Abstract

The view widely accepted among theologians that Greeks and Hebrews held different conceptions of time is based upon the absence in Hebrew of a future tense and a specific word for time, and upon the claim that the Greeks conceived time as a cycle, the Hebrews as a line. None of these alleged evidences can survive examination. Moreover, whatever Greek philosophers thought about cyclical time, that view cannot be found in the historians. The real differences between Old Testament and Greek historiography lie in differing attitudes toward the continuity of events, kinds of evidence, the significance of remembering the past, and the relation of history and prophecy