Introduction -- pt. 1. History, time, and paradigm in scripture. Hebrew scripture and the requirements of historical thinking -- History, time, and paradigm -- pt. 2. The absence of history. Missing media of historical thinking (I): the sustaining narrative of one-time events, biography -- Missing messages of historical thinking (II): the pastness of the past -- pt. 3. The presence of the past, the pastness of the present. The enduring paradigm -- pt. 4. From history to paradigm. Narrative: the conduct of the cult and the story of the temple -- Biography: exemplary pattern in place of lives of sages -- pt. 5. Transcending the bounds of time. Zakhor: is rabbinic Judaism a religion of memory? -- pt. 6. Five supplementary studies: a documentary account of the idea of history in rabbinic Judaism. The Mishnah's conception of history -- The Yerushalmi's conception of history -- Genesis rabbah and the history of Israel -- Astral Israel in Pesiqta deRab Kahana -- What, exactly, do we mean by "an event" in Judaism? Address at Collège de France, Paris, 1990.