Genesis 1 & 2

[Peter Kirby]

Where did humans get 7 days week from?

This farmer's almanac has a fairly entertaining review:

http://www.almanac.com/content/why-week-has-seven-days

tl;dr from the four phases of the moon



... and it wasn't the only system tried.

[semiopen]

There is no evidence that the seven day week was in use prior to the Babylonian Exile. Shabbat is used to express the concept of week along with it's more common meaning of Saturday. Therefore, anytime Shabbat appears in the context of week, we can assume the verse is post exilic.

Shabbat - Strong's 7676 only occurs a few times in Genesis - other than Genesis 2:2-3 it appears in Genesis 8:22 in a different sense.

We "know" Genesis 1-Genesis 2:3 is post exilic - probably all of Genesis is.

The word appears in the Pentateuch a bunch of times but not as many as I thought before looking it up; it occurs rarely in the prophets.

But he said, "Why are you going to him today? It is neither new moon nor sabbath." She answered, "It's all right."
(2Ki 4:23 TNK)

Is an important verse, the new moon and Sabbath are given together. This (and similar patterns) led some 19th-early 20th century scholars to speculate that before the exile, the Sabbath was a once a month holiday similar to the New Moon where the obvious placement would be the full moon. I've asked about this here, but no one responded. Maybe the issue is too speculative for modern scholars, and they don't bother with it.

[Anat]

Supposedly the 7 day week was based on there being 7 obviously moving visible celestial objects (5 planets visible from earth plus the sun and earth's moon).

[Ben C. Smith]

Supposedly the 7 day week was based on there being 7 obviously moving visible celestial objects (5 planets visible from earth plus the sun and earth's moon).

The medieval alchemists really went to town on lining up the 7 planets (= wanderers) with the 7 days of the week, the 7 heraldic tinctures, 7 different metals, 7 different gemstones, and so forth. You can still see the correspondences in some of the names of the days of the week, especially in Spanish (for example).

Sun	Moon	Mars	Mercury	Jupiter	Venus	Saturn
Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
domingo	lunes	martes	miércoles	jueves	viernes	sábado
gold	silver	iron	mercury	tin	copper	lead
or/gold	argent/silver	gules/red	purpure/purple	azure/blue	vert/green	sable/black
topaz	pearl	ruby	amethyst	sapphire	emerald	diamond

But I do not think any of this was formative for the seven-day week. It all appears to be numerological and alchemical wrangling after the fact.

[andrewcriddle]

Supposedly the 7 day week was based on there being 7 obviously moving visible celestial objects (5 planets visible from earth plus the sun and earth's moon).

The medieval alchemists really went to town on lining up the 7 planets (= wanderers) with the 7 days of the week, the 7 heraldic tinctures, 7 different metals, 7 different gemstones, and so forth. You can still see the correspondences in some of the names of the days of the week, especially in Spanish (for example).

Sun	Moon	Mars	Mercury	Jupiter	Venus	Saturn
Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
domingo	lunes	martes	miércoles	jueves	viernes	sábado
gold	silver	iron	mercury	tin	copper	lead
or/gold	argent/silver	gules/red	purpure/purple	azure/blue	vert/green	sable/black
topaz	pearl	ruby	amethyst	sapphire	emerald	diamond

But I do not think any of this was formative for the seven-day week. It all appears to be numerological and alchemical wrangling after the fact.

The seven day week has two origins (both may possibly go back to ancient mesopotamia but they enter the mediterranean world independently)

1/ The Jewish seven day week probably going back at least to the exile. followed by Christians as well as Jews.
2/ The astrological seven day week in which each planet (counting the sun and moon as planets) is in charge of a different day. This enters the Roman empire probably in the very early 1st century CE.

By the time of Constantine both seven day weeks were widely known. Constantine made a special day of what was both the 1st day in the Jewish week and the day of the sun in the astrological week.

Andrew Criddle

[lpetrich]

The medieval alchemists really went to town on lining up the 7 planets (= wanderers) with the 7 days of the week, the 7 heraldic tinctures, 7 different metals, 7 different gemstones, and so forth. You can still see the correspondences in some of the names of the days of the week, especially in Spanish (for example).

Is this a good source? Renaissance Astrology -- has several medieval and Renaissance astrologers' writings. I've also found translations of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos online.

Medical astrology, Zodiac Man lists astrologers' correspondences between human body parts and the signs of the Zodiac.

From China came the Wu Xing - the Five Elements / Phases / Agents / Movements / Processes / Steps / Stages
The same sort of thing, but with its details different.

Steve Farmer article download page -- he's done some interesting work on "correlative cosmologies", like this: Neurobiology, layered texts, and correlative cosmologies: A cross-cultural framework for premodern history I'll repeat its description:

Steve Farmer, John B. Henderson, and Michael Witzel, Neurobiology, layered texts, and correlative cosmologies: A cross-cultural framework for premodern history, Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 72 (2000 [written and published 2002]): 48-89. The first published paper to seriously link neurobiology and the evolution of religious and philosophical traditions, in a cross-cultural study of so-called correlative systems (in China), bandhus or upanishads (in India), and systems of correspondence (in the West). Hence the collaboration of one Western specialist, one Chinese specialist, and one specialist on premodern India and in writing the paper. The first suggestion that the Indus civilization was not literate was a direct prediction of the model developed in the paper (see the later sections on tests of the model).

Astrology fits in perfectly.

Another sort is the Doctrine of signatures:

The doctrine of signatures, dating from the time of Dioscurides and Galen, states that herbs that resemble various parts of the body can be used by herbalists to treat ailments of those parts of the body. A theological justification for this, as stated by botanists like William Coles, was that God would have wanted to show men what plants would be useful for.

Western correlative-cosmology work reached its height around the Renaissance, then collapsed as the "mechanical philosophy" rose.

[lpetrich]

Here's how one gets the days of the week from astrology. Arrange the (geocentric) planets in order from slowest to fastest: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon:
Sa Ju Ma Su Ve Me Mo

The first hour of the first day gets Saturn, the next hour gets Jupiter, the next one gets Mars, and when one runs out of planets, repeat. Continue into the next days until one finds Saturn the first hour again.

Code: Select all

Sa Ju Ma Su Ve Me  Mo Sa Ju Ma Su Ve  Me Mo Sa Ju Ma Su  Ve Me Mo Sa Ju Ma
Su Ve Me Mo Sa Ju  Ma Su Ve Me Mo Sa  Ju Ma Su Ve Me Mo  Sa Ju Ma Su Ve Me
Mo Sa Ju Ma Su Ve  Me Mo Sa Ju Ma Su  Ve Me Mo Sa Ju Ma  Su Ve Me Mo Sa Ju
Ma Su Ve Me Mo Sa  Ju Ma Su Ve Me Mo  Sa Ju Ma Su Ve Me  Mo Sa Ju Ma Su Ve
Me Mo Sa Ju Ma Su  Ve Me Mo Sa Ju Ma  Su Ve Me Mo Sa Ju  Ma Su Ve Me Mo Sa
Ju Ma Su Ve Me Mo  Sa Ju Ma Su Ve Me  Mo Sa Ju Ma Su Ve  Me Mo Sa Ju Ma Su
Ve Me Mo Sa Ju Ma  Su Ve Me Mo Sa Ju  Ma Su Ve Me Mo Sa  Ju Ma Su Ve Me Mo

For the first hour of each day, one gets Saturn, the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus -- the order of our days of the week.

In 1611, a certain Francesco Sizzi argued in his book Dianoia Astronomica, Optica, Physica that Jupiter's moons could not exist.

Galileo had discovered them the previous year with his telescope. He resolved Jupiter and he saw some "stars" nearby. Could they have some connection with Jupiter? He looked at Jupiter the next night and found the "stars" still present, but in different positions. He kept on observing Jupiter night after night, and he watched the "stars" move and be joined by a fourth "star". All four "stars" moved back and forth relative to Jupiter, and it was evident that they were orbiting that planet.

Francesco Sizzi, however, argued this (I'd written it for Wikipedia):

In the macrocosm, there are seven planets: two favorable (beneficas) ones, two unfavorable (maleficas) ones, two luminaries, and unique Mercury, erratic and indifferent (vagum & indifferens). In the microcosm, the human head has seven openings: two nostrils, two eyes, two ears, and one mouth. He also noted that there are seven days in the week, seven metals, etc. Given all these corresponding sets of seven, there was clearly no place for the extra planets that Galileo had claimed to have discovered. So they do not exist.