The Terror of History
For the fate of the sons of mankind and the fate of animals [a]is the same. As one dies, so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath, and there is no advantage for mankind over animals, for all is futility. Ecclesiastes 3:19 NASB
Futility – Qohelet’s assessment of the human condition is very dark. So dark that there was quite a bit of debate as to whether or not the book should even be in the Bible. The fact that traditional held the author was Solomon saved it from rejection, but that didn’t save the subject matter from hopelessness. The issue of the inevitability of extinction isn’t just a biblical problem. Ancient societies grappled with the pointlessness of living, just as modern civilization struggles with the same conclusion. Perhaps the Greeks said it best:
https://skipmoentw.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/Video/Troy-revised.mp4
Mirea Eliade’s study of civilizations focused on the essential existential difference between the Hebrews and all other ancient societies. He called it “‘the terror of history.’ The passage of time, with its disasters, its apparent randomness, its radical contingency, is profoundly threatening to the human search for order and coherence. There seems to be no meaning in history. We live, we die, and it is as if had never been. The universe gives no sign to any interest in our existence. . . Time seems to obliterate meaning. Nothing lasts. Nothing endures. . . (Ecclesiastes 3:19).”[1]
Eliade contrasted this with the Hebrew worldview:
“It may, then, be said with truth that the Hebrews were the first to discover the meaning of history as the epiphany of God.”[2]
Sacks points out the following crucial difference:
“Judaism is the escape into history, the unique attempt to endow events with meaning, and to see in the chronicles of mankind something more than a mere succession of happenings—to see them as nothing less than a drama of redemption in which the fate of a nation reflects its loyalty or otherwise to a covenant with God.”[3]
“To think of history as an arena of change is terrifying likewise. It means that we have only one life to live; that what happened once may never happen again; that we are embarked on a journey with no assurance that we will ever return to where we began. It is what Milan Kundera means in his phrase, ‘the unbearable lightness of being.’”[4]
Without this essential difference, human beings face the impenetrable wall of meaningless existence. We may pretend that our lives matter, that we contribute, that there is a purpose, but in the face of eternity, when the sands of time erase everything, the end can only be despair.
“Every other modern freedom, whatever satisfactions it may procure to him who possesses it, is powerless to justify history; and this, for every man who is sincere with himself, is the equivalent to the terror of nature . . . Any other situation of modern man leads, in the end, to despair.”[5]
Abraham Heschel noted that in the biblical worldview despair is forbidden. Now, perhaps, we know why. Events under the sovereignty of God have meaning. Nothing is lost. Everything matters. Unless you share this view of history, the graveyard of entropy is the final result, but if you share this view of history, then the end is the glory of God—and your life means something.
Topical Index: history, meaning, futility, Mircea Eliade, Ecclesiastes 3:19
[1] Jonathan Sacks Covenant & Conversation: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible: Exodus: The Book of Redemption (Maggid, 2010), p. 64.
[2] Mirea Eliade, Cosmos and History (Harper & Row, 1959), p. 34-36, cited in Jonathan Sacks Covenant & Conversation: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible: Exodus: The Book of Redemption (Maggid, 2010), p. 65.
[3] Jonathan Sacks Covenant & Conversation: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible: Exodus: The Book of Redemption (Maggid, 2010), p. 65.
[4] Ibid., p. 66.
[5] Mirea Eliade, Cosmos and History (Harper & Row, 1959), p. 160-162, cited in Jonathan Sacks Covenant & Conversation: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible: Exodus: The Book of Redemption (Maggid, 2010), p. 66.
