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Saint Augustine is the one to adjust the Judaic model of history and time to fit Christianity.18 Augustine defines internal, experiential time, and identifies the past with historic memory, while the future is identified with expectation. According to him, human civilization is consistently advancing and developing. Yet, in parallel to this time, Augustine talks about the eternal time inhabited by God; mystical time. “In the Eternal nothing passeth away, but that the whole is present.”19 Augustine attempts to find a solution and bridge the gaps between two contradictory concepts: eternal mystical time and linear earthly time. In his view, there is no conflict between the two. In the Christian West, these two dimensions of time coexist, the extra-natural mystical time occurs alongside the historical, earthly time. History in the Christian-Augustine conception is linear. Western history, at least in Western liturgical writings, has a beginning and an end.20 All of Christian philosophy takes place within the sequence of time and thus within history. The story of humanity’s origins, as it is told in the West, assumes the existence of progress21 and development or, in other words, an up- wards trajectory, as expressed by the arrow of biblical time. This linear concep- tion of history and its division into segments, which follow one another as they get closer and closer to the end, has become dominant in all the cultural spaces that rely on the Bible as the cornerstone of their worldview.22 The foundation for this is laid out as early as the book of Genesis. Genesis, which is a “book of origins”, tells us of the “origin of heaven and earth” as well as the genealogy of families, tribes and nations. The book de- scribes acts that denote either progress or regression as far as the fulfilment of mankind’s mission – as mandated by God – is concerned. In other words, acts that express loyalty to the mission or rebellion against it. The book then goes on to report on the successes and failures of the chosen ones to advance the great promise inherent in their mission. This is the same principle according to which the stories of the Israelites’ origins had been selected throughout the first five books of the Old Testament. The Hebrew Bible is characterized by a historio- sophical approach, that is to say, the writing is influenced by the experience of history, the impressions made by historical events and hope for the future. The biblical story is composed of the history of ideas and of ideals, written down with linear uniformity that did not exist in the first place.23 This biblical under- pinning has had an influence on cultural domains that are marked by modernity, capitalism and democracy. They are founded on a Christian worldview which 18 Russell 1945, 353–354. 19 Augustine 1950, 231–232. 20 Bloch 1964, 5–6. 21 Carr 1987, 109–113. 22 Dan 2000, 265–308. 23 Zeligman 1992, 102–103. 100 | Bina Nir www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 95–116