Thorleif Boman wrote Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek where he has a 50-page chapter on Time and Space which compares Western thought to Hebrew thought. Here is a more detailed list of quotes from the section.

Western minds represent time as a straight line upon which we stand with our gaze directed forward; before us we have the future and behind us the past. On this line we can unequivocally define all tenses by means of points. The present is the point on which we are standing, the future is found at some point in front of us, and in between lies the exact future; behind us lies the perfect, still farther back the imperfect, and farther yet the pluperfect. (Pg 124)

Chronometry is a practical requirement; much more decisive for Aristotle’s philosophical conception of time is the definition he gives a few pages prior to the one mentioned above; [greek text], which can be translated freely as; ’time is the continuous dimension of successive movement’, or in more modern terms: ’time is the dimension of succession.’ According to Aristotle, therefore, we must represent time by the image of a line. (Pg 125)

[Plato sees] both physical and psychological time belong to the sensible and transitory world in the same way as time, divine time, the archetype of time, is called eternity. … We see here also how the spatial governs Plato’s line of thought; time is only pictorial, moving imitation of immovable and unalterable eternity, which represents perfection. (pg 127-128)

In Plato’s thinking eternity is spatial not in the sense that it is three-dimensional, and still less four-dimensional. But only in the sense that it is without alteration, hence without unrest, disturbance, privation, decay, and destruction. The ’tooth of time’ does not gnaw upon [eternity]. (Pg. 128)

Sun and moon as time-determinants; perception of time. … As the Greeks did and as we do, the Israelites determined these times with the aid of the sun, moon, and the stars (Ge. 1.14), but in a totally different way. The distinction is expressed eve in the different designations for sun, moon, and stars; the Greeks called them heavenly bodies, and Plato knows that they are spherical. The Greeks, therefore, first consider the form of the heavenly bodies; they observe where they are in the heavens, and in that way they determine time. The most important time determinate is the sun; Christmas and St. Johns’ day, which are defined by means of the sun’s position in the sky. … These were unknown in Israel; there the holy seasons were defined with the aid of the quite variable and movable moon. The Hebrews call the heavenly bodies lamps, or lights; both names refer to their function. Lamps and lights help us to see; they illuminate and warm. The heavenly luminaries emit differing intensities of light and warmth, and in that way they define time. (Pg. 130-131)

For [the Hebrews], time is determined by its content, and since light is authoritative and decisive, the light was called day and the darkness night even before the creation of the heavenly luminaries (Gen. 1.5). day and night are determined by illumination and by the movement of the heavenly bodies. (Pg. 131 -132)

The Hebrews orient themselves temporally not toward the circular movement of the sun, but toward the regular change of the moon’s phases, toward the rhythmic alternation of light and darkness, warmth and cold, as already indicated. … Human life runs its course as an eternal rhythm: earth-man-earth. If we depart a bit from our customary way of thinking and reflect quite dispassionately, we shall find in this alternation no trace of a circular line but purely and simply a rhythmic alternation. … For them the great reality is rhythm, and the circular course is a rhythm of which they learned primarily not from the movement of the sun …, but from the round dances and their rotating themselves in the dance. (Pg. 134)

For us the turn of the year is the time when the annual cycle is at an end; for the Israelites it is the time when the beginning of the year returns. (Pg. 135)

The shortest time in Hebrew is not a point, nor a distance, nor a duration, but a beat. (Pg. 136)

We have examined the ideas underlying the expression of calculable time and more than once have found that the Israelites understood time as something qualitative, because for them time is determined by its content (Pg. 137)

Let us reflect upon an event that is unrelated to space and that belongs, therefore, only to time, e.g. a melody. When a song is being sung, its beginning, in our spatial manner of thinking, already belongs to the past and its end still to the future; but essentially the song is a living unity which, even after it has been sung to the end and logically belongs to the past, is something present and in the highest sense real. … In a similar way significant historical events remain indestructible facts in the life of a people. The consequences of the events can be altered in a positive or negative direction by new deeds or failures, but the events themselves can never be altered; they belong to the permanent stock of the people’s life. (Pg. 138)

The semitic concept of time is closely coincident with that of its content without which time would be quite impossible. The quantity of duration completely recedes behind the characteristic feature that enters with time or advances in it. … Time for us is an abstraction since we distinguish time from the events that occur in time. The ancient Semites did not do this; for them time is determined by its content. Time is the notion of the occurrence; it is the stream of events (Pg. 139)

Assume that it is the Hebrews and Semites who have the adequate understanding of time, not the Greeks and we Europeans. We must then ask whether the tenses of Hebrew verbs do not express time more clearly than do our tenses; at all events, they are fundamentally different from ours. The Info-Germanic framework of three time-spheres (past, present, and future) is quite foreign to the Semitic notion of tense which views what happens principally from the standpoint of completed or incomplete action. (Pg. 144)

Instead of placing themselves at some point or other on an imaginary time-line, the Hebrews proceed from the time-rhythm of their own life. (Pg. 145)

The Hebrew term ’now’ signifies ‘subjective simultaneity’ while our term expresses the present. (Pg. 147)

Because our idea of eternity is religiously coloured, it is advisable to avoid this term when we want to translate the Hebrew equivalents into our language and to translate them by means of the notion of ‘boundless time’. The commonest word for boundless time is ‘olam’; according to the most widespread and likeliest explanation the word is derived from ‘alam’ meaning ‘hide, conceal’. In the term ‘olam’ is constrained a designation of time extending so far that it is lost to our sight and comprehension in darkness and invisibility. … Even when ‘olam’ is used of God, it suggests only unbounded time and does not refer to being beyond time or to his transcendence, although the Hebrews used the expression that Jahveh was enthroned in heaven. For his transcendence other expressions had to be used [See Ps. 90:1, Ps. 145.13, Dan 12.7, Isa. 40.28, Isa. 26.4]. (Pg 151-152)

The act of numbering has originally to do with the conception of the I, thou, and he. A common etymological root for the expression ‘you’ (thou) and ’two’ appears to have been established especially for the Indo-European languages. It is now very interesting to be able to establish that the Hebrew expression for ’two’ has nothing to do with ’thou’, or with any other person; nor is there behind it any other perception of visible objects such as two eyes, two ears, two fingers, etc. ‘shenayim’ comes from the verb ‘shanah’ - double, repeat, for the the second time. Thus the Hebrews for the concept of number not as we do through visual perception but through frequent repetition of the same motion. … Number or quantitative variety is thus not something spatial and quantitative but dynamic and qualitative. The twice-done movement is a duplicate, the thrice-done a triplicate, etc. We, too, are familiar with such units or representation and designate them as rhythms; a rhythm is a definite number or unit of repetitions. (Pg. 165-166)

Saul has slain his thousands. And David his ten thousands (1 Sam. 18.7). Cassirer observes, … the owner of a herd of four to five hundred cattle could recognize even at a distance whether any were missing and which ones. Here individual groups are recognized and differentiated by some individual characteristic: in so far as one can speak of ’number’, it appears not in the form of a specified measured magnitude, but as a kind of concrete ’numerical gestalt’, an intuitive quality adhering to a totally unarticulated general impression of quantity. (Pg. 166)

Becoming must have its ground in being; then either the same thing is always happening, or else becoming is something other than previous being. (Pg. 169)

God revealed himself to the Israelites in history and not in Ideas; he revealed himself when he acted and created. His being was not learned through propositions but known in actions. (Pg. 171)

The creation of the world by God, in the Old Testament, is not an absolute fact important in itself; rather, creation is thought of as the inauguration of history. (Pg. 172)

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