… the symbol of time for Primitive Christianity as well as for Biblical Judaism and the Iranian religion is the line, while in Hellenism it is the circle.

Because in Greek thought time is not conceived as a progressing line with beginning and end, but rather as a circle, the fact that man is bound to time must here be experienced as an enslavement, as a curse. Time moves about in the eternal circular course in which everything keeps recurring. …

For the Greeks, the idea that redemption is to take place through divine action in the course of events in time is impossible. Redemption in Hellenism can consist only in the fact that we are transferred from existence in this world, an existence bound to the circular course of time, into that Beyond which is removed from time and is already and always available. The Greek conception of blessedness is thus spatial; it is determined by the contrast between this world and the timeless Beyond; … On the basis of the cyclical conception of time, it cannot be determined by the time factor.