Christianity promotes a teleological view of history. The Christian reading of the Bible recasts it as a god-revealed plan in which the prophets announce Christ and their place in the Bible is changed accordingly to make that clear. Nothing is left to chance or to circularity in that history. Even the return of Christ is one single, unifying goal. Everything is part of a divine plan in which politics cannot be a return to a golden age. No MAGA! Everyone is the citizen of two cities, permanently under a tension to be resolved at the end of time.

This kind of thinking was already in the works in Israelite thinking and is in continuity with it. My sense is that ancient Israelites started to give this kind of oriented meaning to their history because they found that the habitual answers given by them or their neighbors to their historical catastrophes were failing and did not take the events into sufficient account. It was not enough to claim that one’s gods or god had punished or abandoned their people until the right king showed up again. Israelites and Judahites tried radical solutions to explain the total ruin of their monarchy and temple. Kings were not going to come back, and Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia were not going to vanish either, with their paradoxical succession of divine pantheons. As Yahweh had already become the Israelites’ only god—this was somewhat encouraged by Israel’s and Judah’s kings in the 9th to 7th centuries—they found themselves deepening the singularity, mobility, and power of their god, especially after their exilic contacts with Babylonia (Ezekiel). This led to the transformation of their god into the creator and unseen mover of universal history (Isaiah), as well as to its refashioning as their only salvific, law-giving, king (Exodus, where there is still an intermediary, Moses, but who is not king).

This god was presented as having plans and a will, even if some of it was impenetrable (a theme of the Psalms). Further, in some very important stories like Genesis 1 (creation) or 12 (Abraham’s “return”), human history is set as open to the future generations rather than locked in the time frame of a royally defined mythological epic. Divine punishment or threat of it were still a primary aspect of the divinity, but divine care for its people and salvation were taken to be certain also. In that sense, the Hebrew Bible already—and singularly—saw meaning in its history. Of course, my being a “modern” makes me stop short of calling it a praeparatio evangelica, or of seeing a Hegelian spirit at work. After all, we are talking about a mere three millenia, if barely that!