Talk:Week

message: --Pnb73 (talk) 09:17, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lithuanian nine-day (or night) week 

message: I find on the web Vaster Guðmundsson believed that the Norse used a five day week prior to the borrowing of the seven day week, and used this in his reconstruction of the Norse calendar.
The only mention of a book is just Guðmundsson.  1924, p.88. 
This five-day week may have some relation to the Celtic half-week, although this was a five-night week, with four days.
Anyone know more?--Pnb73 (talk) 09:46, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Old Norse Five-day Week 

message: Many workers at the Port of Felixstowe work an eight day week, four days of 12 hours each on, and four days off. The port is a 24 hour operation so it appears this is a good idea. Interestingly this divides by 364 and the port only shuts on Christmas day (or during bad weather), although I'm not sure what happens during a leap year! Is anyone aware of anyone else diverting from the standard seven-day week? --Pnb73 (talk) 11:41, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other weeks used in a Gregorian Calendar Society 

message: Does it really matter what Radley College does?  Many organisations run on non-standard calendars
189.188.165.190 (talk) 18:34, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Radley College? 

message: A week is a time unit equal to seven days, used by the Jews at least since the time of Abraham[1], who probably lived between 2000 BCE and 1630 BCE[2].
OK, let us count the ways this makes no sense.
1) "used by the Jews at least since the time of Abraham" -- since Abraham is the earliest figure in the Old Testament whom one might reasonably call a Jew, the "at least" makes no sense.
2) Abraham to the best of my knowledge is not recorded in Genesis as using a calendar of any sort. The citation attached this statement refers to Moses, an entirely different figure.
3) Abraham is a legendary figure who may or may not have existed, and who is only referred to in the books of the bible, written hundreds or thousands of years after his supposed death.  I don't want to start a fight on religion, but his historicity is certainly up for debate, and a citation of a 100-year-old encyclopedia from a religious institution based in part the Abraham narrative isn't really a reliable source.
Surely the ancient Jewish use of the seven-day week ought to be mentioned in the lede, as it is the ultimate origin of the West's seven-day week, but the first sentence as currently written is nonsense.  Any suggestions on rewrites? --Jfruh (talk) 01:03, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The only support for the claim that the seven-day week system has been used by the Jewish since BCE 2000 was that it was mentioned in the Christian bible. This is not a reliable source at all; unless one is willing to accept other farfetched claims in the book like someone dividing the ocean in half and so. Removed as deserved.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 175.114.18.120 (talk) 17:29, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I am reverting both the edit introducing this information by Rdh288 and the partial reversion by 175.114.18.120 pending discussion. The seven-day week originated during the Jewish exile in Babylonia after 586 BCE, which both Colson in The Week (1926) and Zerubavel in The Seven Day Circle (1989) will support. At that time the Torah was committed to writing. The Babylonians did not have a continuously repeating seven-day week, although every seventh day of the lunar month was considered unlucky. See Seven-day week. — Joe Kress (talk) 22:54, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I admit that the bible quote included a typo where I wrote Abraham instead of Moses, and I should have used the Moses date instead of the Abraham date (I didn't catch it, probably because 2000 was probably more accurate for moses than 1200).  And I didn't realize that Wikipedia somehow managed to date Exodus as recent as 500 BC.  However, Why was the Chinese date removed?  I had a reliable source, and there wasn't any Bible connection to be attacked.  --Rdh288 (talk) 23:17, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  First sentence -- painfully misguided 

message: This article claims the Celts used an 8-day/9-night week. This can't possibly make sense, unless there's an extra day between every week. Moreover, there's no mention of this in the Celtic calendar article. Can someone clarify/correct this? 75.22.28.250 (talk) 15:50, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I fully agree, so I removed the whole section.  I left a message on Talk:Celtic calendar to see if anyone there can provide us a one or two sentence summary and pick a relevant citation or two.  I can try myself, but the week info there isn't specifically linked to a source.  Qwyrxian (talk) 23:42, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confused by Celtic week 

message: Week came from the Lunar phase. New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon and Last Quarter: There are nearly 7 days between them! Böri (talk) 11:45, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: That information would belong at Seven-day week, although you'll need a reliable source to verify it. Qwyrxian (talk) 13:02, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  reliable source: Time and the calendars (by W.M. O'Neil) Böri (talk) 13:38, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Feel free to take that over to Talk: Seven-day week; however, you'll have to deal with the fact that there are other reliable sources which disagree with that analysis, as far as I can see.  It's possible that both explanation should be in the article.  Qwyrxian (talk) 02:10, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  The name "month" came from the moon... Of course, they knew the lunar phase. (a month = 4 weeks) as easy as like that Böri (talk) 12:00, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: We need a page in O'Neil's book. — Joe Kress (talk) 01:22, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have the Turkish version of that book. (and my book is in İzmir now... & I'm in Istanbul.) Is there an online version of that book? Böri (talk) 13:29, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lunar phase 

message: You may be surprised to learn that the week of seven days and 24 hours is based on astronomy.  Which is why neither the revolutionary French, nor the early Bolsheviks, nor anyone else, have been able to change it.
The days of the week are based, as many know, on the Sun, Moon and five traditional planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.  This ordering is modern, by the way.  Sunday is the day of the Sun, Monday is the day of the Moon, Tuesday is the day of Mars, etc.
The 24 hour concept is based on this.  Starting with sunrise on Sunday (or any other day you choose), the first hour is "ruled" by the planet which "rules" the day.  In fact it is the planet that rules the first hour of the day that gives its name to the rest of the day.
Subsequent hours are ruled by subsequent planets, given in order of speed, not distance from the Sun, in this order:  Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars.  As this is a slice taken from the middle, it will do as well to give this sequence:  Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon.  Which then leads back to Saturn and a new cycle.
Starting with Sun at sunrise on Sunday and working through the various possibilities, one discovers the week of 7 days and 24 hours per day, a total of 168 separate hours before the entire cycle repeats.  
You will find more on this at Wiki's own article on Planetary Hours, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_hours , where we will discover, to our horror, that the week and its hours are based on evil astrology.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.15.119.52 (talk) 16:20, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Week defined 

message: I am quoting the part where I'd like to draw attention:
This sentence seems wrong to me. I am fine with the "with society split into three groups" part, but the following part reads just weird. "working different weeks of four days" maybe should have been phrased as "working on different four days of the week, followed by two rest-days".
It probably tries to say the same thing, but I claim that the current version is not exactly to the point. Or is it the case that English takes the word "week" as "working days" as a secondary meaning to it? If so, then take this as a comment from an average person, confused while reading through the article.
— manual signature: comment added by ThoAppelsin (talk • contribs) 17:00, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Six-day week, Argentinean astronomer's work 

message: There is an image described as "World map showing holidays of week in different countries". What are "holidays of week"? --Apoc2400 (talk) 16:21, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I was wondering  that myself.  --Khajidha (talk) 10:50, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think Holidays of week means normally non-working days such as Saturday & Sunday. Karl (talk) 12:38, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: At the very least it should be "holidays of the week" to be grammatically correct, but that expression isn't one that is generally used in English. Khajidha (talk) 10:38, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

text:  Agreed like Days of the week. Another concern was that the map's legend only shows colors for single days of the week, rather than sets such a Saturday and Sunday or Friday and Saturday. Karl (talk) 11:59, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Holidays of week? 

message: There are several issues with this article that should be thought over:
*In a very prominent place, the second paragraph of the lead, the article focusses on the English names of the weekdays. I find that misleading and not to the point. The topic of the article is the week itself, its definition, its characteristics and history, and that is what the lead should focus on.
:The names of the weekdays in English and other languages and their origins certainly are interesting and should have their place - somewhere down below in the article.
*The lead currently mentions astrology, it mentions the Gregorian calendar, it mentions the Roman era, but it does not mention the origins of the 7-day week. This has a slight smell of POV. Why hint at all kinds of historic eras except the one(s) the 7-day week originated in?
*The whole article conveys the impression of virtually painstakingly avoiding any emphasis on the biblical role of the 7 day week, and subsequently, of its role in Judaism, in Christianity, and in all cultures influenced by these religions. That, to me, is a quite clear case of POV.
:I think it goes without saying that none of us wants anything along the lines of "God made the world in seven days, so that's why we have a 7 day week".
:But the way this whole aspect currently is bashfully hidden in sections with nondescript titles grossly underrates and (purposely?) plays down the role of this part of the history of the week.
*Considering the enormous importance of the Hebrew tradition in the development of the 7 day week, not listing the Hebrew names of the weekdays is a definite gap in the article. The Greek names should also be added. The Anglo-Saxon or western hemisphere naming of the weekdays may be interesting, but they are not the cultural origin of the weekdays, as the article currently suggests.
--93.212.230.88 (talk) 23:01, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Not having been paying detailed attention to this article for many years, just observing from the side what goes on here occasionally, all the suggestions above strike as very good. I endorse all of them. Thanks. warshy (¥¥) 16:44, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Several issues 

message: Obscure is still the Christian Greek and Latin nomenclature in this article and in Names of the days of the week. From what I gather, from the Greek page of this article, Judaism had the Sabbath and all days were referred to it, thus "first from Sabbath", "second from Sabbath" etc. Christian Greek assumed this nomenclature and added the "Κυριακή ἡμέρα" ("day of the Lord"). All days then "δευτέρα Σαββάτου/ Σαββάτων" etc. Is this to be interpreted as "δευτέρα (ἡμέρα ἀπό) Σαββάτου" ("second [day from] Sabbath")? Then apparently Latin assumed this nomenclature, and, Sabbath being "rest", put "feria" ("holiday") for "Σαββάτου", where "feria" is truly ablative, thus being "secunda (dies ab) feria" ("second [day from] holiday", as the Greek page even translates "ἀπό ἑορτῆς")? This is fundamental since "secunda feria" by itself may be seen as "second holiday", a holiday, when truly it is no holiday, but one day reckoned from the holy day, Sabbath. Today this would affect also Portuguese "segunda feira" etc. By the time (c. 600 CE) Isidore of Seville writes, week days seem to be already interpreted as "feriae", "holidays", with him even (wrongly) saying "holiday" to be from "talking" ("feria a fando"), since these are days to discuss matters.  And even much earlier Pope Sylvester is told to have said all days should be holidays to every Christian. - GuitarDudeness (talk) 22:34, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  On Christian nomenclature 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: 1. The History section claims that the week was known in India back in 3000 BC. This is ridiculous. 
The concept of the 7-day week originated in the middle east and spread to Asia through Hellenistic contact (300 BC or later). 
2. There is a reference to the text Pancha Siddhantika, in relation to a 6th Century BCE date. This is incorrect too. The Pancha Siddhantika was composed a thousand years later. 
Please fix it. 
172.127.160.93 (talk) 18:09, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Week in India back in 3000 BC? 

message: I added this to the opening paragraph... Its origin is the 4 lunar phases of roughly 7 days each. 2601:580:102:D87D:65F0:2A7B:6443:A334 (talk) 17:00, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Two competing theories, this and another, are already in the article, so one cannot be in the lead alone. Putting both in the lead would be too much, so yours will be removed. — Joe Kress (talk) 03:30, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  7-Day Week & 4 Weeks in a 'Moonth' originated from 4 Lunar Phases of ~7 Days each 

message: has raised an issue over the dating of the composition of the books of Genesis and Exodus.  The traditional view is that they were composed by Moses around the time of the Exodus from Egypt, in which case the Babylonian captivity could not have influenced them.  However modern scholarship on both books (see their respective leads) dates them to the 5th or 6th century BC.  The Babylonian captivity was between 597 — 539 so Babylonian myth (possibly most noticeably Noah's flood) would have been a major influence as Genesis was codified.  I'm therefore reverting the edit to the status quo inline with modern scholarship unless an authoritative source for the earlier dates can be found. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 08:10, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Achaemenid period 

message: Talk:Seven-day week. i would like if somebody put link to it. also i think this probably should be done on all article merges. i would like it somebody starts a discussion about this in general wikipedia discussion and links to there from here. (maybe i will do that). --Qdinar (talk) 16:54, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  there is another talk page, of a merged page 

message: I've been doing some thinking, and I've come to the conclusion that the circle packing theory of the Babylonian "week" is particularly convoluted and dubious. As it is currently written, it is unclear how geometric circle packing in a circle relates to the astronomical bodies. Furthermore, it is unclear how the astronomical bodies relate to the number six. According to The Atlantic, the Babylonians recognized five planets, plus the sun and moon. I'm aware that many ancient cultures considered the sun and moon planets, so they had either five or seven planets. Somehow this means that six has a divine importance.
The reasoning behind the connection between the Earth's rotation and the number six is easier to understand, but in my opinion it still needs a reference. Due to how dubious the whole theory is, I plan to remove the paragraph in one month if a reliable source is not added by that time. Fyndegil (talk) 04:58, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Circle packing theory of the origin of the week 

message: The current text of the article says "The Hebrew Bible offers the explanation that God created the world in six days. The first day is then given the literal name First (in Hebrew: ראשון), the second being called Second (שני) and so forth for the first six days, with the exception of the seventh and final day, which rather than be called Seventh (שביעי), is called Shabbat (שבת) from the word לשבות (to rest)." This is inaccurate. The first day in the creation narrative is simply called: י֥וֹם אֶחָֽד ("Day One", or "one day"). Moreover, the seventh day isn't called שבת there, it is repeatedly called the Seventh Day in the creation narrative, on which God rested (וַיִּשְׁבֹּת֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י).
Barring an explicit source for this explanation, I'd be inclined to change this to "The Hebrew Bible offers the explanation that God created the world in six days. The first six days are simply numbered while the seventh day is given the name Sabbath since God rested on the seventh day." (We could optionally reference Exodus 20:11 for the last part.) Rxtreme (talk) 17:43, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you are correct, and I would agree to the proposed change. But I would mention Genesis 2:3, and Exodus 16:26 in that order, before mentioning Exodus 20:9, which is the one you are referring to above in the Hebrew version, I believe. Thank you, warshy (¥¥) 20:24, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  The first day in the Hebrew Bible 

message: I am surprised to see that no one has updated this article to include the latest research on the topic of the seven-day week by Sacha Stern, Professor of Rabbinic Judaism and Head of the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London. His article "The Seven-Day Week in the Roman Empire" (Ch. 1 of "Calendars in the Making: The Origins of Calendars from the Roman Empire to the Later Middle Ages" (Brill, 2021)) demonstrates that the seven-day week was an "invention of the early Roman imperial period." https://brill.com/display/book/edcoll/9789004459694/BP000011.xml 2601:153:680:1F40:6005:41FD:F6B8:CF35 (talk) 14:40, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: PDF of the article referenced above: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10126925/3/Stern_Chapter%201.pdf 2601:153:680:1F40:6005:41FD:F6B8:CF35 (talk) 14:47, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prof. Sacha Stern's research seems relevant 

message: There's currently text at the end of the lead section suggesting that Judaism, Christianity and Islam have different Sabbath days. I don't feel knowledgeable enough to edit this but my understanding was that all three religions would consider Saturday to be Sabbath, but Christianity and Islam have a different day for their main religious day for different reasons (but not just to avoid the other religions' days). It would be great if someone who can describe this better than me could edit that section. --Mgp28 (talk) 14:00, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: For Christians (except for Adventists and other groups like them), Sunday would be considered the Sabbath, as the holy day and/or day of rest. I don't know enough about Islam to know how they'd understand the question. Fyndegil (talk) 22:15, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

text: We consider Friday as 'Sabbath' in Islam, but as you said, it's for reasons other than not wanting to share the same day with different religions. Main reason is that it was described as a sacred day of worship in the Quran. I went ahead and edited that, but someone else should edit the part referring to Christianity if it's also wrong. MalakW.11517 (talk) 21:17, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm currently leaning towards the statement about Christianity not being correct. The only thing I've heard is that Christians worship on Sunday because it's the day of Christ's resurrection. I haven't seen any reliable sources that say they changed the day just to be different from Judaism, and I don't have any specific reasons why it couldn't coincide with the Jewish day of rest, but I'd like to find scholarly sources that address this matter before I make any edits. Fyndegil (talk) 22:17, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sabbath 

message: Re: Header 2603:7000:2307:FBD6:78C0:59A8:F432:2DC4 (talk) 04:25, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Days of the week table: add Babylonian? 

message: The source for the map seems to be in error. I can find no other source giving Friday as the first day of the week in the Maldives. I can, however, find several sources giving Sunday, for example calendar.mv. Asztalok (talk) 17:02, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Start of Week Map Error - Maldives 

message: There now seems to be a fairly consistent agreement among specialist calendrical scholars and historians that there is no evidence for Babylonian observance of a seven-day week. If there are no objections supported by evidence and statements from peer-reviewed scholarship, I will change this claim to reflect the combination of Jewish sabbath observance (apparently dating to the first temple era) and later popularization by the Romans to explain the week's origins. 
Here are some typical statements by scholars:
… the establishment of a seven-day week based on the regular observance of the Sabbath is a distinctively Jewish contribution to civilization. The choice of the     number 7 as the basis for the Jewish week might have had an Assyrian or   Babylonian origin, yet it is crucial to remember that the ancient dwellers of Mesopotamia themselves did not have a seven-day week. (Zerubavel, The Seven-Day Circle, 1989, p9)
 
Various claims, or rather assumptions, have been casually made about the ancient Egyptian or ancient Mesopotamian origins of the seven-day week. These assumptions are unfounded: there is actually no evidence of any seven-day cycle in all the     rich corpora of literary and astronomical sources of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. (Bultrighini and Stern, Calendars in the Making… Ed. Sacha Stern, 2021, p.11)
 
Apart from the Jewish week, only one seven-day cycle is known from the ancient world. This is the so-called planetary or astrological week. It probably came into use in the Roman world during the Hellenic period, probably in the first century     CE. (footnote: Despite the Babylonian interest in astrology, there is no evidence for the Babylonians observing a planetary week.) Living in the Eighth Day, Underdown, 2018, p155.
 
"Some people have argued that there are roots of this in Babylonia [which lasted     from around 1900 BCE – 500 BCE] but the evidence for that is pretty slim …  The Romans definitely had [a seven-day week]," Professor Henkin says. (David Henkin is a history professor at the University of California, Berkeley) Quoted in this online article –: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-05/how-did-the-seven-day-week-come-to-govern-our-lives/100672194
Henkin again: As the scholars Ilaria Bultrighini and Sacha Stern have recently documented, it was in the context of the Roman Empire that a standardised weekly     calendar emerged out of a combination and conflation of Jewish Sabbath counts and Roman planetary cycles. Viewed here: https://aeon.co/essays/how-we-came-to-depend-on-the-week-despite-its-artificiality Sineaste (talk) 06:10, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Erroneous attribution of the week's origins to Babylonia