Why are there seven days in a week??

Answer 1

one for each dwarf

Answer 2

Nobody really knows but it is most likely to be related to the moon's quarters. The moon's cycle from new moon to new moon is approximately 28 days. New to half moon (first quarter), half to full (second quarter), full to half (third quarter) and half to new (last quarter) are each approximately 7 days.

I suspect that naming each day after a god (or rather a planet associated with a god) came a little later but not much, since there is some correspondence between the god for each day in widely different cultures, but see the interesting theory for the order of the planets in the link below!

Foreknowledge of the moon's phases probably predates agriculture, since it would be useful to hunters, so it would be fairly safe to say that the seven days to a week thing is one of the earliest human organisations of time (as opposed to a natural sequence, like the seasons).

It really is ridiculous to quote the bible as the source of the seven day week! The creation myth was written TO FIT IN WITH an already existing period of seven days! That doesn't make the story any less valid or less of a representation of truth, it just shows that it was evolved and written down AFTER man became settled and agriculturally based.

Answer 3

The source will give you more information about the days of the week than you ever wanted to know...Basically, no one really knows. But here is a possibility:

Everyone needs a rest from work sometime. After our ancestors figured out the number of days in a year (it may have been more or less than the 365 days we know), they tried to find a divisor that could give them a suitable period of work, then rest. First, they tried 5, which goes into 365 evenly, but the best you could reasonably do there would be 3 days work, two days rest, or 4 days work and one rest. So they tried 6, and we get 61 weeks, sort of an odd number; then 8, and we get an even odder number, 45.6 weeks. So if we try 7, we get 52.1 weeks. Makes sense. Using 7 also makes sense because 4 times 7=28, which is the cycle of the moon and of women's periods (generally).

Answer 4

That's easy enough. The seven day week is based upon the Babylonian Creation story where God, called An or Anu, if I remember which word it is correctly, (a variant of Al, meaning Lord, from which many words are derived including Elohim, Allah, Bel, Baal and many others) created the world in a Metaphorical six days and rested on the seventh day. This Creation story is the template for the Creation so well known to us in the Bible's Book of Genesis.

The first day of the week is actually Sunday, and didn't become the Sabbath until around 400CE (AD) when the Roman Emperor Constantine declared Christianity as Rome's State Religion. The original, or actual Sabbath is actually Saturday.

The origins of the names of the days of the week, if you are interested, stem from what is now called Asatru (the Old Norse Religion) and Roman Religion.

The Names of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are Norse. Tuesday is named for the Norse God Of Justice "Tyr" and appears to mutated from his Rune Tiwaz. Wednesday is named For Odin who in earlier times was called "Wotan." Thursday is named for the God Thor, and Friday is named for the Goddess Frigga.

The names of Saturday, Sunday and Monday are Roman and named for celestial bodies. Saturday is named for the Planet Saturn, Sunday for the Sun and Monday for the Moon. These remained as they are considered the most influential celestial bodies in Roman Tradition.

Addition: think72 is correct. I was wrong when I said the planet based names are Roman in origin; although these names did come to us through them. I obviously forgot that these names are considerably older and that the planet based names are indeed Babylonian in origin. LOL, you'd think I'd have remembered that considering I knew the seven day week is Babylonian in origin. oops :)

Answer 5

The earliest calendars were simple tallies of days from one new moon to the next (where "new moon" means the reappearance of the moon after two or three days of invisibility).

Bones with 29 and 30 scratches have been found which are at least 40,000 years old, suggesting (since a lunation is approximately 29.5 days) that the scratches were a record of days (or nights) in a lunation.

This appeared to be the first attempt by humans to divide the sequence of days into periods. They would quickly have noted that four successive 7-day periods were almost, but not quite the number of days from one new moon to the next.

This gave rise to a calendar (such as is known to have been used by the Sumerians and Babylonians) in which the days of a lunation (a "month") were divided into four 7-day periods beginning with a new moon, followed by one or two days (not part of any 7-day period) until the next new moon.

Answer 6

The 7 days were called for during the the time of the Phoenicians. At that time most labor groups insisted upon having at least 1 free day (Saturday) and one worship day (Sunday). Since they already were required to work every day the work week got broken up into 7 days instead of 5 days. The trade unions voted and it became the law of the land. The 14 hour days became 8 hour days and they never looked back.

Answer 7

It would appear that the number of seven is related mostly to ancient babylonian astronomy that included 7 celestial objects. This included the sun and moon ( sunday monday) and 5 visble planets Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mercury and Mars.

Answer 8

Units of time are normally natural. The seven day week is the only one that isn't. It has nothing to do with the moon or the revolution or rotation of the earth. My guess is it goes back to the bible.

Answer 9

It's in the first bit of The Bible. God made everything in 6 days, then had a bit of a rest on the seventh, which happened to be a Sunday.
During the French Revolution, they tried with ten days to a week and ten months to a year, but it never really caught on.

Answer 10

The first pages of the Bible explain how God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. This seventh day became the Jewish day of rest, the sabbath, Saturday.

Answer 11

By trial and error it was discovered that you can only make people work for six days without a day off.