Why are there 7 days in a week?

Question

why not 10, 8, etc.
why 7?

Answer 1

the seven day week is a consequence of the ancient babylonian religion. some 2600 years ago, the babylonians worshiped seven "deities": sun, moon, mars, jupiter, mercury, venus, and saturn. these were the known planets at the time. the babyloians chose to divide the day into 24 equal time periods. they chose 24 because it is divisible by a lot of smaller numbers. they dedicated each hour to one deity in order of its speed across the sky. it happens that the first hour of each day is therefore dedicated to a different deity and that day was named for that deity. the first day of the week is sunday (sun day, if you wish). the second day is monday (moon day), if you know the names of the next few days in french or spanish then you will recognize that tuesday (mardi, martes) is named for mars, wednsday (jeudi, jueves) is named for jupiter, thursday (mercredi, miércoles) is named for mercury, and friday (vendredi, viernes) is named for venus. the last day of the week is saturday (saturn day).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Week#Origin_of_the_seven-day_week

Answer 2

Digging into the history of the 7-day week is a very complicated matter. Authorities have very different opinions about the history of the week, and they frequently present their speculations as if they were indisputable facts. The only thing we seem to know for certain about the origin of the 7-day week is that we know nothing for certain.

The common explanation is that the seven-day week was established as imperial calendar in the late Roman empire and furthered by the Christian church for historical reasons. The British Empire used the seven-day week and spread it worldwide. Today the seven-day week is enforced by global business and media schedules, especially television and banking.

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.

Extra-biblical locations sometimes mentioned as the birthplace of the 7-day week include: Babylon, Persia, and several others. The week was known in Rome before the advent of Christianity.

There are practical geometrical theories as well. For example, if you wrap a rubber band around 7 soda cans (or any other convenient circular objects). You get a perfect hexagon with the 7th can in the middle. It is the only stable configuration of wrapping more than 3 circular objects. Four, 5, and 6 objects will slip from one configuration to another. Ancients wrapping tent poles, small logs for firewood, or other ciruclar objects might have come upon this number and attach a mystical significance to it.

One viable theory correlates the seven day week to the seven (astrological) "planets" known to the ancients: Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. The number seven does not seem an obvious choice to match lunar or solar periods, however. A solar year could be more evenly divided into weeks of 5 days, and the moon phases five-day and six-day weeks make a better short term fit (6 times 5 is 30) to the lunar (synodic) month (of about 29.53 days) than the current week (4 times 7 is 28). The seven-day week may have been chosen because its length approximates one moon phase (one quarter = 29.53 / 4 = 7.3825).

Answer 3

I guess it may have something to do with the Bible,and the world being created in six days with one eay of rest. If you believe that stuff. Fundamentally, it is arbitrary, and there is no reason it cannot be changed, so long as the year works out to 365 days (the length of time the earth takes to go round the sun) That 365 can be divided up any way you want.
But ten days in a week! No way Jose! ain't waiting eight days for the weekend to come around!

Answer 4

for goodnes sakes, it has to do with agriculture and mapping the seasons, for good times to farm, the aztecs and the egyptians both and everybody else came up with a week with seven days and even figuired out that every four years we need to add a day, there were calendars before the bible, on a side note ancient greeks and egyptians knew that the earth was round to, does that blow your mind some farmer figuired it out from the shade at certain times of the year, specifically the solstice

Answer 5

There are 7 days in a week just because God ceated the seven days in the 6 days(Sunday-1st day,to Friday-6th day) of earth's creation and the 7th day(Saturday) in which He rested.Days were created too as creatures,bodies and entities were created.You will read "And God said, let there be light:and there was light....And God called the light Day and the darkness He called Night.And the evening and the morning were the first day...And God said,let Us make man in our own image...And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made;and He rested from all His work which He had made.And God blessed the seventh day,and sanctified it:because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made.'' So that is that,God chose and made them to be 7. See ref.Ali.

Answer 6

There was a Beatles song called 8 days a week. Perhaps 8 days would be better than 7.

Answer 7

there are seven days,,because someone ages ago said lets make 7 days in a week..that is why,and everyone is too weak minded to query this, and as at the present time people just follow others.

Answer 8

Because the moon takes 28 days to orbit the Earth. The phases of the moon look different depending on its position, so a quarter of the way round is the first significant phase and this is 7 days into its journey, and so on. Hope this helps!

Answer 9

Well measurements of time really is just an irrational. Meaning much like number systems just based on perception. Week ,month ,and year are just names and how we group it it shorten having to say the number of days or weeks. Does anyone really know what time it is does anyone really care.

Answer 10

Because that's what it says in the Bible. The length of days 1,2, and 3 are highly debatable as the sun didn't appear until day 4.
This is an interesting article if you want to take it further......http://www.kiva.net/~kls/page2.html