mythical cycles, grounds the unity of history in the unity of space and time, marks the fundamental difference between the mythological and the biblical-theological understanding of the holiness of God.4 I shall return at the end of this essay to the comments about what the whole Old Testament says about God’s holiness. For the moment I intend to point out that the claim that ‘all religions’ know the holiness of God in his radical difference and in the way that he conceals each life in his own is