A10f Origins of
the Seventh Day
Here's a summary from a non-biblical source on the origins of the 7-day week
from one of you on this mailing list, that I'd like to pass on to all.
Interestingly enough they avoid giving God the credit for
arbitrarily assigning a 7-day week, but at the same time they point out that
alternatives have never succeeded. Also, interesting is how the days were
named. There are a few things that have always remained the same:
Sunday is the first day of the week
Sunday was first dedicated to the Sun god (Satan) and then to the Lord
Saturday was always the Sabbath Day and the 7th day
Historically, "the Lord's Day", whenever referenced in the Bible,
always refers to the 7th day Sabbath, not to Sunday. The Catholic Church thought to change God's
laws and times as predicted (Dan 7:25) when they reassigned the Lord's Day to
Sunday. This practice was in keeping with their altruistic attempts to
replace pagan practices and gods with something they could call
"holy". They renamed the day
of the Sun god and called it the day of the Lord, but in the process they
“forgot” the real Lord’s Day, the day God blessed specifically for them to
remember.
That's interesting, because all they succeeded in doing was to lower their
original Christian values by absorbing something pagan and becoming more pagan
themselves under a different name. Now it's hard to tell the
difference. Another reason to go back to the basics - back to where God
laid it out; and then just follow what He ordained without the contaminations
of manmade institutions.
The Origins and History of the Days of the Week by Allen Butler
August 11, 2005
The 7 day week seems natural to people today, but it did not always exist. Its
origins lie in the days of ancient
It is easy to take the 7 day week for granted. After all, its use
is near universal today, and after all how else could it really be done? But
every system must have a beginning somewhere, and although in use for thousands
of years, the 7 day week had to start somewhere.
Not all ancient calendars made use of the 7 day week. The Romans during the
Republic, for example, did not have a seven day week, but marked a recurring
cycle of 8 days to mark when a market would be held in
As late as the 18th Century attempts were made to change the calendar. The
forces behind the French Revolution understood that the days of the week could
be changed. With other changes to the calendar, and even a complete
redefinition of our basic units of time (the second, minute and hour), they
made a 10 day week. These days were not even given special names, but were
called simply primidi (first day), duodi (second day), and so on.
Unsurprisingly this try at calendar reform did not succeed. By this point in
time the 7 day system was so ingrained into people that it was difficult to
enact any sort of change. Imagine what would happen today if workers were now
told that they had a ten day week and weekends would no longer come after five
working days. It wouldn’t work.
Our own 7 day week seems to come from the ancient Babylonians over 3000 years
ago. Why the 7 day week was chosen is not exactly sure. Some have theorized
that 7 was the number of planets which could be seen by Babylonian astronomers
(Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter), and this gave significance
to the number 7.
It is more commonly believed that the 7 day week was used to approximate the
lunar cycle. Like our own calendar, Babylonian months revolved around the lunar
cycle, which lasts about 29 and a half days. (Our word
month comes from the word moon). Because the lunar cycle did not perfectly
coincide with the day, months would be either 29 or 30 days, alternating.
However, the Babylonians also wanted a unit of measurement that would be larger
than the day but smaller than the month. 4 weeks of 7 days comes the closest to
an even division, if one does not make the weeks last longer than the lunar
cycle (five 6 day weeks would close the week cycle after the lunar cycle had
already begun again). Because of the significance of 7 with the number of
planets, it made sense to have a 7 day week.
The use of the 7 day week proved to be quite popular in the
ancient world. The Egyptians quickly picked up on the practice, as did the
ancient Hebrews of
In the 1st Century CE, as Christianity began to grow into its own
religion separate from Judaism, they continued with the tradition of the 7 day
week, as the celebration their holy day (Sunday or the Lords Day) was based
upon the 7 day week. (Jesus was resurrected the day after the Sabbath, a Jewish
calendar reckoning requiring 7 days in a week).
Although many Romans had adopted the use of the 7 day week, either picking
it up from the Egyptians or from the Christians, it did not become standard in
the Empire until the time of Constantine. Constantine was the first Roman
Emperor to convert to Christianity, and he enacted a 7
day week so that the entire Empire might follow the cycle of the Christian holy
day.
In the beginning,
days of the week were named after deities who were seen to be having dominion
over a single day. These deities would also correspond to a celestial body. For
example, the Latin names for the days of the week were:
Looking at these
names it becomes clear that some of these names remain with us. Sunday, Monday
and Saturday obviously come directly from these Roman names for the days of the
week. In most Latin based languages the names of the week follow even more
closely the names used by the ancient Romans. For example look at the Spanish
days of the week:
The days of the
week took a different turn in
Left to itself,
Unlike the Germans who had taken control of what is
now
The Germans attempted to find equivalencies between the Roman days of the week
and words in their own language. dies solis and dies lunea
easily became Sonntag and Montag.
Tuesday became named after the German/Norse god Tyw,
Wednesday after Woden, Thursday after Thor and Friday
after the goddess Frigga. The only day of the week
which remained intact was Saturday, for reasons which are not certain, perhaps
because they could not find a god in their own mythology to match Saturn, the
Roman god of the harvest. This leaves us with the weekdays as we have them now:
The days of the week have remained
almost exactly the same since the Anglo-Saxon Conquests, and it can be expected
to stay that way. The experiment of the French Revolution demonstrates modern
mans reluctance to move away from the 7 day week. It has become ingrained into
the internal clock which we all unconsciously follow. The week has a long
tradition, and it will only grow longer with time.
27 February 2007
For more on this and a response to any questions, please
email any comments to michael.a.comberiate@nasa.gov