Why Seven Days?
- stephenstrent7
- 5 days ago
- 6 min read
Where Science Meets the Old Testament, for the Come Follow Me lesson January 12-18; Genesis 1-2; Moses 2-3; Abraham 4-5
The Babylonians, apparently, invented the base-seven week, along with a seven-day creation cycle, around 2,000 BC, not for mathematical reasons, but because of their astronomy and religion, and founded on the seven visible, “movable” celestial bodies (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) they observed.1 This was about the time of Abraham, who was from Ur of the Chaldees, part of Babylon. The heading to the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price states, “A Translation of some ancient Records that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt. The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus. Abraham lived around 2000–1800 BC, around 1200 years before the captivity.” Apparently, through Abraham, the notion of a seven-day week spread to the Hebrews. When Genesis was written, the Hebrews were under the strict laws of the Sabbath, and so, the creation story was fit into a week-long narrative.
They were told in Exodus 20:8-11, “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”
The idea of a seven-day week spread to other cultures as well, and then, in 321 AD, under the direction of Roman Emperor Constantine, it was officially adopted for the Roman Empire. The Romans had previously observed an eight-day market week, which meant that people would work for seven days and then come into the market cities on the eighth day to buy and sell goods.2 When Julius Caesar introduced the Julian calendar, by edict, on 1 January 46 BC, he proposed adopting the seven-day week. However, the eight-day and seven-day weeks continued side-by-side until Constantine made the seven-day week official. Christianity, with its Hebrew origins, and Biblical foundation, was influential in Constantine’s decision. He had already issued the Edict of Milan, in 313 AD, which ended Christian persecution and allowed public worship. Then in 380 AD, the Emperor Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica, making Nicene (Trinitarian) Christianity the formal religion of the Roman Empire. As a result, the practice of a seven-day week spread throughout the Roman Empire and eventually through Christian cultures around the world.3
The ancient Egyptians had a ten-day week. However, Egypt became part of the Roman Empire when Octavian (Augustus) defeated Cleopatra and Mark Anthony at the naval Battle of Actium, in 31 BC, at which time, the Egyptians were converted to the seven-day week.4
The seven days were: Sunday, Moonday, Marsday (Tuesday), Mercuryday (Wednesday), Jupiterday (Thursday), Venusday (Friday), and Saturnday (Saturday). Marsday became Tuesday because the Anglo-Saxons replaced Tiw for Mars, thus the day became Tiwsday. Likewise, Mercury was replaced by the Germanic god Woden, so, it became Wodensday. Jupiter was replaced by the Norse god Thor, thus Thorsday; and Venus was replaced by Frig, the Germanic goddess of love and beauty, thus Frigday.
Today, there are eight planets. I find it very strange that anyone would lump the sun and moon in with the planets to come up with the number seven as the base number for a week. We know so much more than the Babylonians did about our solar system. It wasn’t until 1543, with the Copernican Revolution, that the Earth was recognized as a planet.5 Uranus was only first observed by William Herschel, using a telescope, on 13 March 1781,6 and Neptune wasn’t discovered until September 23, 1846, by Johann Galle.7 None-the-less, no matter how we obtained to a seven-day week, it turns out that such a length of week is apparently the most satisfactory, from both a mathematical perspective and a work-cycle perspective.
The creation accounts in Genesis, Moses, and Abraham are all recounted in the context of seven days. We are told in Abraham 4:3, 5, “And they (the Gods) said: Let there be light; and there was light…And the Gods called the light Day, and the darkness they called Night. And it came to pass that from the evening until morning they called night; and from the morning until the evening they called day; and this was the first, or the beginning, of that which they called day and night.” How was there evening and morning for the first three days, when the sun was not created until day four?
We read in Genesis 1:5, “And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.” Bible Hub states, for this verse, that the Hebrew words for evening and morning are: עֶ֥רֶב (‘e·reḇ), meaning evening, and בֹ֖קֶר (ḇō·qer), meaning dawn or morning. So, the words apparently are translated correctly. The word “dawn” makes it even more clear that the Hebrew word בֹ֖קֶר (ḇō·qer) was referring to the sun.
The Pulpit Commentary, cited at Bible Hub, states, “…it is assumed that the first creative period is here described as an ordinary astronomical or sidereal day of twenty-four hours’ duration, its constituent parts being characterized in the usual way, as an evening and a morning…The language of the fourth commandment (Exodus 20:11) is also appealed to as removing…beyond the sphere of doubt that the evening and the morning referred to are-the component sections of an earthly day.”
Ellicott’s Commentary, also cited at Bible Hub, says, “Before this distinction of night and day was possible there must have been outside the earth, not as yet the sun, but a bright phosphorescent mass, such as now enwraps that luminary; and, secondly, the earth must have begun to revolve upon its axis. Consequent upon this would be…alternate periods of light and darkness…” This Commentary recognizes the dilemma of having diurnal cycles without a sun and attempts to provide, albeit a rather fantastical, explanation.
Ellicott’s Commentary continues, “A creative day is not a period of twenty-four hours, but an ?on, or period of indefinite duration, as the Bible itself teaches us. For in Genesis 2:4 the six days of this narrative are described as and summed up in one day, creation being there regarded, not in its successive stages, but as a whole…in Zechariah 14:7 the whole Gospel dispensation is called ‘one day;’ and constantly in Hebrew, as probably in all languages, day is used in a very indefinite manner, as, for instance, in Deuteronomy 9:1. Those, however, who adopt the very probable suggestion of Kurtz, that the revelation of the manner of creation was made in a succession of representations or pictures displayed before the mental vision of the tranced seer, have no difficulties…What else could he call these periods but days? But as St. Augustine pointed out, there was no sun then, and ‘it is very difficult for us to imagine what sort of days these could be’ (De Civ. Dei, xi. 6, 7). It must further be observed that this knowledge of the stages of creation could only have been given by revelation, and that the agreement of the Mosaic record with geology is so striking that there is no real difficulty in believing it to be inspired. The difficulties arise almost entirely from popular fallacies or the mistaken views of commentators. Geology has done noble service for religion in sweeping away the mean views of God’s method of working which used formerly to prevail. We may add that among the Chaldeans a cosmic day was a period of 43,200 years, being the equivalent of the cycle of the procession of the equinoxes (Lenormant, Les Origines de l'Histoire, p. 233)…”
I quite agree with Ellicott, Kurtz, and Augustine on these points. To me, to a certain extent, it seems that the creation story is shoe-horned into, a sometimes, uncomfortable seven-day scenario. For example, as a biologist, I find it quite unsettling to place the creation of plants into day three, whereas the sun was not created until day four. Furthermore, it is also unsettling to me that the fish, including the whales, which are mammals, and birds were created on the same day (day five), and that all the land animals, as well as mankind, were created on day six.8 That clumping together of quite unrelated life-forms seems that there was some rush to cram their creating together into the last two days.
Even though the seven-day week was an arbitrary invention, it apparently works better than any other weekly cycle that humans have tried. Furthermore, the length of the week is not important, what is important is that we set aside one day in the weekly cycle to rest and worship God. That day was originally set by God for the Israelites to rest on the last day of the week. However, that designation changed when Christ fulfilled the Mosaic Law and was resurrected on the first day of the week. Thereafter, we Christians celebrate the Lord’s Day as the first day of the weekly cycle.
Trent Dee Stephens, PhD
References
3. Packer, George Nichols, Our Calendar, originally published, by F.R. Miller Blank Book Co., Williamsport, Pa., 1893 reprint version published by Forgotten Books, London, 2018
5. 50 minutes, Copernicus: The Discovery of the Heliocentric Revolution, 2017
6. nasa.gov/history/240-years-ago-astronomer-william-herschel-identifies-uranus-as-the-seventh-planet
8. Genesis 1:20-31; Abraham 4:20-31
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