Re: Weeks

[brian whatcott <inet@INTELLISYS.NET>]

At 06:04 PM 4/9/01 -0500, brian whatcott queried the
characterization of this curious URL offered by John Denker as being
opposed to a seven day week as we know it:

> > >   http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/khagen/Babylon.html
> > [Brian]
> > I expect I am missing something.

 The 'contrary' personal homepage URL [above] 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..."


[Brian]
> > This looks rather more confirmatory than contrary to the innocent eye.


At 21:42 4/9/01 -0400, John Denker explained his position in this way:

> 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".

Quite so: a period of seven days does not comprise the whole
semantic content of the word "Week" as we know it. The day names
were different too!
I certainly would not describe this semantic difference which
John describes as merely a nit-pick. No indeed!

[John continues]
> 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."

This seems to be a restatement of the concept that there are
more than four seven day weeks in a synodical month. Actually not as
John's reference URL seems to think, "a few epagomenal days at the
 end of the month",
but in fact 1.531 mean solar days, on average, I'd say.
     Wouldn't you?

[John continues]
> 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."

It is always enlightening to read about peoples' suspicions and how they
have not found a critical text that they are willing to accept in support
 of a widely held view.
 Nevertheless, the early naming of days after an astronomical or
astrological entity associated with the dawn hour is not exactly a wild
 sweep of the speculative imagination. "Sun day; Moon day", etc.

Even if it were, I don't find the day-naming topic tremendously
relevant to the seven day period which the Jews adopted from a Middle East
source, and which found wide acceptance in the dominant cultures of the time.

But then, this is not only my understanding, it is also John D's position,
 as I see from Jim's quote below....

> ==================
[John D]
> > > 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.
At 05:52 PM 4/9/01 -0600, Jim Green responded:
> > 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?

/snip/



brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>  Altus OK
                Eureka!