premjan

As I expected you have not even looked at the form of the Babylonian calendar. It is lunisolar with an intercalary month. Of course the Hebrew calendar must be unique, it is Judeo-Christian after all.

spamandham

The week is 7 days long because there are 7 "non-fixed" eye-visible celestial objects.

The days of the week are even named after these objects:

Sunday - Sun
Monday - Moon
Tuesday - Mars
Wednesday - Mercury
Thursday - Venus
Friday - Jupiter
Saturday - Saturn

It has nothing to do with 7 being a good number for calendars.

andrewcriddle

I'm worried that we may be misunderstanding each other.

Are you claiming that the Babylonian Calendar was a continuous seven day cycle ? IE that day 7 is a special day and so is Day 7n where n can be any positive integer whatever ?

If so please explain how this worked.

Or are you just saying that although the Babylonian Calendar was not a continuous seven day cycle and the Hebrew Calendar was, this difference is only a minor detail ?

Andrew Criddle

premjan

I think it is simply because 7 days is the interval between a new moon and a half moon, or a half moon and a full moon, etc.

andrewcriddle

This is the Hellenistic Astrological Week which is (almost certainly) later than the Hebrew Week. (Although, as I said in my earlier post, the Astrological Week appears to have arisen more or less independently of the Hebrew Week)

Andrew Criddle

semiopen

My above post was no model of clarity; but here, 100s of relics of the first temple?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n.../87301540.html

Were you referring to the ceramic bowl sherds in this link?

semiopen

Andrew, do you have a source for your position that the Hebrew week is older than the Babylonian... thanks

andrewcriddle

The Babylonian week (If you mean the practice of celebrating the 7th 14th 21st and 28th days of the month) is not a continuous seven day cycle. Nor does it involve naming days after the planets in a seven day pattern. IE The Babylonian week may be older than the Hebrew week but it is not a real week as normally understood.

The Astrological week developed in Hellenistic times and is a continuous seven day cycle with the days named after the planets. Among the reasons for dating it late are that we have no solid evidence for it until after 50 CE and it assumes an order of the planets with Saturn furthest from Earth then Jupiter then Mars then the Sun then Venus then Mercury then the Moon nearest of all. This order is only established in Hellenistic times.

(The order of the names of the days comes from the order of the planets by giving successive hours successive planetary rulers, with the First hour of the First day represented by Saturn the Second hour of the First day represented by Jupiter etc. Hence the First hour of the Second Day (the 25th hour) is represented by the Sun the First hour of the Third day (the 49th hour) is represented by the Moon and so on. Hence Saturn's day (the day whose first hour is ruled by Saturn) is followed by the Sun's day followed by the Moon's day followed by Mars' day followed by Mercury's day followed by Jupiter's day followed by Venus' day. )

Andrew Criddle

ETA

This is a reasonably good reference about the astrological week

spamandham

It doesn't matter. The significance of '7' is derived from these same celestial objects in Sumerian numerology, upon which the significance of 7 is based in Judaism. Once you pick 7, it fits kinda-sorta nicely into the lunar cycle, so using it is somewhat natural.

Unless there is something interesting about 7 from an accuracy perspective (there isn't), it's reasonable to approach this from a comparative religion perspective.

If Neptune were eye visible, there would be 8 days in a week.

kcdad

If you think of all structures of society as being created to help us get through our lives, the calendar is certainly one of those.

Once we solve the problem of finding enough food to eat, we start thinking about what is going on around us. We notice that at night (and there seems to be an almost endless supply of that) that there is a big shiny object in the sky that changes it shape on a regular basis... hmmm how regular? hmmmm it seems about every 28 times it is dark, it resumes it full shape. So every 14 times it is half as big and 7 times it is 1/4 as big and every 3 1/2 times it is 1/8 as big... CRAP! 3 1/2 put us in the day time... go back to the 1/4 phases... HEY! That's a good name for it...Phases of the ... what should we call it? Go ask the cow. OK, He says we should call it the mooooooooooooo. OK. Phases of the moo.

Now, what are we going to call those things in between the phases.. those 7 things?
What difference does it make... we could name it after the Gods. Sure, but we could also name it after the planets and stars... Hey dummy... what's the difference?