ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that by relating the state, in the middle of human history, to the two meaningful ends of the story, the Fall and the Second Coming. The opening of the Epistle to the Hebrews gives a good indication of the way in which the history of the Jews can be seen as the development of faith. The whole length of Michael’s visionary history is built up on contrasts of seemingly unendurable ill, promoting despair, and seemingly pleasant idylls, encouraging complacency. The cycle of death and jollity is thus inherent in the dynamics of history as also in the process of Adam’s education. The process of history has a penitential aspect for the teller as well as for the told. The human mind, perhaps because it is fallen, perhaps only because it is human, is imprisoned by the need to grasp at understanding through the sequential process which leads through error to revelation of truth.
