Sacred Time and Rabbinic Literature: New Directions for an Old Question

Abstract

Abstract This article questions the utility of the term “sacred time.” In other words, it cautions against allowing sacred time to obscure how scholars study the dynamic relations between temporalities and sanctity in classical rabbinic texts (c. 200–550 CE). The achievement of recent Biblical and Jewish studies scholars who rejected characterizations of Hebrew or Jewish time as monolithic was their decoupling of the patterning or shape of events from what it means for time to be holy or for there to be a time for holiness. In the wake of such corrective efforts, scholars can now examine how rabbinic texts engage the quality of holiness as it pertains to durations, human activities, embodied temporal awareness, the time of exegesis, or to God’s time. This article distinguishes God’s time and human moments of recurrence and connection from eternity and sacred time through analysis of late antique Palestinian midrashim and presents directions for future study of holiness and time in classical rabbinic literature.