Why Seven Days?
No more logic supports seven days than, say eight or five, yet the seven-day week has resisted any and all attempt at change.
- Why the Week Has Seven Days, The 1988 Old Farmer's Almanac
Some
believe that the theory of Seven Heavens and also the Seven days of
Creation was originally in direct connection to the other planets and it
all 'goes back to astrology.' Others go even further and contend that
the Biblical legend of Seven days of Creation and the Judeo-Christian
Seven-day week comes from Mesopotamia, possibly through the Biblical
Patriarch Abraham who was once a citizen of that civilization.
Astrology
has had a major influence on our weekly calendar in which it is
responsible for the order of the days. Ancient Mesopotamian astrologers
linked a planet-god to each hour of the day and then arranged them to
their correct cosmological order. They used a seven-sided figure to keep
track of the proper names of the hours and days in relation to the
planet gods where each vertex was marked with a planet’s name in the
proper order. Some Asiatic languages such as Hindi, Japanese and Korean
have a similar relationship between the week days and the planets.
- The Days of the Week, TimeandDate.com
Why
can't one say that ancient cultures were affected by the Seven-day week
tradition of Adam and his descendants? There is no reason to deny the
claim that Mesopotamia (or Sumeria) may have been influenced by other
factors including the ancient Biblical Patriarchs who were renowned
astronomers, astrologers, and time-keepers. Today's Hebrew calendar
which is now at the year 5772 is considered one of the oldest known in
the world. The date, 5772 is the number of years which have passed since
God created the universe in Seven days. Wikipedia notes that 'the
number 7 in Biblical references symbolically represented perfect
completion, as in the seven-day week, the seven eyes and horns seen on
the Lamb of God in The Book of Revelation, and the seventh in the
generations of Adam: Lamech who was completely wicked, and Enoch who
walked with God.' Some still claim otherwise:
It is a mistake to believe that our 7-day week has
its origins in the command of the biblical YHWH, since the 7-day week
is older than the Hebrews, having been used by the Sumerians and
Babylonians.
- Hermetic Systems, Why Seven Days in a Week? by Peter Meyer
Apparently,
ancient observers of the skies were only able to see seven planets in
this solar system. Because of this they identified 'seven great heavenly
objects and assumed each was floating in a separate heaven.' This is a
highly dubious proposal and is just as absurd as claiming the age-old
Seven-day week tradition which cuts across numerous cultures actually
comes from God and the Bible. Interestingly enough, these seven
celestial objects were the same across many different societies and
religions. They were as follows:
1) Moon
2) Sun
3) Mercury
4) Venus
5) Mars
6) Jupiter
7) Saturn
This
isn't the only order of sequence that the ancients utilized. A certain
Muslim scholar named Ibn Kathir 'stated in his Tafsir that the Seven
Heavens contained the moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and
Saturn in that order.' In English at least, the Seven days of the week
are partly named for these stellar bodies. One source notes in
particular:
Most Latin-based languages derived the names of the seven days of the week from
the Roman period where they related each day of the week with the seven
planets, the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
The English language has retained these names for Saturday, Sunday, and
Monday, however the planet names for the other days of the week
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday) were replaced by their
equivalent Norse gods.
- The Days of the Week, TimeandDate.com
As
of now, some scholars surmise this may imply the true origins of
mankind's Sacred use of the number Seven as possibly derived from the
Persian and Babylonian Pagan time-keeping systems. This simply cannot be
true, mainly because of the original Book of Genesis, which
specifically also mentions Seven Days of Creation. According to many, if
not most, scholars of today this Biblical text dates from long before
Persia and Babylonia ever became individual civilizations with their own
distinct Pagan religion. Indeed, the prophet Abraham most probably
practiced this system long before Moses wrote the Biblical story of a
Seven-day Creation sometime around 1,450 BC.
The origin of the seven-day week is
the religious significance that was placed on the seventh day by
ancient cultures, including the Babylonian and Jewish civilizations.
- Seven Day Week, Wikipedia
For
countless millennia, Jews have 'celebrated every seventh day, within a
continuous cycle of seven-day weeks, as a holy day of rest from their
work.' Even so, some believe that 'it is possible that the Hebrew origin
of the seven-day week was lunar, and not perpetual,' meaning it was
structured around 12 lunar cycles which occur each year. What seems the
most likely point of origin is that this came directly from the Bible
and from Hebrew traditions dating back thousands of years. At least one
modern author agrees. Judeo-Christian researcher Frank C. Senn, in his
book Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical, provides data which
indicates the ancient Jews had been using the Seven day week for a long,
long time. Specifically, he provides 'evidence of an early continuous
use of a seven-day week; referring to the Jews during the Babylonian
Captivity in the 6th century BCE, after the destruction of the Temple of
Solomon.' In other words, the Jewish use of the Seven Day Week was old
when the Babylonian Empire was still very young.
All
things considered, the majority of the evidence suggests that the Hebrew
(Judeo-Christian) tradition of the Seven-day week is indeed unique and
original to Judaism and Christianity- stemming from the ancient creation
legend found in the first few pages of the Bible. A few scholars still
try to suggest that the Biblical Seven-day week was adopted by the Jews
from the surrounding Babylonian and Persian cultures. One source
contends:
There are many different opinions as to how the history of the seven-day week
came about, but the most common explanation is that the seven-day week
seems to have originated when Babylonian astrologers assigned their
planet gods to the days of the week around 700 BCE. The Romans later
replaced these names with their own planet-gods.
- The Days of the Week, TimeandDate.com
Now
traditional Judaism and Christianity date the Book of Genesis, and its
Seven-day Creation legend, to 1,500 BC. Even the more modern scholars
will claim that this Book couldn't possibly have been written after the
rule of King David and Solomon around the year 1,000 BC. This means
that, at a minimum, the Judeo-Christian Book of Genesis specifically
describes a Divinely-ordained Seven-day week at least 300 years before
the Pagan 'Babylonian astrologers'.
In
summary, further evidence concerning King David's ancient kingdom
indicates the Book of Genesis most definitely predates nearly all Pagan
cultures and traditions by centuries. Also remember that this text is
recording an age-old legend which was believed in and passed down at
least 3,000 years previous to its writing. In addition, one should also
note that Jewish mythology was mostly influenced by the Canaanite and
Egyptian kingdoms which has no known tradition of the Seven-day week.
Thus, the relationship between the number Seven and the Divine, between
the Seven-day Week and God, could originate as far back as the ancient
Patriarchs who supposedly lived nearly 6,000 to 4,000 years ago. In
short, the legendary Adam and Eve, and their children, may be the actual
founders of the Seven-day week and its key connection to the one, true
God.
Historically, the Babylonian Pagans, probably through
ancient Hebrew influence, celebrated 'celebrated the seventh day of
each seven-day week as a holy day, just like the Jewish practice of
Sabbath. However, Babylon's calendar did not consist of a perpetual
series of Seven Day Week. The ancient Babylonians also had a monthly
calendar which 'would always commence on the new moon.' Because of this,
Babylon's months consisted of three seven day weeks, followed by a
final week of varying length depending on the 12 annual lunar cycles.
This tradition of Seven days can still be found 'in the contemporary and
traditional Zoroastrian calendars that relates to the first, seventh
and so on days of the month as pertaining to Ahura Mazda (God).' The
Babylonian traditions concerning the number Seven also can be seen on a
very old map, dating from the 6th Century BC. It depicts Babylon
'surrounded by a "bitter river" (Oceanus), with seven islands arranged
around it so as to form a seven-pointed star.' The exact system of
Babylonian time measurement can be described as follows:
Counting
from the new moon, the Babylonians celebrated the 7th, 14th, 21st, and
28th as "holy-days", also called "evil days" (meaning "unsuitable" for
prohibited activities). On these days officials were prohibited from
various activities and common men were forbidden to "make a wish", and
at least the 28th was known as a "rest-day".[citation needed] On each of
them, offerings were made to a different god and goddess. Tablets from
the sixth-century B.C. reigns of Cyrus the Great and Cambyses indicate
these dates were sometimes approximate. The [lunar cycle] of 29 or 30
days basically contained three seven-day weeks, and a final week of
eight or nine days inclusive, breaking the continuous seven-day cycle.
- Seven Day Week, Wikipedia
There
are also other cultures and empires which utilized the Seven Day Week
and Rome was one of the them. At first, the early Romans 'traditionally
used the eight-day nundinal cycle, but after the adoption of the Julian
calendar, in the time of Augustus, the seven-day week came into use.'
For a time, the Seven-day week and the eight-day system 'coexisted, but
by the time the week was officially adopted by Constantine in AD 321'
the Eight-day week had ceased to be used. Remember, as noted earlier the
naming of the 'days of the week with the Sun, the Moon, and the five
planets visible to the naked eye dates to the Roman era (2nd century).'
For
reasons still somewhat mysterious, which may not seem so mysterious to
believers in the Judeo-Christian Creator God, the Seven-day week also
developed independently in the east and the Asian cultures of China,
Japan, and India. To be specific, 'the earliest known reference in
Chinese writings to a seven-day week is attributed to Fan Ning, who
lived in the late 4th century in the Jin Dynasty.' It can also be found
centuries later in 'Ceylonese or Central Asian Buddhist monk Bu Kong of
the 7th century (Tang Dynasty).' This Chinese tradition of Seven days
and Seven planets 'was soon brought to Japan by the Japanese monk Kobo
Daishi.' Some texts which survived over the centuries 'show the
seven-day system in use in Heian Japan as early as 1007.' In Japan, at
least, 'the seven-day system was kept in use for astrological purposes
until its promotion to a full-fledged Western-style calendrical basis
during the Meiji era. In India, which practiced the polytheistic Hindu
religion, 'the seven-day week may have been in use during the Vedic
Period.' This remains in dispute, although one Hindu text called the
Garga, which dates to the 1st century BC. 'refers to the seven-day week,
Sunday to Saturday.' Regardless, of the specifics, it seems that,
through Divine guidance, even the Pagan nations of Asia adopted the
clumsy, awkward, Seven-day week as their own to finally culminate in the
international Seven-day week of the 21st century.
Again, Why Seven?
An
extremely ancient Judeo-Christian source for the Divine Seven-day week
is not so hard to accept considering how awkward a number it is to
calculate time, both long-term and short term. To demonstrate their
ignorance as to how arbitrary and just plain odd the Seven-day week
tradition is, one website actually (and mistakenly) claims the
following:
It [the Seven-day week]
provides a clear method of representing dates and times to avoid
misinterpretation of data transferred between countries with different
conventions for writing numeric dates and times.
- The Days of the Week, TimeandDate.com
Nothing
could be further from the truth. Think about it. 1 week of 7 days is
168 hours, 10,080 minutes, and 604,800 seconds. These are all extremely
clumsy, mathematically useless numbers. As predicted, this tends to show
that the Seven Day week has nothing to do with organizational or
structural perfection and is, in fact, completely arbitrary in terms of
measurement precision. If the ancients wanted to be precise about
numbers and calculations for the movement of the Heavens they could have
used a system based upon 10, 100, 1,000 and so on. As one online source
informs:
It is not immediately apparent why the seven-day week was selected by ancient cultures,
rather than a week that included a number of days that was a factor of
these numeral systems, such as a six-day or a twelve-day week, or a week
that divided the lunation more accurately using a factor of these
number systems, such as a five-day or ten-day week. There are no historical Jewish or Babylonian records that confirm that these cultures explicitly defined the seven-day week as a quarter of a lunation.
- Seven Day Week, Wikipedia
Over
the course of the past 2,000 years, some radicals have been enraged at
this God-given tradition of Seven days. There have even been two modern
attempts at abolishing the Seven Day Week system. These coincided with
attempts to abolish the Bible, Judaism, and Christianity as well. After
the French Revolution, the new anti-Christian government of France
called for 'a ten-day week with the introduction of the republican
calendar in 1793.' Alas, this did not last long because what is
historically called 'The Concordat of 1801, which re-established the
Roman Catholic Church in France, also restored the seven-day week.' The
Communists in the Soviet Union also attempted to get rid of the
God-given Seven Day Week. This occurred in 1929 when the 'USSR
discontinued the seven-day week for a five-day week, then a six-day
week.' Even so, they never stopped using seven difrferent names for the
days even when 'the work schedules were rotated in five- and six-day
periods.'. So it should not be surprising that this new Soviet systems
didn't catch on either and instead the Communist government reverted
back to the Seven Day protocol. As Wikipedia records: 'the seven-day
week was reintroduced on 27 June 1940.' The current situation in the
21st century can be summarized in the following manner:
The
day of rest can vary for each culture and religion. According to the
Jews, the Sabbath or Saturday is the day of rest and worship because it
was on this day that God rested after creating the world. Most
Christians mark Sunday as their day of rest and worship because Jesus
rose from the dead on a Sunday. Muslims refer to Friday as their day of
rest and worship because the Quran calls Friday a holy day or the “king
of days”.Nowadays, both Saturday and Sunday are seen as days of rest,
and some calendars show Monday as the first day of the week since it is
the first day of the "work week"
One could
tentatively conclude the actual reason the Seven Day week still exists
is to commemorate the Hebrew Creator God who , according to Genesis,
finished making all the Universe in just Seven Days. Indeed, this may be
the only reason why the world doesn't have 1000 seconds, or 100
minutes, to the hour, perhaps translating into 10 hour days, and 10 day
weeks. Logically speaking, it is far more likely that the ancient Pagans
got this exact number Seven from the story in the Book of Genesis and
not from the Seven Planets.
The seven-day week appears
in the Creation story in the Book of Genesis, in the Hebrew Bible,
where Elohim (God) is said to have created the heavens and the earth in
six days and rested on the seventh (Genesis 1:1-2:3). In the Book of
Exodus, the fourth of the ten commandments is to rest on the seventh
day, the Sabbath, which can be seen as implicating a seven-day week
social institution (Exodus 20:8-11).
- Seven Day Week, Wikipedia
Copying
the prior tradition from Judaism, Christianity and Islam also adopted a
7 day week unit and imposed it upon all peoples they encountered and
converted. They also allowed peasants and servants, even slaves, to rest
from work every Seven Days, something other societies never really did
on their own.
The Jews also adopted a seven-day cycle,
based on the time it took the Lord to create the universe as reported
in Genesis. A new wrinkle in their week was the Sabbath, a day set aside
for rest. This was the first time a culture had invented a holiday that
occurred on a regular basis, unrelated to natural phenomena.
- Why the Week Has Seven Days, The 1988 Old Farmer's Almanac
Indeed,
in many ways, the Sabbath proved to be a merciful institution for all
those who labored hard and long throughout Judeo-Christian history. Now,
because of the implacable power of this Biblical tradition, Most of the
known world follows suit. Two different source relates:
Historically,
a number of other cultural groups, such as Christians and Muslims, have
continued to regularly hold religious events on a specific day within
each seven-day week.
- Seven Day Week, Wikipedia
The seven-day week
is used by the majority of the world and has become the international
standard as specified by the International Organization for
Standardization.
- The Days of the Week, TimeandDate.com
This
lack of any logical connection between the various systems of
time-measurement logically leads to the premise that the Seven Day Week
comes straight from the Judeo-Christian Bible, not from so-called Pagan
sources. Thus, through sheer of force of will, this ancient Hebrew
tradition of Seven Days, has triumphed and has now come to dominate the
international system of time organization. Christianity has proceeded to
calculate time with Seven Day weeks for nearly 2,000 years.
Specifically, one source writes:
The seven-day weekly cycle
is reputed to have remained unbroken in Europe for almost two
millennia, despite changes to the Alexandrian, Julian, and Gregorian
calendars. The date of Easter Sunday can be traced back through numerous
computistic tables to an Ethiopic copy of an early Alexandrian table
beginning with the Easter of 311 AD.
- Seven Day Week, Wikipedia
To
summarize the history involved, the current contention of Persian or
Babylonian origins of the Seven-day week tradition that in time
influenced the Jews is probably the exact opposite of historical
reality. The Jews, and their mythology, are the true founders of the
Seven-day tradition which has now passed on to both Christianity and
Islam centuries ago, marking the number Seven, for whatever reason, as a
Holy and perhaps even, Divine numeral for all three religions.
