What is time? How does our sense of time lead us to approach the world? How did the peoples of the past view time? This book answers these questions through an investigation of the cultures of time in Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and the Australian Dreamtime. It argues that our contemporary world is blind as to the significance and complexity of time, preferring to believe that time is ‘natural’ and unchanging. Offering the first detailed historiographical study of the centrality of time to human cultures, the authors set out the complex ways in which ideas of time developed in the major world religions, and the manner in which such conceptions led people both to live in ways very different to our contemporary world and to make very different kinds of ‘histories’.

'Thought-provoking, ambitious and immensely learned, this should be read by all who are interested in the cultural variety of attitudes to time. Readers should prepare for a surprise: it is rare to get so much theology in a history primer'.
Penelope J Corfield, University of London