "All things perish except His face." In the Mishkat al-Anwar, or Niche for Lights and in the 'lhya' 'Ulum al-Din, or Revival of the Religious Sciences, the great Muslim theologian al-Ghazali ( 1058-1111) argues in the Platonic mode that this world, the visible world of the here and now, is the image of the higher, timeless world of the malakut, literally God's Kingdom, interpreted here as the abode of the angels-that is, the disembodied intelligences, the minds that think the ideas that are the pattern and so the formal ground of the being of this world here below. 21 Our task in this life, al-Ghazali argues, is one of exegesis or 21

See W.H.T. Gairdner tr., Al-Gha::ali's Mishkat al-Anwar, Lahore, 1952 (Lon-

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decipherment (ta'bir, ta'wil), unriddling the symbolism embedded in this world by its patterning upon the timeless reality of the supra-celestial world, which in Quranic language is called the Inviolate Tablet (lawh mahfuz) or the World of the Word. To discern the unseen meaning of creation is in fact to open oneself to the ultimacy and omnipresence of God's wisdom and to scale the depths of our mortality and ascend to the realm of perfection itself. For the content of our intelligence is what we shall become. Indeed, it is what we have always been; and in this sense our ascent is a journey of recollection and self-discovery: We bear within ourselves the seeds of immortality as well as the hallmarks of eternity. This is the proper sense of Plato's Socratic reading of the Delphic oracle, recast in the Islamic milieu as a dictum of the Prophet: "He who knows himself knows his God." 22 We are aided in our ascent, al-Ghazali argues, by the indwelling intelligence within us. The spiritual heart, which is the mind in al-Ghazali's mystic epistemology, is always open to the ideal or intellectual world of the malakut, because properly speaking that heart is no part of the anatomy but itself (as Plato had argued of the mind) a member of the intellectual world. Al-Ghazali follows Plato in calling the inner sight by which we apprehend God's wisdom in nature, the timeless plan of temporal creation, the mind's eye. His departure is all the more striking when he argues that mystic practices (not Plato's dialectic!) are the means of polishing and purifying this organ of our spiritual vision, giving certitude to human understanding. Even the spiritual world, al-Ghazali insists, is dark and shadowy, without the Qur'an to light it uir-the Qur'an, God's veritable Word, here plays the role of the Aristotelian Active Intellect, rendering ideas intelligible as sunlight renders bodies visible. No mystic can expect to attain his goal who denies the reality of the malakut and its mediating lower hypostasis the world of imaginative symbolizations,jabarut. To deny such realities is to be denied access to them-for one has negated or obstructed their presence in oneself by negating the very categories they use, rendering the language of the heart opaque dumbshow, an undecipherable code. To reach the malakut, however, is to make contact with timelessness and immortality. Even prophecy is anchored in this attainment, standing as it does intellectually in the presence of don, 1924); 'Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din, Cairo, 1968, III 12, 13, 20, 21; and the discussion in Farid Jabre, La Notion de Certitude selon Ghazali, Paris, 1958, 179--85, 189--206, 212-13, 257-58, 341; AJ. Wensinck, La Pensee de Ghazzali, Paris, 1940. 22 See Alexander Altmann, "The Delphic Maxim in Medieval Islam and Judaism," in his Studies in Religious Philosophy and Mysticism, Ithaca, 1969.

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the unchanging Plan, the Inviolate Tablet which is the pattern and program of creation. Plato defined time rather gnomically as the moving image of eternity. 23 It was Aristotle who stood close enough to Plato to allow later readers to unfold a conceptual sense from these words, calling time the measure of motion (Physics IV 14, 223a 19). When alKindi, the first important philosopher to write in Arabic, (d. 867) wished to mark the boundary between time and eternity, he used the kalam-like expedient of a verbal formula, adding to Aristotle's four kinds of change a fifth, creation, God's bringing something ( 'aysa) from nothing (laysa). The expedient represents a clear departure from the quasi-Megarian and creationist worries of the kalam: Al-Kindi does not share in the Megarian elenchus and sees no inconsistency between God's creation and the Aristotelian account of change. Later philosophers, more thoroughly imbued with the implications of the Aristotelian system, will differ with him here, adopting the Aristotelian account of time and motion, but acknowledging, as Mu'ammar seemed to fear, that such an account excludes the notion of a temporal origin for the world. For the Persian physician and philosopher al-Razi (d. 925 or 932) the task of defending creation was more difficult than al-Kindi saw it to be. He rejected Aristotle's relativistic definition of time, which implied that if there were no bodies in motion there would be no time, and posited an absolute time, into which God had created nature. Relative time and place (al-zaman, al-makan) came into existence with the world; but their absolute counterparts (al-dahr, and al-Jada', the void) were eternal. Five things were eternal by Razi's count: God, the world soul, time, space, and matter. Without the eternity of all five, he argues, no proof of creation is possible -creation here acquiring the concessive sense of formatio mundi. 24 Absolute time is unmeasured, just as absolute space requires nothing to be placed in it. If time is to be the condition of change, al-Razi reasons, time must precede change. He does not accept the Aristotelian argument that since time is eternal, motion too must be eternal. Eternal time implies only the eternal possibility of motion, just as empty space does not require a body to be placed within it but requires only the possibility of a body's placement in it. Razi is an atomist, but of the Democritean sort: His atoms have 23 Plato apud Pseudo-Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, H. Daiber, ed., Die arabische Uberset::,ung der Placita Philosophorum, Saarbrucken, 1968, 173/4. 24 See Paul Kraus, ed., Ra::,is Opera Philosophica Fragmentaque quae supersunt, Cairo, 1939, 195 ff.; L.E. Goodman, "Razi's Psychology," Philosophical Forum, 4 (1972) 26-48.

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size and duration, and his time and space are not comprised of discrete quanta. For if time and space are not relative, there is no need for the kalam notion of discontinuous time, space and motion to correspond to the discontinuous bodies that make up the cosmos. Some scholars have related al-Razi's doctrines of eternal time and space to ancient Persian mythology, but a closer affinity is found in the thinking of al-Razi's predecessor Iranshahri, who had treated time and space as aspects of divine power. 25 If God is to be capable of creation, then the conditions of creation must be eternal with Him. Aristotle argues for the relativity of time from the fact that without phenomenal time or observable change we would have no grounds for assuming that time had passed (Physics, IV 11, 218b 21 ff.). The argument operationalizes the idea of time strikingly, and al-Razi seems to respond in kind in the record (preserved by his adversary) of some of his philosophical debates. Abu Hatim al-Razi, whose name indicates an origin like Muhammad ibn Zakariya' al-Razi's from the city of Rayy near present day Tehran, always found his interlocutor exasperating, but never more than on the subject of time: I sought him out at another gathering and said: "Tell me, do you not claim that five things and only these are eternal?" "Yes," he said. "But we know time," I said, "by the motions of the sphere, the passage of days and nights, the counting of years and months, and the passing away of each successive moment. Are these co-eternal with time, or are they new things that have come to be?" He answered, "It is not acceptable to say that these are eternal. For all of these are measured by the motions of the sphere, numbered by the sunrises and sunsets-and the sphere and all that is within it has a beginning. This notion [that the motions of the heavens are eternal] is Aristotle's theory of time, but others differ with him and hold a variety of different theories. My own view is that there is absolute time and demarcated time: what is absolute is duration and eternity (dahr), this is what is eternal and moves ceaselessly; determinate or circumscribed time is what occurs with the motion of the spheres and the courses of the sun and the stars. If you distinguish between these two and imagine the movement of eternity, then you have imagined absolute time. But if you picture the motions of the sphere, you are imagining demarcated time." I said, "Give us some definite idea by which we can conceive of absolute time. For if we abstract from the motions of the sphere, the passage of days and nights, the passing of moments, the notion of time disappears as well, and we are left with no idea of it. So give me 25

See Nasir-i-Khusraw, in Kraus, 255 ff.

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a better idea of this 'motion of eternity,' which you say is absolute time." "Do you not see how the whole runs its course with the passage of time?" he said, "Tap, tap, tap. This is something that will never end or run out, and the movement of eternity is the same, when you conceive of absolute time." "The world runs its course," I said, "only with the passage of time, which occurs with the motions of the sphere; and the world has a beginning, and so does the sphere, as you yourself admit. Time is a feature of the world and began when the world began. Time passes and will end just as the world does, in the same way that it began with the world. We know no other reality for time ... So you must either make all of these [temporal things whose movement measures time] eternal along with time, which would bring you back to the eternity of the world, or you must admit that time has a beginning like these things-or you must give me a definition of time that is independent of these events, for the notion you have given thus far is not: When you say 'Tap, tap, tap,' the words you utter are themselves numbered and are not conceivable apart from their being articulated. But number and speech are themselves temporal and originated. So you haven't really said anything yet, when you utter those words, which any sensible person would be ashamed of. Give us something with a definite essence that we can conceive. " 26 Muhammad ibn Zakariya' never does succeed in satisfying his namesake that there is a definition of absolute time conceptually independent of the physical and phenomenal measures of time from which the idea of time arises-partly because Abu Hatim insists on mental images as the basis of conceptual constructs. But Muhammad ibn Zakariya' remains convinced nonetheless that absolute time is real-for reasons closely akin to those that motivate his adversary: Abu Hatim shuns the notion of eternal time because (given the relativity of time) such a notion will imply the eternity of matter and the cosmos, as Aristotle had argued, derogating, in Abu Hatim's eyes, from the absoluteness of God's role as Creator. Muhammad ibn Zakariya', for his part, equally impressed with the arguments of Aristotle for the eternity of time, which thefalasifa of the next generation will simply accept, admits the eternity of time, space and matter and seeks to preserve God's role by making Soul responsible for the motion of matter and God's gift of intelligence responsible for the ordering of that motion into a cosmos. 27 If time is eternal, he reasons, it must antedate the cosmic mo-

Munazarat al-Raziyayn in Kraus, 304--05. See L.E. Goodman, "Razi's Myth of the Fall of the Soul: Its Function in his Philosophy," G. Hourani, ed., Essays on Islamic Philosophy and Science, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975, 25-40. 26

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tions, which Aristotle had taken for its correlate. Time in a different sense from that which Aristotle yoked with matter in motion must exist eternally, as the very locus of the possibility of such motion. This is the eternal time that antedates creation and in which creation occurs. It can be measured only by the virtuality of natural motions in it, but it is separable from their temporality and so is not originated. It is the duration posited by Aristotle during which, in his hypothesis, all processes of nature-all movements and all thoughts-have stopped, the interval during which Rip Van Winkle or Aristotle's sleepers of Sardinia (218b 25) slept. While our studies of Leibniz, or of Kant, or of Einstein may incline us more to the side of Abu Hatim that to that of Muhammad ibn Zakariya' on the issue of the reality of absolute time, our very need to differentiate the sense in which we claim that the former is the true view will require us not to go so far with Abu Hatim as to accept the claim that the idea of absolute time is unintelligible--or we shall have no language in which to formulate the (rather Newtonian) view of time that we seek to exclude. Both al-Farabi (ca. 870--950) and Avicenna (Ibn Sina, 980-1038) reject the idea that the world has a temporal origin. They are strict and rigorous members of the cadre of the falasifa, trained in the translated works of the Greek philosophical thinkers and too aware of the close coherence of the arguments of Aristotle and his neoplatonic systematizers to attempt, as al-Kindi and al-Razi did, to pick and choose among the outcomes of those arguments or to graft creationism onto the body of the Aristotelian cosmos. Rather, they treat the scriptural idea of creation as a mythic symbolization, attuned to the imaginative rather than conceptual level of human thought, and thus accessible to the masses. What the story of creation represents, however, is the much subtler antic dependence of the temporal world upon a timeless God's eternal act, the emergence or emanation of material particulars from the intellectual realities which give determinacy and specificity to the Wisdom which is God. Al-Farabi, like Avicenna, Ibn Rushd and others among his contemporaries and successors, follows Aristotle in holding that the present is an instant that divides the future from the past and that every moment of time accordingly has a before and an after: there is no first. Avicenna similarly holds, with Aristotle, that if there were a first moment of time there would be a time before which there was no time: but the very notional postulation entailed in the expression before which shows that one cannot actually abstract from time-we have presupposed time even in the attempt to suppose "a time

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when" time itself did not exist. 28 Defenders of creation-that is of the philosophic credibility of the idea of the world's origination and contingent dependence on a free act of God's will-were not slow to detect a verbal fallacy in this bit of Aristotelian reasoning on the part of the Philosophers: The supposition of a time before time was only nominal or virtual and is easily done away with unless one presupposes that every moment has a before and after, which is to beg the question. The real problem, as Avicenna saw, is that the Aristotelian analysis of time is not an isolable theory but an integral constituent of the Aristotelian cosmology, which could make credible claims by the tenth century to being the only viable and developed framework for the sciences of nature. The Aristotelian analysis of time as continuous and unoriginated was linked specifically, seemingly inextricably, to the Aristotelian accounts of matter, motion, potentiality and change. In short, it was an integral constituent of the Aristotelian account of causality, which by alFarabi's time had already put the kalam alternatives very much on the defensive, as we can see in the carefully qualified theories of al-Ash'ari, and which, by Avicenna's time had driven kalam occasionalism into the parochial corners of the mosque schools, making it a mode of dialectic no longer cogent in interconfessional or intraconfessional debates but a scholastic study of relevance only among the adepts of kalam themselves-or a semi-popular mode of apologetics. Thus al-Ghazali, born just a few years after Avicenna died, could join the falasifa in all but dismissing kalam as a kind of midcult, suitable for the defense of the faith among the relatively unsophisticated, but risky even there-lest the recipients of such arguments (for example, in behalf of the temporal origin of the world) erroneously be led to suppose that no more rigorous (i.e., philosophical) responses are available to the Philosophers. Avicenna argues, following Aristotle, and staking all on the credibility of the Aristotelian cosmology of the spheres (which would soon be shaken by the criticisms of lbn al-Haytham, Ibn Bajjah and his intellectual heirs, lbn Tufayl and Maimonides) that the invariant and unopposed, continuous motion of the heavens is the visible evidence of the ceaselessness of time. If time had a beginning, and nature was originated, as maintained by those who hoped to cleave to what they took to be the teaching of scripture about creation, then Avicenna argued, there must have been the possibility of nature and of time before anything at all existed. 28 See Aristotle Physics VIII 1, 251 b 10-25, and Ibn Tufayl, Hayy lbn Yaqzan, tr. L.E. Goodman, Los Angeles: Gee Tee Bee, 1984 (1972), 131.

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Where would such a possibility reside? By the Aristotelian account, matter was the basis of possibilities-every product of nature or of art required the matter appropriate to it. How, Avicenna and many other philosophers asked, could there be a possibility of the existence of the world before there was any matter or substrate for that possibility? Similarly, and again following Aristotle, there was a problem of infinite regress: Change, as Aristotle had discovered, requires matter as the underlying substrate that remains the same through time and without which there would be no answer to the Parmenidean elenchus that change requires a thing to become what it is not. What then could be meant by al-Kindi's notion of a change that requires no prior matter, a change of nothing into something? And if the matter of the world is not eternal, how did it come to be-out of what? If time itself began, since time is the measure of motion and is supposed by the creationists to have begun, how did time originate? Did it come to be? Was its origin itself a process in time? If so there is another infinite regress, exactly like the one involved in supposing an origin for matter, and thus supposing that matter came from matter-time from time. It was to escape such regresses and the lingering aura of mythicism they involved that Aristotle had first cut loose the cosmological insights of the presocratic philosophers from their cosmogonic linkages, dissociating the question of the nature ofreality from that oforigins and making the dissociation final, or so his followers had supposed, by demonstrating the eternity of time, motion and the cosmos. Now the creationists, a new band of mythicists, seemed bent on undoing that achievement, by which philosophy first emancipated itself from the dream-like clutch of imagination and its categories and modes of explanation. The operative force of all the arguments that Avicenna culls from Aristotle, Proclus and other critics of creation (whose reasonings against an origin for time and the cosmos go all the way back to Parmenides' goddess and her challenge that reason can find no way to mediate the transition from non-being into being and that there is no reason why such a change would or therefore could take place at any one time rather than another29 ) is to deny creationists access to the Aristotelian account of change: Unless the recalcitrant defen29 Parmenides, Frg. 8; see L.E. Goodman, "Matter and Form as Attributes of God in Maimonides' Philosophy," in A Straight Path: Essays in Honor of Arthur Hyman, Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1988, 86-97; "Ghazali's Argument from Creation," lntemationaljoumal of Middle Eastern Studies 2 (1971) 67-85, 168-88.

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ders of scripture abandon all pretense to science they must recognize that Aristotelian causality and naturalism are of a piece with Aristotelian eternalism and they must reject the pretense of employing the Aristotelian ideas of time and causality in their accounts of nature. The atomists, occasionalists and even the preformationists of the kalam were at least consistent in this: They knew that their creationist assumptions or beliefs denied them access to the Aristotelian account of change. To propose a time before which there was no time was to propose an uncaused first event, an arbitrary eruption of something out of nothing with no prior determinant or rule. Here the followers of Aristotle were still good Parmenideans, as was Aristotle himself, denying the intelligibility of pure non-being, insisting on the identity of being with definiteness and intelligibility, and thus rejecting causeless, unpreceded events not only as unscientific but as illogical. 30 Of course the defenders of creation could say that the world came not from nothing but from God and was not uncaused at all. But the very essence of the critique of the idea of the world's temporal origination among the falasifa was a reaffirmation of Aristotle's original intention cosmologically, of breaking away from what he called the deus ex machina gods of the myths that act from outside of nature rather than from within it, as a deus ex machina in a bad play or melodrama acts externally to the logic and dynamic of the action of the play. In the Aristotelian universe the whole system of forms as essences and as teleological causes had been devised to explain how the divine could move all things intellectually and as a goal without itself participating in such movement. The neoplatonic philosophy adopted and developed ever more globally by all the falasifa perfected the Aristotelian scheme by locating the Platonic forms within the Aristotelian intelligences and making the hypostatic Active Intellect the bestower of those forms upon all finite beings, as the objective basis of their intelligibility and the subjective basis of their intelligence. If the forms were not eternal and did not eternally flow forth out of the Active Intellect to impart their eternal patterns to eternal matter, there could be, so the falasifa argued, no successful linkage of the temporal and the eternal. And certainly any hybrid model that sought to link creationism to Aristotelian naturalism would be incoherent. Yet that precisely was the kind of model that al-Ghazali and Maimonides (1135-1204), the two most sophisticated defenders of the idea ofan origin of time, 30 See L.E. Goodman, "Islamic and Jewish Philosophers and the Irrational," in S. Biderman, ed., Essays on the Irrational, Leiden: Brill, 1989.

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set about to build. For, as Maimonides astutely observed, the reliance of the falasifa upon the intertwinedness of their theory of time with their accounts of causality, matter, potentiality and change was nothing more than an elaborate begging of the question on the material issue of the finitude or infinitude of time, incorporating the outcomes of the Aristotelian analysis of empirically studied temporal events into the reasoning that would exclude a priori a type of event of which we have no experience and for which we have no analogy. 31 Richly caparisoned with arguments from the armory prepared against Aristotelian eternalism by John Philoponus in the 6th century, 32 al-Ghazali in his polemical work The Incoherence of the Philosophers abandons atomism and occasionalism and adopts the Aristotelian relative time and space. He even adopts a modified Aristotelian naturalism, fortified by the recognition that all forms come from above and that matter, by Aristotle's own account, can receive any form. 33 But he turns the tables on Aristotelian eternalism by deploying the Aristotelian arguments against the possibility of an infinite magnitude and against the possibility of exhausting an infinity, to show that there can be no infinite time: If the world were eternal, al-Ghazali argues, an infinite time would have elapsed before today. The same paradoxes that followers of Aristotle had long used to show the finite size of the cosmos are now arrayed, as they were by Philoponus, to show the absurdity of the infinite age of the cosmos: The sun has revolved about the earth infinite times, by the Philosophers' account; so too have Saturn and Jupiter. And in the infinite history of the Philosophers' cosmos there has never been a variance in the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. Yet for every revolution of Jupiter the sun has circled the earth twelve times, and thirty times for every revolution of Saturn. Are there multiples and fractions of infinity then? Al-Ghazali takes the notion to be absurd. 34 31 See L.E. Goodman, "Three Meanings of the Idea of Creation," in B. McGinn, ed3~ God an4 Creation, No!:e Dame, _1989. . . . . See Richard SorabJ1, ed., Phzloponus and the Reyectzon of Arzstotelzan Science, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987; Christian Wildberg, tr., Philoponus Against Aristotle on the Eternity of the World, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987; S. Sambursky The Physical World of Late Antiquity, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962; Davidson Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God; and Van Den Bergh's notes to the Incoherence of the Incoherence in vol. 2 of his translation: Averroes' Tahafut al-Tahafut, London: Luzac, 1954. 33 See L.E. Goodman, "Did al-Ghazali Deny Causality?" Studia Islamica 47 (1978) 83-120; lbn Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaq;:,an, tr., L.E. Goodman, 124--27. 34 Tahafut al-Falasifa I, ed. M. Bouyges, Beirut: Catholic Press, 1962, 53-54 =

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By al-Ghazali's lights, God, who made the world a finite time ago could have made it earlier or later in the same way that He could have made it larger or smaller than He did. There is no real difference between time and space in this regard: It is true, as the eternalists claim, that time per se affords no determinant to the choice of God to serve as a sufficient reason for the preference of one moment over another as the first-but the same is true of space. It too contains within itself no sufficient determinant of one spot over another as the locus of the pole of the revolving heavens or the outermost boundary of the sphere. There are many arbitrary determinations to be made if a world is to be created. For actuality does not, as the Philosophers suppose, exhaust the scope of possibility, and God's will does not require a "determinant" to be given it; rather, the essence of a will, al-Ghazali argues, is to make a difference where it does not find one-to choose a time as the first moment of creation, despite the fact that any moment, considered in the abstract would be the same as any other. 35 Averroes (lbn Rushd, 1126-98), the defender of falsafa against the attack of alGhazali and the rebutter of his arguments in The Incoherence of the Incoherence is outraged at the idea that any of the determinants of nature are arbitrary and takes particular care to inform his reader properly on the technical differences between time and space: Time, he insists, has order but not arrangement. 36 But such an argument has little purchase upon al-Ghazali's dialectica_l use of the parity between time and space relative to the arguments against an infinite magnitude or the elapsing of an infinite duration, or relative to the indeterminacy of any abstract, virtual (or "empty") moment of time or sector or space as a determinant of choice. What the Aristotelian teaching of the relativity of time to motion shows us, al-Ghazali argues, is not that motion is eternal but that time, like motion, is created. 37 The Philosophers claim, al-Ghazali points out, that it is "impossible for an eternal will to be linked to the generation of any temporal thing whatever"-an expression more of the problematic of their notions than of any real difficulty for God-"Do you know of this impossibility," al-Ghazali asks, "by Tahafut al-Tahafut, ed. M. Bouyges, Beirut, Catholic Press, 1962, 16; tr. Van Den Berfoh, 9. 3 See The Incoherence of the Philosophers, ed. Bouyges, 56-58 = The Incoherence of the Incoherence, ed. Bouyges, 34, tr. Van Den Bergh, 18-19, and the discussion in Goodman, "Three Meanings of the Idea of Creation." 36 See Aristotle, Categories 6, 5a 25. 37 Tahafut al-Tahafut, ed. Bouyges, 38-42, tr. Van Den Bergh, 21-25; cf. Timaeus 37D-39E.

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necessity of reason or by thought?" If by thought, you must produce some middle term which shows the impossibility oflinking the eternal to the temporal; but if your claim is that you know of this impossibility by immediate necessity of reason, why is what you claim to be self-evident obscure to others? Why is it impossible for an eternal will or plan to generate temporal effects, each event in its time? 38 It is orthodox doctrine in Islam that God transcends time. AlNasafi (d. 1142) formulated it in his creed: "Time (al-zaman) does not affect Him." The later theologian al-Taftazani (1322-92), who served by command at Tamberlane's court in Samarkand, glosses al-Nasafi 's article of faith as follows: "Time for us is an expression for something originated, by which something else originated is measured. For the Philosophers it is the measure of motion. God far transcends it." 39 Al-Ghazali of course subscribes to the same belief, and like al-Taftazani he will make no absolute, eternal or objective thing of time but treats it rather as nominal and relative to the facts of creation. In his Jerusalem Letter, incorporated into the text of the Revival of the Religious Sciences, he makes it an article of faith that God transcends directionalities: For Him there is no up or down, left or right, forward or back, since all of these terms have meaning only relative to our particular type of body. If we were spherical (as the world is), the notions of directionality appropriate for us would be different: All is relative to our mode of being. 40 In view of the parity al-Ghazali finds between time and space, we can infer that he would hold the same with respect to time, that time, as a feature of nature is relative to the motions of bodies and to the perceptions of those beings that measure such motions. And so in fact he does argue in The Incoherence of the Philosophers, basing his case on the fact that the same event is spoken of as past or future, depending on one's point of view. The argument, as Van den Bergh points out, is a late echo of a Stoic thought that can be traced back to Heraclitus, the idea that time is merely notional. 41 Although undeveloped as an Tahafut al-Falasifa, 52-53. E.E. Elder, tr., A Commentary on the Creed of Islam: Sa'd al-Din Al-Tajtazani on the Creed of Najm al-Din al-Nasafi, New York: Columbia University Press, I 950, 45; the translation here is my own. 40 Jerusalem Letter I, 7; cf. Timaeus, 62d-63a and Aristotle's objections at Physics, Delta I, 208b 16; De Caelo IV I, 308a 18. 41 See Plutarch aµud Eusebius Praeparatio Evangelica, XI 11, 529a: "the very language of time: 'after,' 'before,' 'will be,' 'was' is already a confession of the unreality of time"; cf. SVF II 166.4. See also Aristotle, Physics IV 14, 223a 22-26, a crucial passage for the Neoplatonists, who regard the world soul as projecting time because for Psyche (as opposed to Nous) thought is necessarily discursive. 38

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argument, this thought is essential to al-Ghazali's project, and to the cosmological project of Islam at large that he makes his own when he adopts the role of Hujjat al-Islam, the argument of Islam and revivifier of the faith for his age: Contrary to the heretical thinking of al-Razi, time has no real existence of its own. And it has no power over God, who stands outside of time and yet is its Creator. The nature of time is as Aristotle described it-yet that does not imply its eternity, for as Plato showed, 42 all things temporal are originated. The precipitation of the temporal from the timeless is emanative-but that does not imply temporality in God's timeless act, nor does it allow the inference from God's timelessness to the eternity of the world. An eternal Will and Plan, al-Ghazali argues, does not change with the changing or even the absolute creation or destruction of the objects of its choice. God retains His timelessness, and the world retains its temporality, which is the real mark of its contingency and dependence upon God, without any need for recourse to atomic time or the atomization of events or natures. The pre-Islamic image of time as an enemy43 survives well into the Islamic period in the secularizing complaints of al-Hamadhani's (967-1008) rogue hero Abu 'I-Fath al-Isfahani against time's duplicity. 44 But for the Muslims most committed to Islam time lost its implacability when dahr was differentiated into eternity and duration. Eternity became malakut, retaining the connotations of destiny but now controlled under the sovereignty of God, as the transtemporal Kingdom of God's wisdom and eternal plan; duration became ;::,aman, the span of human life and the world's history, from birth to death and from creation to the overturning of the cosmos. Like the Christian Philoponus, Quranically imbued Muslims were heartened, not discouraged by the thought of the world's inevitable decline and ultimate destruction. For these portended the reality of God's act (since what is originated is what will not eternally endure45 ), the fact of creation's dependence upon God, and the ultimacy and omnipresence of God's judgment. Time, al-;::,aman, lost its bite, its teeth were drawn, when it was Timaeus 27D-28C. See my Halmos Lecture, "The Sacred and the Secular, Rival Themes in Arabic Literature," Tel Aviv University, 1988, especially the discussion of'Imru' al-Qays, pp. 11-22. 44 See my "Hamadhani, Schadenfreude and Salvation through Sin," Journal of Arabic Literature 19 (1988) 27-39. 45 See Aristotle, De Caelo, I 12, 282b 2; Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 8.20; Origen, Contra Celsum, III 43. 42

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moralized--domesticated, as it were-subjected to God's purpose. That purpose was judgment, and it was for the sake of judgment that time had been first created. It need not have been, and yet it was. Time acquired meaning through the recognition that God in His grace had not held being unborn, clutched and smothered within His bosom, but had allowed the playing out of the drama of life and destiny, so that men of discernment might have their day and return to God and others too might be judged, in accordance with God's grace and pleasure.

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TIME AND THE HINDU EXPERIENCE Anindita Niyogi Balslev An outstanding characteristic of the conceptual world, which is the abode of Hindu religious thought and philosophy, of myths and symbols, is its vast time-consciousness. Bound by a few shared convictions regarding the nature of the self and the world, the Hindu mind plays with various alternatives with regard to time. While here one breathes an atmosphere where there is no pressure of achieving uniformity of views and dogmas, there are surely a few broad and general insights that are common and which form the backdrop to the competing paradigms for interpreting time in a widely divergent manner. 1 The richness and the enormity of the material available for exploring the many-layered meaning that the theme of time has in this complex and highly articulate tradition, calls for a gigantic scholarly enterprise. 2 In this paper my objectives will be: a) to draw the attention of the reader to the wide range of views on time that has nourished this culture by referring to some of the texts whose authenticity has been unquestionably accepted in the tradition and b) examine some cliches about the Hindu time-experience in a cross-cultural and inter-religious context. The relevant material for I would like to take this occasion to thank the organizers and the audience present at the talks delivered at the Scandinavian Indological Conference, Stockholm, 1982; Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Calcutta, 1985; The Asiatic Society, Calcutta, 1985; Annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, 1986; Institute on Religion in an Age of Science, New Hampshire, 1988; University of Kentucky, 1988; University of Virginia, I 989; Sixth East-West Philosophy Conference, University of Hawaii, 1989; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., 1989, 1990; Indian Institute of Advanced Study 1990. 1 This essay is based on a number of my earlier publications and talks on different aspects of the theme of time in Indian thought. Publications: i) A Study of Time in Indian Philosophy, Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 1983. (monograph). ii) Reflections on Time in Indian Philosophy: With Comments on So-called Cyclic Time in The Study of Time V, edited by J.T. Fraser and others, The University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1986. iii) Time, Self and Consciousness: some conceptual patterns in the context of Indian Thought, in Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, vol. v, no. i, sept-dee. 1987. iv) Cosmology and Hindu Thought, in Zygon, vol. 25, no. I, march 1990. 2 Cf. the compilaticm (in sanskrit), entitled Kiilasiddhiintadarfinz, by Haran Chandra Bhattacharya, with a foreword by Gopinath Kaviraj, Calcutta, 1941.

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the study of time in Hindu thought is found in the very early sources as well as in the later texts that are broadly classified as Sruti, Smrti and the Sastras. I will try to present some of the dominant views about time, selecting them from the vast literature of the Hindu tradition, such as the Vedas, the Upaniiads, the Bhagavad Gztii, the epic Mahabharata and the _Purii1J,as, from the literature of the Sa4adarfana, cutting across the Agamafiistras of the major denominations of the Hindus such as the Saivas, the Saktas, the Vai~Q.avas etc. In order to present an over-all picture of this complex tradition, I will draw not only on some of the basic philosophical and religious ideas, but will also focus on myths and symbols. It is hoped that the intellectual challenges and the soteriological aspirations that are embedded in all these expressions of the multi-faceted Hindu religious experience concerning time will eventually facilitate an interreligious dialogue. At the outset it may be mentioned that the two of the most important ideas about the self and the world that have exerted decisive influence on all Hindu thinking are: a) the idea of aniidisal?lsiira-that no absolute beginning can be attributed to the worldprocess and b) the idea that mok~a, the soteriological goal, is not possible without 'knowledge of the self' (iitma-vidyii). These ideas, as we shall see shortly, are the salient features of the Hindu ethos and are unfailingly taken into account in all reflections on time. The various configuration of ideas concerning time (kiila) and the self (iitman) present in the philosophico-religious literature makes the Hindu tradition distinctly different from the other two dominant religious traditions that originated in the Indian soil viz. the Buddhist and theJaina, with which otherwise it shares much in common. It needs to be noticed, for example, that in the soteriological schemes of the Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina alike, the notions of Karma and rebirth play equally important roles. It is also worthy of notice that soteriology in the Indian context does not necessarily refer to a theistic frame of thinking, various other conceptual possibilities have been enthusiastically explored with intense intellectual acuity. There are many examples where within a non-theistic frame (nirisvaravada), the pursuit for mokialnirviinal kaivalya are worked out harmoniously in these traditions. However, the Upani~adic doctrine of iitman remains the central theme in the Hindu discourse. 3 3 Note that the terms 'Brahmanical' and 'Hindu' are used synonymously in this paper.

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THE IDEA OF ATMAN

If the term 'self' is far from being obsolete in religious and philosophical literature across cultures, it must be emphasized that in the Hindu context the notion of atman is absolutely crucial,-hence the other name of the Brahmanical tradition is atmavada. How the self is to be conceived in contrast to the not-self has been a preoccupation for centuries for the Brahmanical thinkers. As one begins to delve into the depth of Hindu religious consciousness, one captures the centrality of the idea of Atman as that which in the midst of the flux of existence remains ever-identical, untouched by 'change'. 4 There are different approaches to the disclosure of the atman in the U pani~ads, such as in the Brhadaral).yaka which exposes it as svqyaajyotih-the light that invariably illuminates the fleeting states-or as in the Taittiriya which unsheathes the inner self through the idea of ko,fa-where embodiment is explained in terms of 'sheaths', which are external to the atman. In Hindu understanding of death and deathlessness, of time and timelessness, this notion of the unchanging and unchangeable self plays a role of capital importance. Disregarding for the moment all internal differences in the tradition concerning the idea of the self, it may be noted that there is no disagreement that in the last analysis, the self (atman) is seen as unsublatable (abadhya), as that about which it cannot be said-it was not, it is not or it will not be (nirya). The Bhagavad Gita 2.20 describes it in a nutshell5 thus: He is never born, nor does he die at any time, nor having (once) come to be will he again cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, permanent and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain.

An elaboration of these shared convictions of the Hindus about the self (atman) and the world, in its various versions, will involve a close examination of not only the diverse views on time, but a network of ideas disclosing the alternative perspectives about the Recall the famous words of Vacaspati Misra, from Bhamati: Ye{u vyii.vartamanesu yad anuvartate tat teblrya bhinnam-"that which is constant in whatever is variable is different from the latter". Eng. tr. taken from T.M.P. Mahadevan, The Philosophy of Advaita, London 1938. 5 Bhagavad Gita 2.20: Na jiiyate mrzyate vii. kadacin Na 'yam bhiitva bhavita vii. na bhiiyah Ajo nityah fafvato yam purii.T}o Na hanyate hanyamane far'ire (This and english translations of Bhagavad-Gi:ta _passages are from S. Radhakrishnan, The Bhagavadgita, New York, Harper 1948.) 4

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phenomena of 'beginning' and 'end', 'change' and 'becoming' and also of the notions of eternality and timelessness. II.

ON KALA (TIME)

Before going into the details of some aspects of the question of Hindu time-experience in the Indian as well as in an inter-cultural context, I will attempt briefly a general survey of some ideas that are recorded in some of the earliest sources. Some of these ideas are now part and parcel of the culture and can be said to have anticipated later theories. Concern with time, as a distinct theme, is clearly seen in so old a document as the Atharva Veda. The Atharva Veda depicts time as the all powerful deity-as the creator, sustainer and the destroyer of the universe. Time begets all creatures, the universe is set in motion by time. The well-known hymn, called the Kala-sukta describes time thus: .... With seven wheels does this time ride, seven naves has he, immortality is his axle. He carries hither all these beings (worlds). Time, the first god, now hastens onward .... 6

A similar idea, identifying the supreme Lord with time, can be seen in the Vi~I).u Purana as well as in the Bhagavad Gita. Consider the following utterances of Lord Krisna in the Bhagavad Gita: -Kalah kalayatam aham-

'Of calculators I am Time'. x/32

-Kalo'smi, lokak:fayakrt-

'Time am I world-destroying'. xi/32

-Aham evak:fayah kala-

' I also am imperishable time'. x/33

The Upani~ads are strewn with various allusions to time and time-divisions, which indicate the sort of notions that were then current. The Maitri Upani~ad contains allusions to time as kala and akala, the measurable time and that which is unmeasured and immeasurable. It is a}so illuminating to find a record of a view, called kalavada in the Svetafvatara Upani~ad. Reference is made to the Ka.lava.dins, who held time to be the sole principle which regulates and controls all that there is. Not only that, the Upani~ads are also important sources which enable us to perceive how already at an early stage of the Brahmanical tradition, the notion of self is clearly 6 From Hymns of the Atharva Veda, translated by M. Bloomfield in Sacred Books of the East, edited by F. Maxmiiller, Vol. XLII. (The english translation is from S. Radhakrishnan, as above.)

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conceived in relation to that of time. This view has influenced all subsequent Hindu formulations of these questions. Then there is the vast religious literature of the various denominations of the Hindus such as that of the Saivas, the Vail?Qavas and others which contain profound and complex deliberations on time. The ancient Panr;ariitra texts, revered by the Vail?Qavas, contain ideas which are philosophically and theologically potent, such as the notion of subtle causal state of time (Suk1?ma-kala) or the idea that time is the power (Kiila-fakti) of the Lord. It is by the exercise of this power that Lord Vi1?QU brings about transformation in the world (jagatah samprakalanam). Various versions of the idea of kiila as the dynamic energy of God runs through the literature of the theistic schools of Vaii?Qavism and Saivism. The Saiva tradition, like the Vail?Qava, have various schools and sub-schools which have developed deep insights into these questions and their literature bears witness to the different ways in which the timeless Lord and the temporal world can be interwoven in theistic schemes. The idea of kiila as kanr;uka is dealt with in great detail in the Pratyabhijiiii philosophy of Kashmir Saivism. The importance of time for human actions and for the reaping of the consequences of these actions, is a theme which is worked out in the Saiva-siddhanta philosophy with great care. No Karma, it is said, can fructify without the instrumentality of time. Saiva-siddhanta also expresses the theological need to transcend time and it does so by declaring time to be an effect (kiirya). An account of the Brahmanical conception of time is incomplete without the profound contribution made by the grammarian philosophers such as Bhartrhari. In his major work, Viikyapaazya, Bhartrhari has bridged the concern of philosophy of grammar with that of soteriology. His reflections on time form an important section of his work, entitled Kiilasamuddesa. A philosophy of grammar is naturally concerned with the question of time as the basis of tense-distinctions of verbs. Bhartrhari's penetrating linguistic analysis (Sphotovada), leads him further to the idea of Sabdatattva Brahman-where the word is seen to be the nature of consciousness that transcends all temporal sequence. Bhartrhari speaks of Sabdapurva yoga, a soteriological pursuit seeking union with the ultimate Word where all sequence is transcended. A detailed treatment of this complex idea of the sequenceless word (akrama-viik) cannot be attempted here. The most articulate and systematic formulations of diverse conceptions of time are to be found, of course, in the literature of the six major schools of Hindu philosophy (Sarfa-darfana). Note that these

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are to be taken into consideration as these are all acknowledged as Mok~a-Sastras i.e. treatises relevant for the attainment of salvation (mok~a). These positions are often incorporated in the literature of various Hindu denominations with or without much modification. These different views have slowly crystallized abandoning other possibilities along the way and bear witness to the fact that soteriology has never in the Brahmanical tradition blocked a free exploration of alternative perspectives. Apart from the sources mentioned above, in any attempt to obtain an over-all view of the significance of time for Hindu religious consciousness it is necessary to take note of the Pural).as, a body of literature which is a rich repository of Hindu mythology that has nourished the imagination of all stratas of Hindu society. Here one comes across a bold expression of Hindu mythic consciousness that seeks to combine human time-experience with the cosmological time. The narratives weave an intriguing pattern with threads supplied by Hindu cosmology and soteriology. 7 It is equally important in this context, as has been mentioned above, to comprehend the meaning of some religious symbols which are profusely used in sculpture, painting and literature, such 7 The narratives of the Pura1_1as are absolutely fascinating in the manner in which these bring out the human signicance of vast stretches of cosmological time. Ideas of karma, rebirth (Punar-janma) and salvation (moksa) are all woven into the texture of these stories which unfold events spanning over billions of human years that make a kalpa. As an example, let me recount very briefly the central theme of such a story: Indra, the king of gods, after winning a formidable victory over the titans, decides to build himself a magnificent palace, the like of which nobody has ever seen. He summons Visvakarma, the divine architect and orders him to construct one. Visvakarma builds a superb palace, but alas, it does not satisfy Indra. Many more gardens, lakes, pavillions are added in course of time to please the master but Visvakarma's efforts were in vain. The insatiable Indra represents the arrogant, powerful boss who is conscious of his unlimited wealth, who thinks that he is not accountable to anyone for his actions, who is even under the delusion that he is immortal. Visvakarma in despair seeks refuge to Lord Visnu. Visnu agrees to help and appears before the power-drunk king of gods in the· disguise of a small boy. There are a number of plots in what follows describing in detail how Indra is gradually made aware of his finitude, of karma and rebirth and of the enormous expanse of time in which the universe undergoes repeated creation and dissolution. One of the dramatic aspect of the story is the appearance of a row of ants which are seen crawling along the wall during the conversation between Indra and Vi~1_1u. Vi~1_1u discloses to a petrified Indra that these ants were nothing but previous Indras, kings of gods of previous world-cycles. The idea that it was their immoral actions that has turned them to ants is a jolt to the pride of present Indra. As the story unfolds, Indra is shown as one. who is aware of the futility of power and possession, who is conscious of his mortality and who now seeks salvation. For a marvellous rendering in English of this Puranic story, see Parades of the Ants in Heinrich Zimmer's Myths and Symbols of the Indian Civilization, Washington 1946.

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as the symbol of the wheel (cakra). Perhaps, as we shall see later in this paper, some of the stereotypes that one comes across in an inter-cultural and inter-religious context, such as the cliche that the Hindu view of time is cyclic are precisely due to not seeing the large inter-connections between philosophical concepts, religious ideas, myths and symbols. 8 III.

THE IDEA OF ANADI-SAMSARA

One of the basic tenets of Hindu thought is the notion that no absolute beginning can be attributed to the world-process. Whether in theological symbolism or in cosmological speculations, the Hindu mind strongly adheres to the view that 'being cannot come out of nothing' (cf. Bhagavad-Gzta 2/16, Nasato vidyate bhavo etc.). In many classical philosophical texts one comes across elaborate discussions about the difficulties and the absurdities that a transgression of this principle of ex nihilo nihil fit would entail. This is one of the major shared convictions that runs through the entire tradition. However, although the idea of absolute beginning i.e. creation out of nothing is rejected, the notion of repeated creation (Punar-S'(,f(i) and recurrent dissolution (Punar-pralaya) is widespread. This is a very ancient idea and it can be traced back to the Rk-veda Sainhita ( 10-190-3): The Lord created the sun and the moon like before (Surya-candra-asaudhata-yatha-purvam-akalpayat). These oft-quoted words suggest that prior to creation there has been a state of dissolution. This idea of cosmological cycle is widely accepted in the tradition, so much so that the idea may well be considered to be a characteristic of the Hindu conceptual world. The question has been asked whether the anadi (beginningless) sainsara is also ananta (endless) or not. It is interesting, in this connection, to observe the intimate relation between Hindu cosmology and soteriology. There are examples of controversies amongst the different schools of Hindu thought regarding the question of dissolution (pralaya). Only those who accept the idea of universal salvation (Maha-pralaya), such as Advaita Vedanta, admit the possibility of a state of final dissolution. The schemes

Paul Tillich observes in his work The Protestant Era, Chicago. 1948: "In every religious interpretation of history, philosophical elements are implied, first of all, a philosophy of time, and in every philosophical interpretation of history religious elements are implied-first of all an interpretation of the meaning (or meaninglessness) of existence. Whenever existence itself is to be interpreted, the difference between philosophy and theology decreases, and both meet in the realm of myth and symbol." 8

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where no idea of universal salvation is pronounced operate with the idea of interim dissolution (Avantara pralaya), i.e. there will be perpetually a fresh beginning, a re-creation (Punar-S'(.f(i) after a state of cosmic rest. Cosmological speculations and soteriological ideas are worked out in harmony with each other.

IV.

TIME AND THE COSMOLOGICAL CYCLES

The epic Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita, the Pura:r:ias, all accept this notion of repeated creation and dissolution. The Bhagavad Gzta compares each world-cycle with a 'day of Brahma', symbolizing cosmic activity, which is followed by His 'night', the state of cosmic rest or dissolution (pralaya). In the Pura1Jas, one comes across the grand cosmological model where each world-cycle is measured in astronomical figures-in one calculation a world-cycle (kalpa) is said to have 4320 million years. Huge time scales are used for dividing and sub-dividing a kalpa into manvantara, mahayuga,yuga etc. It is important to understand how the Hindu mind uses this idea in a soteriological framework. It should, however, be noted that although the idea of Anadi-samsara is unanimously accepted by all schools, there are disagreements with regard to the notion of repeated creation and dissolution-a notable example is Piirva Mimamsa, a prominent Brahmanical school. It is extremely important to make a clear conceptual distinction between the idea of 'cyclic time' and that of 'cosmological cycle'. As we shall see shortly, in an inter-cultural and inter-religious context this notion of cosmological cycle has been often misinterpreted, which has given rise to the notion that a predominant feature of Hindu thought (as well as Hellenic) is 'cyclic time'. As we proceed, it will be evident why this appellation is to be taken as a misnomer. For this it is essential to take into consideration several ideas. Firstly, the idea ofrepeated creation and dissolution; secondly, what is generally understood by this designation of 'cyclic time' and its implications; thirdly, an over-all idea about the major conceptual models of time in Hindu thought and lastly, the significance of the symbol of the wheel (cakra) which is a pictorial imagery for conveying the Hindu view of Samsara. The idea of recurrent creation and dissolution has been briefly outlined above. It is important to see how the Hindu view of divine incarnation (Avatara-vada) is interwoven with it. We will then examine some of the distinct conceptual models of time that have emerged in the richly variegated tradition of the Hindus. It is illuminating to discover that there are no lack of examples of

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different schools holding sharply divergent views on time and yet sharing the idea of cosmological cycle (Kalpa). V.

AVATARAVADA AND THE IDEA OF FOUR YUGAS

Avataravada is a distinctively Hindu religious doctrine. It is widely accepted in the tradition. This is the idea of periodic divine descent in order to restore righteousness and vanquish the evil. In the Bhagavad-Gzta, a text revered by all denominations of the Hindus, Kri~r:ia says to Arjuna: Whenever there is a decline of righteousness and rise of unrighteousness, 0 Bharata (Arjuna), then I send forth (create, incarnate) Myself. For the protection of the good, for the destruction of the wicked and for the establishment of righteousness, I come into being from age to age.

The Purar;as weave endless stories about Divine incarnations, assuming diverse earthly forms. The spectacular manner in which each Avatara accomplishes the task of crushing the evil and establishing the supremacy of goodness and righteousness form the basis of colourful legends that have fed the imagination of all stratas of Hindu society, such as the well-known stories of the ten divine incarnations-Dafavatara. In the Bhagavad Purar;a there are detailed renderings_ of the various forms in which the Lord appears in each yuga. The idea of four yugas, it is interesting to observe, is very much a part of traditional Hindu ideology concerning Dharma or moral order of society. The epic Mahabharata contains rich and elaborate descriptions of the various characteristics of the four yugas viz. krta, treta, dvapara and kali. The moral order is said to be degenerating, the standard of human conduct is seen in a state of gradual deterioration. Kali, the yuga in which we are, is the last in succession of four yugas. It is precisely the time when unrighteousness is more a predominant feature than it has been in any of the three earlier yugas. The Avatara who is not yet incarnated is called Kalki. All these form a very important part of Hindu mythology which provide an excellent document of how the Hindu mind has imbued its vast time-consciousness with religious significance.

VI.

DIFFERENT TIME-MODELS: SOME EXAMPLES FROM THE SAOADARSANA

It is of great interest to note the divergences amongst the various Brahmanical schools of thought regarding time. It is indeed a

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rewarding task to perceive the implications of these contrasting views for achieving a coherent picture of the world of change and becoming as well as for comprehending the soteriological goalvariously termed as mok.ralnihfreyasalkaivalya etc. I will attempt a briefoutline of four distinctly different conceptual patterns that can be found in the philosophical literature of the Vaise~ika (a similar position is shared by Nyaya and Mimamsa), Sankhya, Yoga and Advaita Vedanta schools. The Vaisqika view of mahiikala is a model of absolute time. Time is a distinctly independent (svatantra) category of reality. It is all-pervasive (vibhu), ubiquitous (niramfa), unitary (eka). It is without beginning (anadi) and without end (ananta). Mahiikala is the substrate (adhiira) of all that is contingent, but does not itself presuppose any (anafrita). There is no movement or change (Niskriya) within time as such but no change, movement or becoming is possible or even conceivable without it. Moreover, time-divisions are not to be taken as integral to time, these are seen as nothing but conventional practices which are made possible with the help of any standard motion, usually it is the solar motion that furnishes the standard. 9 The idea of reality of change (pariTJ,ama) is vital for the ancient school of Sankhya but it claims that the phenomenon of change does not call for a postulation of an empty time, as a category per se (tattva). All that is needed is an account of the conventional use of the three time-phases, the Sankhya idea of visadrfa parinama does exactly that. A detailed study of the system shows that it is causality which is considered the key problem for understanding change and becoming. Moreover, the fact that the Vaise~ika philosophers need to explain the convention of time-phases with reference to the solar motion show (as Va