ABSTRACT
Time, the time in which we live, seems to be an a priori given, utterly out of reach for humans, who, because they are inescapably subject to it and limited by it, have been given the name “the mortals” by the Greeks, in contradistinction to the gods, who enjoy eternal youth. But of course, it is also well known that the idea and experience of time has changed in the course of human history. Originally, the prophetic word was oral, addressed to the people of the prophet’s time and community. But then at one point prophecy came to be committed to writing; it became literature. Isaiah, after having been repelled by Jerusalem’s leading circles, resolves to “bind up the testimony, seal the law among. The nature of time is turned inside out. In an act of usurpation, an internal “piece” of time declares itself to be time at large.
