The Greeks are famed for having espoused ‘the principle of seniority’.¹ Among countless examples, we are familiar with ‘old Nestor’ in Homer’s poems, a universally respected figure despite his propensity for rather lengthy speeches and recollections; similarly, we have the Council of Elders (Gerousia) in Sparta and its counterpart in Plato’s Laws, the Nocturnal Council. The Romans, for their part, always emphasised the value they placed on the mos majorum, the unwritten customs and laws passed down by their ancestors. They frequently recalled the virtues of the Rome of old, never more so than when the Republic was on the verge of collapse and Rome itself was crumbling under the weight of its victories.

The Greeks contrasted the palaioi (the ancients, elders, those who came before) with the neôteroi (a comparative form of neos), the young, the latter being viewed as ‘newer’ in relation to the former. However, this same comparative form also denotes a rebellion or revolution, and the verb neôterizein means ‘to take new measures’, i.e. to bring about a revolution. These are not indications of an excessive appreciation of the recent; on the contrary, the idea is that one should be extremely wary of the new! There were several possible strategies for dealing with the old, but the ‘new’ or the ‘modern’ were not a counter to the old. There had always been ancients, but not yet moderns. Claiming to be younger and being recognised as such means drawing attention to those who came before you, who are older: the elders, in other words. But while claiming their place, these younger players nevertheless belong to the same ranks as the elders. In simple generational terms, they come after, but they are not there to ‘do something new’.

Ernst Robert Curtius pointed out that the neologism modernus did not appear until the end of the fifth century. Formed from the adverb modo, ‘recently’ – as hodiernus, ‘of today’, was formed from hodie – the adjective modernus, ‘recent’, moves towards the meaning of now, current, of the present.² In the sixth century, Cassiodorus used the noun antiquitas to apply to the Roman (ancient) past and to highlight it as an example for the saecula moderna or ‘our time’ (nostra tempora). Two centuries later, Charlemagne’s time would be hailed as the modern century by its leading figures. Introducing this notion of modern enabled a shift. The modern was no longer merely what came after. By claiming to be of the present, this idea broke ranks somewhat, establishing a separation (if not a rift) from what came before, the old. It is this separation that enabled a positive view of the new, which no longer needed to be immediately devalued or suspected precisely for being new. Nevertheless, nothing had been definitively settled by the sixth century, or even by the eighth.

With the arrival on the scene of modernus, the Ancients/Moderns dichotomy was born, as were the quarrels that would define its history. Of course, there was not just one long, drawn-out quarrel extending from the High Middle Ages until the late seventeenth century, but rather multiple, and all with very different forms and objectives. These Moderns were still only the first Moderns, the people of the day, content to establish a (mobile) border with the Ancients: a border of the present. From the late eighteenth century onwards, the second moderns would be more future-oriented: to be completely contemporary, they would have to look to the future. They would be contemporary precisely because they would already belong to tomorrow. And yet by the simple fact of invoking this dichotomy, of assigning to some the status of Ancients and to others that of Moderns, successive protagonists would long seem like duellists returning to settle old quarrels on the same battlefield.

"With the arrival on the scene of the neologism modernus, the Ancients/Moderns dichotomy was born, as were the quarrels that would define its history."

Let us now leave Greece and Rome for Palestine. In a world where tradition was the primary value and where, particularly in Pharisaic circles, obeying the letter of the Law was the surest sign of piety, Jesus came to proclaim a ‘new covenant’ that was first and foremost a departure. This proclamation was to have a lasting impact on the relationship between old and new as it had hitherto been defined in societies around the Mediterranean: the order of time itself had been turned on its head.³

A new time emerged from ‘normal’ ancient time: that of precedent, of tradition, of ancestors, of imitation, of history as the master of life, but also that of the present, to be savoured, as the only moment over which we have any control, the present as recognised by the Stoics and the Epicureans. Ancient time was also the kind questioned through omens, divination and oracles. Inspired by Apollo, the diviner was supposed to see what was, what had been and what would be. For those blessed with synoptic vision, everything was already there. There were of course things that had not yet come to pass, but nothing new as such.

With the first Christians, on the other hand, there was something new and, for the first time, the new was proclaimed to prevail over the old. In fact, the proclaimed ‘new covenant’ was intended to replace the first one, the one made with Moses, which henceforth became the old covenant.⁴ With the new covenant came a ‘New Testament’, which simultaneously transformed the Bible into the ‘Old Testament’. This upheaval began at the Last Supper when, after the bread, Jesus took a cup of wine, offered thanks and then gave it to the disciples, saying ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you’.⁵

In the Epistle to the Hebrews,⁶ Jesus is said to be making a new covenant with Israel with the following additional comment: ‘By calling this covenant ‘new’, He [Jesus] has made the first obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear’.⁷ As the ‘mediator of a new covenant’, by his death he redeems the ‘transgressions’ that followed the first covenant, and enables those who are called to receive the ‘promised eternal inheritance’. The following legal clarification comes immediately afterwards: ‘In the case of a will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, because a will is in force only when somebody has died’.⁸ In Greek, the same word, diathekê, means covenant and testament (the same is true in Hebrew). But here one can see the shift from covenant to testament: from the moment of the covenant to the time afterwards, which will be governed (forever) by it. Its memory becomes an inheritance to be received and passed on. The old covenant thus marks the ‘death’ of Moses, the first testator, while the new covenant becomes a New Testament through the ‘death’ of Jesus Christ, who assumes the role of (ultimate) testator. The ‘New’ turns the ‘Old’ into the past and, in turn, opens up a radically new present. In his own way, Saint Paul makes this same division when declaring himself one of the ‘ministers of a new covenant’, not ‘of the letter’ (that of the Law) but ‘of the Spirit’, ‘for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’.9 The letter is dead, something of the past, outdated, whereas the spirit ‘gives life’ in the new time that has just dawned.

A break with tradition is thus proclaimed and asserted. The way in which Jesus, and then the apostles, Paul in particular, rebuke the ‘Pharisees’, the ‘scribes’ and the ‘Jews’ is evidence of this. At the same time, however, this break is always claimed to be true fidelity and real continuity. For it is the very people who claim to be the guardians of the Law who have betrayed it, confining themselves to the letter and ignoring the spirit, blinding themselves to the letter by proving themselves incapable of hearing its truth. Written from within the tradition itself and full of quotes from the prophets, with Jesus’ actions being the true fulfilment of those words, the Gospels continually demonstrate that everything written by the prophets was, in fact, about Jesus.

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