Colpe has presented a stage theory of the historical development toward a concept of time in ancient civilizations converging to our understanding. He initially distinguishes two independent lines of development, namely the discovery and cultural recording of historically relevant events and the systematization of recurring, particularly astronomical and socially relevant, natural events and episodes. He uses three categories for his presentation: lack of historicity, division of history, concept of history, and division of time, idea of time, and concept of time. Using the examples of Babylon, Iran, and India, he outlines how and why the centuries-long cultural exchange between neighboring regions has shaped the specific developments in each case, contingently and with very different results.

Lack of historicity characterizes early sedentary and nomadic communities, in which nothing happens other than the repetitive processes of everyday life. This attitude is neither primitive nor typical of early tribal cultures, but occurs alongside institutionalized forms of historical conceptions in both early stratified civilizations and segmental societies.

A division of history can arise through prophetic preaching, through a civilization’s interest in the beginnings of its civilization, through the need to legitimize dynastic power relations, and through the beginnings of a world-historical chronology. The world order then appears as a predetermined temporal form that can point to a beginning and an end. One example is the contingent, gradual emergence of the world-historically influential division of history into four successive empires: Babylon, Medes, Persians, and Greeks.

Colpe cannot yet identify a conception of history in the three older civilizations in which historical elements are bound together into a meaningful unity based on laws. Rising concepts of history can only be found among the Hittites. Judaism developed a conception of history at a high level. Iranian culture never progressed beyond the level of king lists; in India, there was no historiography at all. According to Colpe, the concept of historical time can be abstracted from divisions and concepts of history.

The diverse concepts of time that can be developed from a „calculative“ astronomy have nothing to do with the original historical ones. Colpe speaks of a „desire for periodic calculation“ per se. The impetus for this line of development comes from an interest in horoscopes, from the calculation of seasons for temporal dispositions in all areas of life, especially for agriculture and the associated scheduling of supplies, taxes, and interest, and finally from the understanding of the secrets of the starry sky in general. Colpe discusses how the numerical relationships of Babylonian concepts might have entered Indian and both together into Iranian concepts of the empires of the world.

According to Colpe, historicizing and astronomical concepts culminate in a hybrid form that encompasses both divisions of time and ideas of time, as well as divisions of history and concepts of history. In his view, they could only be synthesized into speculative systems by priests and/or astronomers who, in addition to astronomical knowledge, also possessed the historical experience of their peoples and dynasties. At the top of these systems are concepts that approximate a concept of time, such as Kalpa and Kala in Sanskrit, Zaman and Zurvan in Iranian, comparable to Chronos and Aion in Greek, and possibly Olam and Et in Hebrew. Overall, however, the interpretation of these concepts, both in themselves and in their relationship to one another, remains vague.

Literature:

Colpe, Carsten, Die Zeit der drei asiatischen Hochkulturen, in Die Zeit. Dauer und Augenblick, ed. Gumin and Meier (1981), pp. 252-256

Carsten Colpe (1929-2009):

Religious scholar, New Testament scholar, and Iranist.

Keywords:

Stage Theory, History of Time

Kommentare