The Phrase
"In the twinkling of an eye" - meaning in an instant, instantaneously. Paul's description of the resurrection ("in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump," 1 Corinthians 15:52, KJV) gave English one of its most vivid idioms for extreme brevity of time. It now appears across every register of English from children's books to legal contracts.
Biblical Origin
The context is Paul's great chapter on resurrection. Having argued through 1 Corinthians 15 that the resurrection of Christ guarantees the resurrection of believers, Paul addresses the practical question: how will it happen? "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed - in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed" (15:51-52).
The Greek phrase translated "in the twinkling of an eye" is en rhipē ophthalmou - literally "in the cast of an eye" or "in a throw of the eye." The image is of the eye's movement itself: as quickly as an eye can move from one point to another. Tyndale translated it "in the twincling of an eye" in 1526, and this rendering passed through subsequent translations into the KJV. The "twinkling" (related to "twinkle" as in the rapid movement of a star's light) captured the sense of instantaneous, imperceptible duration.
Semantic Drift
The phrase migrated from its eschatological context to general use for any very brief moment. "I'll be back in the twinkling of an eye" means "I'll be right back." "It happened in the twinkling of an eye" means "it was instantaneous." The resurrection context - the most dramatic imaginable instantaneous transformation - gave the phrase its force, but secular usage has entirely forgotten the eschatological frame.
What survives is the vividness of the image: not "in a second" (which is measurable) but "in the twinkling of an eye" (which names a duration below the threshold of conscious perception). This precision - the designation of a moment so brief that it is experienced as instantaneous - made the phrase irreplaceable for describing true simultaneity.
Cultural Presence
The phrase appears in Shakespeare ("Much Ado About Nothing": "in the twinkling of an eye") as well as in every subsequent century of English literature. Its continued use reflects the ongoing appeal of the specific image Paul chose: not the abstract statement "instantaneously" but the concrete, embodied image of an eye's movement, a biological clock that ticks in fractions of a second and that every human being carries with them at all times.