Page - 95 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

Bina Nir Western Apocalyptic Time and Personal Authentic Time ABSTRACT The concept of time is culturally dependent. During different periods in the history of Western culture, differing conceptions of times competed for primacy, sometimes con- tradicting one another, sometimes complementing each other. Modern Westerners, I will claim, live on two timelines – a linear, historical and cultural timeline directed to the “end of days” and a personal, authentic timeline. The Bible is a central cultural source for the linear conception of time: in the en- trenched Judeo-Christian Western conception, time has a beginning, “In the begin- ning,” and an end, “in the end of days”. Time is directed in its entirety to this final event, to the establishment of God’s kingdom. In our modern consumer society, which is whol- ly concerned with personal time, collective time has lost its purpose and its reason for being preserved. The relationship to time started to gradually change from the general conceptions of linear, collective time which is external to us to a more subjective, per- sonal conception of time. In consumerist capitalism, time becomes personal. I demon- strate the representations of these two concepts of time in the paintings of Chaya Agur. KEYWORDS Authentic timeline, Biblical timeline, “End of Days”, Western Culture BIOGRAPHY Bina Nir completed her doctoral thesis in the Faculty of Humanities at Tel Aviv Universi- ty. Since 2000, she is a lecturer at the Yezreel Valley College and the Department Head of the Honors B. A. Program. Her research focuses on the interface of Western religions and contemporary cultures, specifically the genealogies of cultural constructs rooted in the Western religions, in areas such as the perceptions of time, judgement, leader- ship, and success and failure. Her book Failure of Success [in Hebrew] was published by Resling Press in 2016. DOI: 10.25364/05.05:2019.2.6 Western Apocalyptic Time and Personal Authentic Time | 95www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 95–116