“Time” Narratives: Religious and Historical

Abstract

This paper shall aim at understanding the concept of time in a religious framework,
primarily from the perspective of Wittgenstein. In religious narratives, we find
events happening in time. In every religious discourse, we come across events, which
are captured in historical time. And many religious utterances were performed with
reference to time – past, present and future. How far are these events, which
happened in a religious setting, matched or corroborated with historical facts? What
is the significance of these utterances? What do these events convey to us? Does it
convey the same meaning to a believer and nonbeliever? In other words, how does the
concept of ‘time’ function in historical and religious narratives? Do ‘time’ signify
the same in both these frameworks or is it different? These are the issues we will
focus on in our paper, primarily from Wittgenstein’s perspective.