ABSTRACT
At the end of the film Blade Runner Harrison Ford, the archetypal hero of the 1980s, asks, ‘Where do I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got?’ The very same questions-in almost the very same words-are asked by Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time (1988:171). Futuristic Achilles or Cambridge professor, most of us, at one time or another, think of these questions. The ancient Greeks and the Semitic prophets help us with the answers.
