Time Itself

One of the pieces of evidence that helps cement my belief in the Bible is time itself. When human beings began, as a species, to need a form of reckoning time that went beyond “yesterday, today, tomorrow”, we somehow settled on a 7-day week. Some historians claim this began with the ancient Babylonians and was later adopted by the Jews during their exile. This ignores thousands of years of Jewish history as presented in the Bible, especially the institution of the Sabbath. The Bible itself starts with 7 days, yet some would have us believe that 3500 years later, the Jews, with their rigid laws, rituals, and ways of reckoning with the world, adopted Babylonian customs and retconned their own history to fit. This is too much of a stretch for me.

Today I read Exodus 10-12, which includes the story of the first Passover. It’s not just a celebration of God’s deliverance, but another point of interest in the marking of the passage of time. Although kings Hezekiah and Josiah would later reinstitute the Passover and note that it had fallen out of practice, they still knew (from the reading of the scrolls) when and how to celebrate it. It is perhaps the oldest holiday celebrated continuously by any group in the modern landscape. There is a weight to that fact that my mind finds deliciously interesting. I have mentioned that I am not one for holidays, but if I had the opportunity to celebrate Passover with a group of observant Orthodox Jews, I would find it difficult to say no.

As an aside, two other tidbits jumped out at me from Exodus 12, though I’ve read the passage at least 3 times before now. The first is that, as Pharaoh is ordering the Jews to leave Egypt, he also asks for their blessing. I actually checked the other translations I have on hand to see if I just missed it in previous reads, and I did. To me, though it’s only a couple of words in the text, this seems like the fulfillment of God’s intent that the Egyptians would come to know Him. Here, Pharaoh not only acknowledges God but also His sovereignty in blessing and cursing!

The other thing I missed, though the Bible Recap calls it out, is the fact that some non-Jews joined the Exodus. Presumably they were adopted into the family later, given the laws of circumcision, but they aren’t mentioned again except perhaps in the upcoming sections of the law that reference foreigners and sojourners. So not only do the upper echelons of Egyptian society recognize God and His people, but some of the common folk are convinced enough to join the winning team on their way out of the country!

Of course, the most obvious impact of Biblical theology on time was the Crucifixion, which divided time itself into B.C. and A.D. It’s not a neat division except for those of us in the Christian tradition, with some alternate cultural calendars ignoring the event altogether (including the Jewish calendar, which reckons the year as 5786). However the Gregorian calendar, born of the Julian calendar, is the global standard by which we conduct business and reference time, and it recognizes the division. There were a lot of politics surrounding its adoption, much like the semiannual arguments over Daylight Savings Time, but the profound impact of the Crucifixion remains.

All of these things are perhaps mere factoids, but whenever I try to reason my way out of them, I find myself in more of a mess than when I started. Granted, this may simply be a manifestation of my own limits, but in my research I see that others have also tried and failed. The French Revolutionaries attempted a 10 day week, which seems perfectly logical given the number of digits one has on two hands and the ubiquitous nature of the base-10 numbering system. The Soviets attempted a 5 day week, again seemingly logical since the normal 365 days in a year is easily divisible into 73 weeks. Both attempts failed to catch on, and the 7 day week prevailed. One can look at that and simply identify cultural inertia and obstinance. I see something different. I see the hand of God, shaping time itself from the very beginning, when He created it along with the rest.