Jewish time. Different cultures tell different stories.

The great novelists of the 19th century wrote fiction that's essentially ethical.

Jane Austen and George Eliot explored the connection between character and happiness.

There's a palpable continuity between their work and the book of Ruth. Dickens, more in the tradition of the

prophets, wrote about society and its institutions and the way in which they can fail to honour

human dignity and justice. By contrast, the fascination with stories like Star Wars or Lord of

the Rings is conspicuously dualistic.

The cosmos is a battlefield between the forces of good and evil.

This is far closer to the apocalyptic literature of the Qumran sect and the Dead Sea Scrolls

than anything in Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible.

In these ancient and modern conflict narratives, the struggle is out there rather than in here. It's out there in the cosmos

rather than in here within the human soul, and that is closer to myth than to monotheism.

There is, however, a form of story that is very rare indeed, of which

Tanakh is the supreme example. It's the story without an ending, which looks forward to an open

future rather than reach enclosure. It defies narrative convention. Normally we expect a story to create

attention that is resolved on the final page. That's what gives art a sense of completion.

You don't expect a sculpture to be incomplete or a poem to break off halfway or a novel to end

in the middle. Schubert's unfinished symphony is the exception that proves the rule.

Yet that is what the Bible repeatedly does.

Consider the Chumash, the five mosaic books.

The Jewish story begins with a repeated promise to Abraham that he will inherit the land

of Canaan.

...