The Discovery of Deep Time - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 11

moments, considered in proper sequence, tell a story of linked events moving
in a direction.
At the other end—I shall call it time's cycle-events have no meaning as
distinct episodes with causal impact upon a contingent history. Fundamental
states are immanent in time, always present and never changing. Apparent
motions are parts of repeating cycles, and differences of the past will be
realities of the future. Time has no direction.
I present nothing original here. This contrast has been drawn so often, and by
so many fine scholars, that it has become (by the genuine insight it provides)
a virtual cliché of intellectual life. It is also traditional—and central to this
book as well—to point out that Judeo-Christian traditions have struggled to
embrace the necessary parts of both contradictory poles, and that time's arrow
and time's cycle are both prominently featured in the Bible.
Time's arrow is the primary metaphor of biblical history. God creates the
earth once, instructs Noah to ride out a unique flood in a singular ark,
transmits the commandments to Moses at a distinctive moment, and sends
His son to a particular place at a definite time to die for us on the cross and
rise again on the third day. Many scholars have identified time's arrow as the
most important and distinctive contribution of Jewish thought, for most other
systems, both before and after, have favored the immanence of time's cycle
over the chain of linear history.
But the Bible also features an undercurrent of time's cycle, particularly in the
book of Ecclesiastes, where solar and hydrological cycles are invoked in
metaphor to illustrate both the immanence of nature's state ("there is no new
thing under the sun"), and the emptiness of wealth and power, for riches can
only degrade in a world of recurrence—vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher.
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where
he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north;
it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his
circuits. All the rivers