1. Why are most TV shows aired every seven days instead of every four or five? Next to the day, the week is the most important calendar unit in our lives: the seven-day week. How did this seven-day cycle come to so conspicuously occupy our minds and our calendars? Where did it originate? How did it become such a ubiquitous backbeat in the rhythm of human life?
2. Most other major measurements of time are determined by what happens in the skies above us. The length of a year is determined by how long it takes our planet to make one full revolution around the sun. The month is based on the time required for our moon to complete its cycle. A day is the time the Earth takes to complete one full rotation on its axis.
3. One common explanation says the week is based on one quarter of the 29.531-day lunar cycle, which would come to nearly 7.4 days. Proponents of this theory say ancient peoples used the moons cycle to determine the duration of both the month, in its complete cycle, and the week, as one quarter of that cycle. They say this quartered lunar cycle gave rise to a calendar, like those used by early Babylonians, in which each month began on a new moon and was separated into four 7-day segments followed by one or two odd days each month.
a. In "The Origins of the Seven-Day Week," Eviatar Zerubavel dismisses this theory . Any subdivision of the lunar cycle necessarily involves some mathematically inconvenient remainder of hours, minutes and seconds. A precise quarter of the lunar cycle, for example, amounts to 7.38625 days, and any week of that length would necessarily have to begin at different times of the day.
b. The divided lunar cycle theory also does not explain the fact that, in almost all societies, the week is seven days long. After all, a lunar month could just as easily be divided into three 10-day sections, or five 6-day blocks, six 5-day spans, or other variations, with the final week being shortened by a day or two as needed. Why would early societies choose to divide the lunar cycle by four? Other major units of timethe day, month and yearare derived from complete astronomical cycles,
4. Another popular explanation for the week comes from adding up the number of celestial bodies in our solar system that are visible with the naked eye. The sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn would all have been visible to early stargazers who had no telescopes, so the sum is seven.
a. Peter Meyer of Hermetic Systems explains this theory: If, instead of an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, there had been a planet, then there would have been six visible planets, not five, so the number of celestial entities would have been eight, not seven. In that case humans would have developed a week of eight days, not seven.
b. It is undeniable that the days of the week on our calendars (in English and European languages) are named after the visible bodies (e.g. the day of Saturn is Saturday). Its also true that ancient societies named these celestial bodies after their various gods and goddesses.
c. However, the facts of history prove that the seven-day week existed long before its days came to be associated with these ancient gods, and that the association came about only in the third century B.C.
5. In his thorough book, Zerubavel, after conclusively disproving both of the above theories, finally concludes that the seven-day week was the invention of ancient Israel. He says that it eventually spread from that early society into the whole world. The trouble with that theory, though, is that biology proves the seven-day week predates all societies.
6. Mankind has long understood that our bodies operate on circadian (daily), monthly and annual rhythms, but chronobiologists have only recently discovered seven-day patterns written into the biology of people, animals and plants. According to "The Secrets Our Body Clocks Reveal" by Susan Perry and Jim Dawson, the blood pressure cycle, coping hormone cycles, immune responses to infections, production of blood and urine chemicals, and even the heartbeat operate on a seven-day pattern.
a. Research by Halberg, Perry, Dawson and others has uncovered no cycles (between daily and monthly frequency) that occur in five, six, eight, nine or any other number of daysonly seven. http://132.248.9.1:8991/hevila/ARBSAnnualreviewofbiomedicalsciences/1999/vol1/5.pdf
7. The week is completely oblivious to seasons, tides, orbits and every other aspect of external nature. Nothing in the cosmos happens in seven days, so there is no astronomical reason for the week. There is no recurring cycle of the stars, moon, planets, sun, or anything else that happens in seven days time. So the week had to originate from another source. Science proves that the seven-day cycle is also etched deeply into mankinds DNA, proving it could not have been the invention of any society.
a. How interesting that the same is reflected in first two chapters of the book of Genesis. Why the Week? | theTrumpet.com by the Philadelphia Church of God
2. Most other major measurements of time are determined by what happens in the skies above us. The length of a year is determined by how long it takes our planet to make one full revolution around the sun. The month is based on the time required for our moon to complete its cycle. A day is the time the Earth takes to complete one full rotation on its axis.
3. One common explanation says the week is based on one quarter of the 29.531-day lunar cycle, which would come to nearly 7.4 days. Proponents of this theory say ancient peoples used the moons cycle to determine the duration of both the month, in its complete cycle, and the week, as one quarter of that cycle. They say this quartered lunar cycle gave rise to a calendar, like those used by early Babylonians, in which each month began on a new moon and was separated into four 7-day segments followed by one or two odd days each month.
a. In "The Origins of the Seven-Day Week," Eviatar Zerubavel dismisses this theory . Any subdivision of the lunar cycle necessarily involves some mathematically inconvenient remainder of hours, minutes and seconds. A precise quarter of the lunar cycle, for example, amounts to 7.38625 days, and any week of that length would necessarily have to begin at different times of the day.
b. The divided lunar cycle theory also does not explain the fact that, in almost all societies, the week is seven days long. After all, a lunar month could just as easily be divided into three 10-day sections, or five 6-day blocks, six 5-day spans, or other variations, with the final week being shortened by a day or two as needed. Why would early societies choose to divide the lunar cycle by four? Other major units of timethe day, month and yearare derived from complete astronomical cycles,
4. Another popular explanation for the week comes from adding up the number of celestial bodies in our solar system that are visible with the naked eye. The sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn would all have been visible to early stargazers who had no telescopes, so the sum is seven.
a. Peter Meyer of Hermetic Systems explains this theory: If, instead of an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, there had been a planet, then there would have been six visible planets, not five, so the number of celestial entities would have been eight, not seven. In that case humans would have developed a week of eight days, not seven.
b. It is undeniable that the days of the week on our calendars (in English and European languages) are named after the visible bodies (e.g. the day of Saturn is Saturday). Its also true that ancient societies named these celestial bodies after their various gods and goddesses.
c. However, the facts of history prove that the seven-day week existed long before its days came to be associated with these ancient gods, and that the association came about only in the third century B.C.
5. In his thorough book, Zerubavel, after conclusively disproving both of the above theories, finally concludes that the seven-day week was the invention of ancient Israel. He says that it eventually spread from that early society into the whole world. The trouble with that theory, though, is that biology proves the seven-day week predates all societies.
6. Mankind has long understood that our bodies operate on circadian (daily), monthly and annual rhythms, but chronobiologists have only recently discovered seven-day patterns written into the biology of people, animals and plants. According to "The Secrets Our Body Clocks Reveal" by Susan Perry and Jim Dawson, the blood pressure cycle, coping hormone cycles, immune responses to infections, production of blood and urine chemicals, and even the heartbeat operate on a seven-day pattern.
a. Research by Halberg, Perry, Dawson and others has uncovered no cycles (between daily and monthly frequency) that occur in five, six, eight, nine or any other number of daysonly seven. http://132.248.9.1:8991/hevila/ARBSAnnualreviewofbiomedicalsciences/1999/vol1/5.pdf
7. The week is completely oblivious to seasons, tides, orbits and every other aspect of external nature. Nothing in the cosmos happens in seven days, so there is no astronomical reason for the week. There is no recurring cycle of the stars, moon, planets, sun, or anything else that happens in seven days time. So the week had to originate from another source. Science proves that the seven-day cycle is also etched deeply into mankinds DNA, proving it could not have been the invention of any society.
a. How interesting that the same is reflected in first two chapters of the book of Genesis. Why the Week? | theTrumpet.com by the Philadelphia Church of God
