Page - 103 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

different from all other days, generates the experience of another kind of time, divine-mystical time:31 “But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work … the Lord … rested the seventh day: where- fore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it” (Exod. 20:10–11). In Jewish culture, holy time is differentiated from mundane, ordinary time. Eternal time belongs to God and so do the heavenly bodies which dictate the human calendar year – the sun and the moon are also subject to God’s will. When he wants to, God can change their course and stop time: “Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed … So the sun stood still in the midst of heav- en, and hasted not to go down about a whole day” (Josh. 10:12–13). Man had experienced holy, mystical time, that eternal present, in the Garden of Eden.32 From the moment humanity was cast out of Eden, God, the master of eternal time, has been granting them special occasions on which they can partake of this time. The Hebrew monotheism is the first to come up with the idea of God which exists outside of nature while controlling its forces. God reveals himself to man through his actions in history, by appearing in earthly, human time. It is through the transference of God from the realm of nature to the realm of history that Judaism has allowed God to be distanced from mankind. Unlike the pagan reli- gions, in which the cyclical powers of nature are ever-present and man inhabits the same mystical time as them,33 the God of the Old Testament exists outside of nature in an eternal present and reveals himself to humans periodically, con- ducting his relationship with them linearly in the course of human time. This he does through miracles, revelations and the envoy of angels. The authors of the Old Testament share the idea that the divine real is scary and awful; a glimpse into mystical time is therefore a powerful experience. In the first chapters of the Bible, mystical time is very close to human time, which is still in the process of becoming. God is very much involved in the lives of the first humans: he breathes life into the first man, creates woman, and allows people to hear his voice. The first humans and God stroll around the Garden of Eden together; it is planted firmly within mystical time (even though it already contains the Tree of Life, forbidden to the humans). The guarding of the Tree of Life begins with the expulsion, with the beginning of human time: “So he drove 31 Schweid 1984. 32 Agur 1997, 213–215. 33 In Greek mythology the mystical, eternal time is the time of the gods, but sometimes human beings could experience it too. During the Golden Age, when gods and humans coexisted, the gods had not yet retreated to the summit of Mount Olympus, but rather shared the land with mankind, specifically in the Macona valley. Humans lived alongside the immortals and remained forever young. See Vernant 2002, 47–48. Western Apocalyptic Time and Personal Authentic Time | 103www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 95–116