Christianizing the Planetary Week and Globalizing the Seven-Day Cycle (original) (raw)
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Revista Latino-Americana de Educação em Astronomia
I show in the present work some artifacts from the Roman Era up to the 17th century related to the name of the days in a critical way. In each of them there are the 7 planetary Gods of Mediterranean culture related to the days of the week, and I discuss the enigmatic question of their order. Which rule do the planets follow so that the day of the Sun (Sunday) is followed by the day of the Moon (Monday) and so on? What did people know about the 7 planets? When was the time unit of the week established? In the end, we explore their harmonious and cyclic spatial arrangement. Moreover, in different languages the names of the 7 planets refer to different gods. In the ancient Roman world another system preceded it: nundinae, linked to market days and not to the sky. The studied artifacts are calendars, painted or engraved on marble tables, mosaics and bas-reliefs, Planetary tables published in medieval texts and two artefacts of the 17th century.
Studia Prawnicze KUL, 2019
The text analyses Christianisation of the Roman calendar in the light or the Roman imperial constitutions in the 4th century. The author first of all underlines that only humans recognise religious feasts despite that human perception of time is not that remote from the apperception of time in the case of other animals and that the belief in the supernatural/religion and rituals belong to human universals, the roots of which, together with the judiciary, are to be sought in the evolutionary past of the genus Homo. Furthermore, the author deduces that the first direct Christian influence on the Roman official calendar was probably C. Th. 9,35,4 = C. 3,12,5 (a. 380), prohibiting all investigation of criminal cases by means of torture during the forty days which anticipate the Paschal season, contesting the opinion that dies solis were regarded as dies dominicus (Christian Sunday) already in C. Th. 2,8,1 and C. 3,12,2 (a. 321). Finally, on the margin of the Polish debate concerning the...
The Christian Calendar, 2024
Discover in this unique calendar the principle Christian events suggested in the Bible, namely Passover and Pentecost. Included are also all the 7 Sabbaths of Sabbaths (Feasts or Holy Convocations), which have today rather a local (Israel) and former character. This calendar is the fruit of many preceding studies, only to mention the study on Noah's Flood which clearly confirmed a 360 day-year with 12 months of 30 days, to further mention the study on Christ's Passover Chronology which revealed Christ having died on day 6 of Passover and finally confirming the correct day of the First Fruits counting toward Pentecost, and of course the study 'Sabbaths' with the basic definition of a biblical week which begins on the day after the Weekly Sabbath, the biblical first day of the week (modern Sunday as officially followed by ~55% of the world's population). | Methodology & Overview of Works: www.fitforfaith.ca/overview | Sources are linked within the PDF document. All Rights Reserved.
Calendar and cycles of time: Ancient knowledge and early medieval challenges
The requirements of time reckoning and demands on maintaining the mechanisms of constructing the cycles of Anno Domini and of the Easter celebrations required considerable attention from early medieval scholars. In light of the new discoveries, the extent of their innovation needs to be investigated against the considerable reassessment of the importance of calendar and astronomical observation for Near Eastern cultures. For the Babylonians, it was shown, had already been able to create cognitive mechanisms and procedures that were necessary to create a linear calendar out of the disjointed cycles they were able to observe by looking at the Moon and some other celestial bodies. The Greeks, however, passed on this problem as Aristarchus of Samos and Ptolemy, since they sought to create a geometrical, visual utopia. The cyclical character of time and the ways to construct a linear calendar were lost on them since they used many calendars in their own life that could be reconciled only within the Large Year of 19 years, the lunar cycle. It was Christianity, which, relying on the Old Testament narratives that borrowed from the traditions of Near Eastern, Babylonian astronomy, that began to struggle against visual pseudo-simplicity and sought to establish its calendar and in fact the dogma on that initial cyclical character that was common to both Babylonian sources and the Old Testament. Alexandria was in all cases the key transfer point and the place of synthesis. So Christianity's representation of time reached the Mediterranean in this strange roundabout way, by way of the school of Alexandria's interpretations. The key was the calendar that was centered on the events surrounding the Easter just because it required the adherents of the new religion to agree on the key event of the conjunction of the Solar and Lunar calendars and their restart (symbolized by the "Resurrection"). This originated in the fact that the key point of the calendar, the beginning of the cycle and the year, cannot be determined astronomical and so it is the matter of faith. And so unlike the Greeks, the Christians sought to reconstruct the Mesopotamian knowledge about the cycles of time, heavily represented in the Old Testament, as a principle of theology. Early Medieval scholars in this context can be understood better because they did struggle for maintaining the calendar cyclical and precision was subject to this principle. They also well understood that the beginning of the calendar is a consensual, goodwill act that requires a community's joint action and agreement.
Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 201, pp. 187-196, 2017
This article consists of a series of comments, revisions, and new readings of three Greek inscriptions coming from different areas of the Roman Empire (Asia Minor, Thessaly, Gaul), and dating approximately from the third to the fifth century CE. I offer a restoration proposal and a new interpretation of inscription no. 1 – a votive dedication inscribed on an altar from Ankyra in Galatia – while my comments, revisions, and new readings of nos. 2 and 3 – two epitaphs, from Nea Anchialos in Thessaly and Augusta Treverorum in Gallia Belgica, respectively – concern primarily, though not exclusively, questions related to their date formulae.
The Anthropological Response - The Origin of the Seven-Day Week Within Ancient Judaism.
It has been proposed the origin of the seven-day week and subsequent adoption of a continuous seven-day cycle (Sabbath to Sabbath) by the ancient Hebrews was divinely mandated and instituted, rather than being adopted/integrated from regionally adjacent/dominant cultures.This position is untenable for two key reasons-namely a complete rejection of over a century of academic analysis as well as a highly selective and theologically suspect analysis of Isaiah 66:23. The latter requires a narrow interpretation of Sabbath to Sabbath as a fixed, uninterrupted seven-day cycle when such is unnecessary and likely unhistoric. 2 Additionally, it would mandate the acceptance of an unquestionable assertion of divine origin while overcoming the demonstrable and evidentiary-affirmed role cultural transmission plays in the formation, growth, and development of ancient societies, including the ancient Hebrews. A position which is neither new or novel. 3 Cultural Transmission (CT) Theory Within the modern field of anthropology there has been considerable, if not continuous, discourse regarding the concepts of acculturation, cultural diffusion and sociocultural change since Leo Frobenius first coined the term kulturkreise (culture circles) in 1898. In the simplest of terms, Frobenius demonstrated that cultures, through proximity and/or force, tend to influence each other over time (Dostal and Gingrinch 2010: 334-336). Cultural transmission (CT) theory is a refinement of earlier diffusionist models with nuanced attention to the manner, mode, and socio-historical context under which such transfers/integrations have occurred (Eerkens 2014: 1127-1138; Eerkens and Lipo 2007: 247-252). When they occur, these influences should be detectable within a variety of forms: material goods (in form and fabric), cultural norms and practices, and comparative linguistics. Given the broad nature of available evidence, be it literary or 3 See Morris 1979: 1ff. For contra see Gordon 1982: 12-16. 2 Isaiah 66:23 (KJV) "And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord"; (ESV) "From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the Lord."
in Irene Salvo and Tanja S. Scheer (eds), Religion and Education in the Ancient Greek World. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021
This paper looks at the concurrent spread of astrology and the seven-day planetary week in the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean from the last century BCE through Late Antiquity. During this period astrology became increasingly pervasive in all aspects of life and among members of all levels of society. Astrology was not only a system of divination claiming to predict the future by observing the stars: it implied a religious conception of the world, its starting point being the faith in celestial divinities that were thought to exert an influence on the world. The Sun, the Moon, the planets, and other astral phenomena were understood as divine powers affecting the life and fate of human beings. In the planetary week, each day was named after one of the seven non-fixed heavenly bodies of the universe, as it was known in antiquity: Saturn (Saturday), Sun (Sunday), Moon (Monday), Mars (Tuesday), Mercury (Wednesday), Jupiter (Thursday), and Venus (Friday). In turn, the five planets and the two luminaries (the Sun and the Moon) had been named after Graeco-Roman gods and goddesses and were themselves regarded as celestial deities, following the near eastern tradition that identified the heavenly bodies with specific divinities. This chapter argues that the growing familiarity, from early imperial times onwards, with astrological concepts and practices along with the use of the seven-day planetary week as a means for measuring time contributed to the diffusion of astral beliefs and the cult of the seven planets as week deities in the Graeco-Roman world during the imperial and late antique periods. Please email me if you wish to receive a PDF copy of this paper
The Origins of the Seven-Day Week
OSU, 2021
How the seven days of the week got their planetary names is not a settled question. Evidence is presented in support of the hypothesis that the names arose in India. The Sūrya Siddhānta (SS) explains the names by a construction that divides the day into 12 parts. It is proposed that since the year was seen as the day of the devas and the division of the year into 12 parts goes to the naming of the Ādityas in the Ṛgveda as well as in RV 1.25.8 and RV 1.164.11, a corresponding division of the day into 12 parts served in addition to the better known division into 15 muhūrtas. Antecedents of the SS evidence in the Pañcaviṃśa-Brāhmaṇa are also reviewed.