WEEK: Properly a period of seven days in
which each day has its definite place; in a wider
sense the week is a subdivision of
the month which
may not contain exactly seven days. The week in
its proper sense is now in general use among Christian peoples, but in antiquity was found only among
the Hebrews, and about the Christian era among
the astrologers of the
East. The Hebrew week was
based upon the Sabbath of Yahweh (see
Sabbath);
the astrological week depended upon the conception that each day in turn was controlled by the
"seven planets," the sun, moon, Mars, Mercury,
Jupiter, Venus, Saturn. In the first Christian centuries these two conceptions were combined in such
a way that Saturn's day coincided with the Sabbath.
The seven-day week was not found among other
ancient peoples than the Hebrews, but smaller divisions of time based on a division of the month
were the Greek and Egyptian, by which the month
fell into three parts, and the Indian, into two. The
Avesta calendar divided the month into two parts of
fourteen and sixteen days each, possibly these subdivided into two periods of seven and eight days
each. The Chinese had a sixty-day period. The
Mexicans divided the year into eighteen months of
twenty days each, and the Romans had a sort of
eight-day period, the eighth being market-day. Yet
even the Babylonians did not have a seven-day week,
though the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and
twenty-eighth days were "evil days," when fresh
bread, fresh roasted meats, fresh clothing, and the
like were unlawful for " the shepherd of the great
people " (the king?). But of a week proper there
was no knowledge, as is shown by the incommensurability of the week and the month. In Cappadocian tablets appears a week of five days, and in
Babylonian tablets there are traces of an astronomical division of the month into six and the year into
seventy-two five-day periods.
While, then, a regularly ordered week of seven
days was in antiquity limited to the Hebrews, the
employment of seven-day periods was much wider,
owing to the setting of special mystical value upon
the
number seven. Thus the continuation of festivities in Babylonia for seven days is an instance;
and such a period is of frequent mention in the Old
Testament for the Hebrews (e.g.,
Gen. vii. 4, 1. 10;
Ex. vii. 25;
Josh. vi. 4, 15,
etc.). Among the Persians and in ancient India the seven-day duration
was common for celebrations; the same is true of
the ancient Germans, where it was very
usual, while
seven-day and seven-year periods were known to
the early Greeks. But the Hebrew week does not
range itself with these. It is not probable that the
seven-day period of Babylonia is to be traced to a
quartering of the month first, and then to a relationship with seven. A favorite method of explaining the seven-day period is by referring it to the
seven planets; but the reckoning of just seven
planets is less common than the high estimation
placed upon the number seven. In Babylonia the
reckoning of seven planets can not be proved for a
high antiquity; and a connection of the Hebrew
week with the planets is untenable. Nor can the
holiness of the number seven be connected with the
Pleiades. Yet that the valuation of this number
was heightened by the number of planets known
and of the Pleiades is clear. The basis of the value
placed on sevens must have a more general ground.
This is found in the number itself and its qualities
-it is a number in itself representing a comprehensible magnitude not too large yet large enough for
common life relationships. Four, five, six, are too
small, too common, to carry the idea of
mystical
holiness; eight (twice four) and ten (twice five) are
too common and too obviously transparent; nine
approaches the value placed on seven as the square
of a sacred number; eleven is too large. But seven
is a prime number, its magnitude easily comprehensible yet large enough to be useful. A heightening of the value may have come about through the
coincidence of the seven-day periods of the moon,
and through observation of like periods in sickness,
to say nothing of the planets and the Pleiades.
With the planetary week the Hebrew week had
originally no connection; indeed, an early age for
the relation of the week to the number of planets is
not yet proved and does not appear in the cuneiform tablets, certainly not in the order now followed
of sun, moon, Mare, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn. But other principles of arrangement are discoverable, for instance, that of assumed distance
from the earth. The planets were also connected
with certain hours of the day in turn. While Dio
Cassius attributed the conception that the planets
ruled the days to the Egyptians, in reality it came
from Babylonia, the motherland of astrology. Rising there in the century before Christ, it spread
into the Roman Empire. In the cuneiform tablets
nothing has yet been found of the regularly alternating governing of the days by the planets, nor of
the arrangement of the planets according to their
distance from the earth. The Babylonian arrangement is often moon, sun, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn,
Mercury, and Mars; earlier still, moon, sun, Mercury,
Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The planetweek arose then among the astrologers of Hellenistic
times.
The Jews designated other days than the Sabbath
by numbers (cf.
Matt. xxviii. 1;
Acts xx. 7),
and
outside of the Sabbath only the sixth day as the day
of preparation received a special designation, the
Greek
equivalent being
prosabbaton
(in the title of
Pa. xcii. and
Mark xv. 42),
alongside of which stood
the term
Paraskeue,
and this appears in a rescript of
Augustus releasing the Jews from the necessity of
appearing before the court on
that day. The Christians, who took over the Jewish week, gave to the
first day, on which they assembled to break bread,
the name "the Lord's day" (He
kyriake hemera;
e.g., Ignatius, Ad
Magnesios, ix.;
Didache, xiv. 1);
but in general they designated the days by numbers,
using the Jewish terms as above for the sixth and
seventh days. The names given to the days from
the planets, which came into common use in the
first pre-Christian century, were avoided by . the
Christians; Justin (1 APol., Ixvii.) and Tertullian
employed them only in order to make their meaning clear to the non-Christians whom they addressed.
Not till after the middle of the third century did the
ordinary designation become common among Christians, and then for two centuries more only in the
West and in Egypt. But the astrological conception of control of the days or of planetary influence
upon them found entrance also, the idea being not
that heathen deities were powerful, but that man-
ticism was possible by this means. Still the official
language of the Church avoided the names derived
from the planets, except that
dies sobs ("
day of the
sun ") was used, and the use of
numerals was con
stant. In ordinary life, however, even Christians
employed the common designation derived from the
names of the planets.
(W. Lotz.)
Bibliography:
C.
L. Ideler, Hamdbuch der . . . Chronologie, i. 279 sqq., Berlin, 1825; E. Schrader, in TSB, 1874,
pp. 343-353; E. Mayer, in ZDMG, xxxvii,(1883), 453-455; F. Rommel, Aufaatze and
Abhanedlungen, pp. 373 sqq.,
Leipsic, 1892 sqq.; H. Winekler, Altorientalische Forschungen, ii. 91 sqq., 354 sqq., iii. 179 sqq., Leipsic, 1898-1902; idem, Religionsgeschichtlicher and alter Orient, pp.
58 sqq., ib. 1906; P. Jensen, in Zeitschrift für deutsche
Wortforschung, i (1900), 150-160; G. Schiaparelli, Die
Astronomic im Alter Testament, pp. 114-121, Giessen,
1904, Eng. transl., London, 1905; J. Meinhold, Sabbat
and YVoche im A. T., Göttingen, 1905; F. H. Ginzel,
Handbuch der . . . Chronologie, i. 94, Leipsic, 1906; A.
Jeremias, Das A. T. im Lichte des alter Orients, pp. 182-188, Leipsic, 1906, Eng. transl., 2 vols., London, 1911;
J. Heim, Siebenzahl and Sabbat bei den Babyloniern and
im A. T., Leipsic, 1907; Schrader, XAT, pp. 620 sqq.;
Benzinger, Archäologie, passim (consult Index under
" Woche," " Wochenfest "); and literature under
Moon;
Sabbath;
and
Year.
