Re: Weeks

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

At 06:04 PM 4/9/01 -0500, brian whatcott wrote:
> >   http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/khagen/Babylon.html
>
> I expect I am missing something.
>  The contrary URL adduced by John offers this:
> "The seven-day cycle makes its earliest appearance in Babylonian
> documents of the 7th century BCE. It is not quite yet the week as we
> know it, however. In origin, it seems to have been one fourth of the
> approximate time in a month the moon was visible..."
>
> This looks rather more confirmatory than contrary to the innocent eye.

1) The more-experienced eye might notice the word "not" in the quoted
passage: this is "not quite yet the week as we know it".

2) Also the passage continues as follows:  "In short, it does
not include the days around the new moon, and is not therefore a
continuous cycle. To picture what this "week" was like, imagine one
of our months with four regular weeks, and then a few epagomenal
days at the end of the month, which do not belong to any week."

3) A more-careful eye might follow up on the other references I cited,
which include
  http://www.friesian.com/week.htm
which says in part:
"While it is common to explain this peculiar sequence as going back to the
Babylonian assignment of the planets to different hours of the day (e.g.
David Ewing Duncan, Calendar, p. 47), I am suspicious that such an
astrological mechanism actually does not go back all the way to the
Babylonians. I have not found this explanation in critical sources about
the Babylonians but largely in popular accounts which give no references
and seem to assume that everything in astrology is originally Babylonian."

==================
At 05:52 PM 4/9/01 -0600, Jim Green wrote:
> > It is likely that the seven-day week as we know it has run uninterrupted
> > since the time of Moses, and possibly much longer than that.
>
> John, please say what is your basis for this.
>
> Did the Sabbath of Moses always follow the previous Sabbath by 7 days?
>
> At the time of Moses was there an understood fixed exact unvarying 7 day
> week as we have today --- sort of?

My basis remains the article I cited:
  http://www.boulder.nist.gov/timefreq/general/calendars/week.html
It's about halfway down the page.