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67-523: (Redirected from Eighth Day ) The Eighth Day may refer to: Observances [ edit ] Octave (liturgy) Shemini Atzeret , the eighth day of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles The eighth day (Christian) Film [ edit ] Gattaca , a 1997 film with working title The Eighth Day On the 8th Day (1984 film) , a documentary about nuclear winter The Eighth Day (1996 film) ,

134-504: A year may be designated for a particular purpose, such as Golden Week in China and Japan , and National Family Week in Canada. More informally, certain groups may advocate awareness weeks , which are designed to draw attention to a certain subject or cause. The term "week" may also be used to refer to a sub-section of the week, such as the workweek and weekend . Cultures vary in which days of

201-433: A Belgian film, directed by Jaco Van Dormael Literature [ edit ] The Eighth Day (Wilder novel) , a 1967 novel by Thornton Wilder The Eighth Day (Westphal book) , by Euler Renato Westphal The Eighth Day (Kakuta novel) , 2007, by Mitsuyo Kakuta Music [ edit ] 8th Day (Jewish band) , an American Hasidic pop rock band 8th Day (R&B group) , an American R&B group active in

268-674: A Dedication Festival or Patronal Festival may be celebrated on the Second Sunday of Easter. Among the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Rite Eastern Catholic Churches , what in the West would be called an Octave is referred to as an Afterfeast . The celebration of the Great Feasts of the church year are extended for a number days, depending upon the particular Feast. Each day of an Afterfeast will have particular hymns assigned to it, continuing

335-547: A bookstore in Wichita, Kansas Octava Dies Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title The Eighth Day . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Eighth_Day&oldid=1231882309 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description

402-487: A formation *tъ(žь)dьnь (Serbian тједан , tjedan , Croatian tjedan , Ukrainian тиждень , tyzhden , Czech týden , Polish tydzień ), from *tъ "this" + *dьnь "day". Chinese has 星期 , as it were " planetary time unit ". An older Chinese form is 禮拜 , meaning "week, religious ceremony." A week is defined as an interval of exactly seven days , so that, except when passing through daylight saving time transitions or leap seconds , With respect to

469-700: A seven-day week; referring to the Jews during the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BCE, after the destruction of the Temple of Solomon . While the seven-day week in Judaism is tied to Creation account in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible (where God creates the heavens and the earth in six days and rests on the seventh; Genesis 1:1-2:3, in the Book of Exodus , the fourth of

536-517: A term for the full moon . The Sumerian term has been reconstructed as rendered Sapattu or Sabattu in Babylonian , possibly present in the lost fifth tablet of the Enûma Eliš , tentatively reconstructed "[Sa]bbath shalt thou then encounter, mid[month]ly". However, Niels-Erik Andreasen , Jeffrey H. Tigay , and others claim that the Biblical Sabbath is mentioned as a day of rest in some of

603-523: A wish", and at least the 28th was known as a "rest day". On each of them, offerings were made to a different god and goddess. Though similar, the later practice of associating days of the week with deities or planets is not due to the Babylonians. A continuous seven-day cycle that runs throughout history without reference to the phases of the moon was first practiced in Judaism , dated to the 6th century BCE at

670-463: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Octave (liturgy) Octaves, not being successive, are quite distinct from eight-day weeks and simply refer to the return of the same day of a seven-day week in the inclusive counting system used in Latin (just as the ninth day was a return to the same day of a nundinal cycle , the eight-day week of

737-540: Is named in many languages by a word derived from "seven". The archaism sennight ("seven-night") preserves the old Germanic practice of reckoning time by nights, as in the more common fortnight ("fourteen-night"). Hebdomad and hebdomadal week both derive from the Greek hebdomás ( ἑβδομάς , "a seven"). Septimana is cognate with the Romance terms derived from Latin septimana ("seven mornings"). Slavic has

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804-756: Is no precise parallel to the Israelite Sabbatical week. This leads to the conclusion that the Sabbatical week, which is as unique to Israel as the Sabbath from which it flows, is an independent Israelite creation. The seven-day week seems to have been adopted, at different stages, by the Persian Empire , in Hellenistic astrology , and (via Greek transmission ) in Gupta India and Tang China . The Babylonian system

871-733: The Oktav in honour of Our Lady of Luxembourg , patroness of the city. Despite its name, the occasion is held from the 3rd to the 5th Sunday after Easter , making it 15 instead of 8 days. Seven-day week A week is a unit of time equal to seven days . It is the standard time period used for short cycles of days in most parts of the world. The days are often used to indicate common work days and rest days, as well as days of worship . Weeks are often mapped against yearly calendars . Ancient cultures had different "week" lengths, including ten in Egypt and an eight-day week for Etruscans . The Etruscan week

938-611: The Anglican Communion traditionally observed octaves associated with the feasts of Christmas , Corpus Christi , Epiphany , Michaelmas , Easter , and All Saints' Day . Many provinces have followed the Catholic Church and altered the practice of observing octaves. In the Church of England , the only octave that remains in some form is that of Easter: no other feasts may be celebrated in the six days following Easter Sunday, and only

1005-584: The Coptic , Julian , and Gregorian calendars, demonstrated by the date of Easter Sunday having been traced back through numerous computistic tables to an Ethiopic copy of an early Alexandrian table beginning with the Easter of 311 CE. A tradition of divinations arranged for the days of the week on which certain feast days occur develops in the Early Medieval period. There are many later variants of this, including

1072-662: The Day of the Sun ( dies Solis ) a legal holiday. The Zoroastrian calendar follows the Babylonian in relating the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th of the 29- or 30-day lunar month to Ahura Mazda . The forerunner of all modern Zoroastrian calendars is the system used to determine dates in the Persian Empire , adopted from the Babylonian calendar by the 4th century BCE. Frank C. Senn in his book Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical points to data suggesting evidence of an early continuous use of

1139-515: The Epiphany as in the East, and the feast of the dedication of a church . From the 7th century, saints’ feasts also began to have octaves (as an eighth-day feast, not eight days of feasting), among the oldest being those of Saints Peter and Paul , Saint Lawrence and Saint Agnes . From the 12th century, the custom arose of liturgical observance of the days between the first and the eighth day, as well as

1206-516: The Gregorian calendar : In a Gregorian mean year, there are 365.2425 days, and thus exactly 52 + 71 ⁄ 400 or 52.1775 weeks (unlike the Julian year of 365.25 days or 52 + 5 ⁄ 28 ≈ 52.1786 weeks, which cannot be represented by a finite decimal expansion). There are exactly 20,871 weeks in 400 Gregorian years, so 29 November 1624 was a Friday just as was 29 November 2024. Relative to

1273-475: The Noah -like character of Utnapishtim leaves the ark seven days after it reaches the firm ground. Counting from the new moon , the Babylonians celebrated the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th of the approximately 29- or 30-day lunar month as "holy days", also called "evil days" (meaning inauspicious for certain activities). On these days, officials were prohibited from various activities and common men were forbidden to "make

1340-589: The Pharisee and the Publican ( Luke 18:12 ) describes the Pharisee as fasting "twice in the week" ( Greek : δὶς τοῦ σαββάτου , romanized :  dis tou sabbatou ). In the account of the women finding the tomb empty, they are described as coming there "toward the one of the sabbaths" ( Greek : εἰς μίαν σαββάτων, τῇ μιᾷ τῶν σαββάτων ); translations substitute "week" for "sabbaths". The ancient Romans traditionally used

1407-647: The Ten Commandments is to rest on the seventh day, Shabbat , which can be seen as implying a socially instituted seven-day week), it is not clear whether the Genesis narrative predates the Babylonian captivity of the Jews in the 6th century BCE. At least since the Second Temple period under Persian rule, Judaism relied on the seven-day cycle of recurring Sabbaths . Tablets from the Achaemenid period indicate that

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1474-495: The liturgy was the same as on the feast day itself, with the exact same prayers and Scripture readings. Octaves were classified into several types. Easter and Pentecost had “specially privileged” octaves, during which no other feast whatsoever could be celebrated. Christmas, Epiphany, and Corpus Christi had “privileged” octaves, during which certain highly ranked feasts might be celebrated. The octaves of other feasts allowed even more feasts to be celebrated therein. To reduce

1541-487: The lunation of 29 or 30 days basically contained three seven-day weeks, and a final week of eight or nine days inclusive, breaking the continuous seven-day cycle. The Babylonians additionally celebrated the 19th as a special "evil day", the "day of anger", because it was roughly the 49th day of the (preceding) month, completing a "week of weeks", also with sacrifices and prohibitions. Difficulties with Friedrich Delitzsch 's origin theory connecting Hebrew Shabbat with

1608-582: The patron saint of a particular nation, diocese, or church was celebrated therein with an octave, on each day of which the Mass and Office of the feast was repeated, unless impeded by a higher-ranked celebration. Although the feasts of St. Lawrence and the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary officially still had simple octaves, by the 20th century they had all but vanished as higher-ranking feasts were added to

1675-516: The remainder after dividing the Julian day number by seven (JD modulo 7 + 1) yields that date's ISO 8601 day of the week. For example, the Julian day number of 29 November 2024 is 2460644. Calculating 2460644 mod 7 + 1 yields 5, corresponding to Friday. In 1973, John Conway devised the Doomsday rule for mental calculation of the weekday of any date in any year. The days of the week were named for

1742-413: The (contemporary) Julian calendar, 6 February 60 was, however, a Wednesday . This is explained by the existence of two conventions of naming days of the weeks based on the planetary hours system: 6 February was a "Sunday" based on the sunset naming convention, and a "Wednesday" based on the sunrise naming convention. According to Islamic beliefs, the seven-day a week concept started with the creation of

1809-476: The 1970s "8th Day" (song) , by Canadian country music artist Dean Brody "The Eighth Day" (The Damned song) , a song by The Damned on their 1985 album Phantasmagoria " Eighth Day (Hazel O'Connor song) ", a song by Hazel O'Connor from the album Breaking Glass The 8th Day (album) , by American underground nerdcore rapper Raheem Jarbo "The Eighth Day", a song recorded by Screamin' Jay Hawkins See also [ edit ] Eighth Day Books ,

1876-558: The 1st century CE, along with references to the Jewish Sabbath by Roman authors such as Seneca and Ovid . When the seven-day week came into use in Rome during the early imperial period, it did not immediately replace the older eight-day nundinal system. The nundinal system had probably fallen out of use by the time Emperor Constantine adopted the seven-day week for official use in CE 321, making

1943-510: The Babylonian lunar cycle include reconciling the differences between an unbroken week and a lunar week, and explaining the absence of texts naming the lunar week as Shabbat in any language. In Jewish sources by the time of the Septuagint , the term "Sabbath" ( Greek : Σάββατον , romanized :  Sábbaton ) by synecdoche also came to refer to an entire seven-day week, the interval between two weekly Sabbaths. Jesus's parable of

2010-520: The German Bauern-Praktik and the versions of Erra Pater published in 16th to 17th century England, mocked in Samuel Butler 's Hudibras . South and East Slavic versions are known as koliadniki (from koliada , a loan of Latin calendae ), with Bulgarian copies dating from the 13th century, and Serbian versions from the 14th century. Medieval Christian traditions associated with

2077-479: The Germanic tradition of names based on indigenous deities. The ordering of the weekday names is not the classical order of the planets (by distance in the planetary spheres model, nor, equivalently, by their apparent speed of movement in the night sky). Instead, the planetary hours systems resulted in succeeding days being named for planets that are three places apart in their traditional listing. This characteristic

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2144-567: The Jewish week was adopted from the Babylonians while removing the moon-dependency. George Aaron Barton speculated that the seven-day creation account of Genesis is connected to the Babylonian creation epic, Enûma Eliš , which is recorded on seven tablets. In a frequently-quoted suggestion going back to the early 20th century, the Hebrew Sabbath is compared to the Sumerian sa-bat "mid-rest",

2211-676: The Lord, with proper readings and prayers. The Second Sunday of Easter , which ends the Easter Octave, has also been called “White Sunday” (Dominica in albis), among other traditional names . The Christmas Octave is presently arranged as follows: The liturgical calendar of the Lutheran Churches may have octaves for the following feasts: "The Nativity of Our Lord, The Epiphany of Our Lord, The Resurrection of Our Lord, All Saints, Ascension Day, Pentecost and Trinity Sunday ." Churches within

2278-533: The calendar. The octave day alone of St. Lawrence was still commemorated during the Mass of St. Hyacinth . The entire octave of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary was impeded, but The Most Holy Name of Mary was celebrated during the octave, and The Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary was celebrated on the former octave day. Pope Pius XII further simplified the Calendar with a decree dated 23 March 1955: only

2345-596: The day called the day of Kronos (Saturday). Ravivāra/Bhānuvāsara/ Ādityavāra Somavāra/ Induvāsara Saumyavāsara Sthiravāsara An ecclesiastical, non-astrological, system of numbering the days of the week was adopted in Late Antiquity. This model also seems to have influenced (presumably via Gothic ) the designation of Wednesday as "mid-week" in Old High German ( mittawehha ) and Old Church Slavonic ( срѣда ). Old Church Slavonic may have also modeled

2412-622: The earliest layers of the Pentateuch dated to the 9th century BCE at the latest, centuries before the Babylonian exile of Judah . They also find the resemblance between the Biblical Sabbath and the Babylonian system to be weak. Therefore, they suggest that the seven-day week may reflect an independent Israelite tradition. Tigay writes: It is clear that among neighboring nations that were in position to have an influence over Israel – and in fact which did influence it in various matters – there

2479-452: The eight-day nundinum but, after the Julian calendar had come into effect in 45 BCE, the seven-day week came into increasing use. For a while, the week and the nundinal cycle coexisted, but by the time the week was officially adopted by Constantine in 321 CE, the nundinal cycle had fallen out of use. The association of the days of the week with the Sun, the Moon and the five planets visible to

2546-464: The eighth day. During the Middle Ages , octaves for various other feasts and saints were celebrated, depending upon the diocese or religious order . While Pope Pius V reduced the amount of octaves in 1568, these were still numerous. Not only on the eighth day from the feast but, with the exception of the octaves of Easter, Pentecost, and, to a lesser extent, Christmas, on all the intervening days

2613-540: The first day of the week. Prior to 2000, Saturday was judged as the first day of the week in much of the Middle East and North Africa due to the Islamic influence; however, this is no longer the case. Other regions are mixed, but typically observe either Sunday or Monday as the first day. The three Abrahamic religions observe different days of the week as their holy day. Jews observe their Sabbath ( Shabbat ) on Saturday,

2680-702: The hours of Friday, i. e. between afternoon and night. The earliest known reference in Chinese writings to a seven-day week is attributed to Fan Ning, who lived in the late 4th century in the Jin dynasty , while diffusions from the Manichaeans are documented with the writings of the Chinese Buddhist monk Yi Jing and the Ceylonese or Central Asian Buddhist monk Bu Kong of the 7th century ( Tang dynasty ). The Chinese variant of

2747-685: The hymns that were chanted on the first day of the Feast are repeated. On the Apodoses of Feasts of the Theotokos , the Epistle and Gospel of the Feast are repeated again at the Divine Liturgy . The term "octave" is applied to some church observances that are not strictly liturgical. For example, many churches observe an annual "Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity ", which runs from 18 January to 25 January. The octave

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2814-608: The key celestial bodies visible to the naked eye numbered seven (the Sun, the Moon and the five closest planets). Gudea , the priest-king of Lagash in Sumer during the Gutian dynasty (about 2100 BCE), built a seven-room temple, which he dedicated with a seven-day festival. In the flood story of the Assyro-Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh , the storm lasts for seven days, the dove is sent out after seven days (similarly to Genesis), and

2881-423: The latest. There are several hypotheses concerning the origin of the biblical seven-day cycle. Friedrich Delitzsch and others suggested that the seven-day week being approximately a quarter of a lunation is the implicit astronomical origin of the seven-day week, and indeed the Babylonian calendar used intercalary days to synchronize the last week of a month with the new moon. According to this theory,

2948-462: The lucky or unlucky nature of certain days of the week survived into the modern period. This concerns primarily Friday , associated with the crucifixion of Jesus . Sunday , sometimes personified as Saint Anastasia , was itself an object of worship in Russia, a practice denounced in a sermon extant in copies going back to the 14th century. Sunday , in the ecclesiastical numbering system also counted as

3015-457: The naked eye dates to the Roman era (2nd century). The continuous seven-day cycle of the days of the week can be traced back to the reign of Augustus ; the first identifiable date cited complete with day of the week is 6 February 60 CE, identified as a " Sunday " (as viii idus Februarius dies solis "eighth day before the ides of February, day of the Sun") in a Pompeiian graffito. According to

3082-532: The name of Monday, понєдѣльникъ , after the Latin feria Secunda . The ecclesiastical system became prevalent in Eastern Christianity , but in the Latin West it remains extant only in modern Icelandic , Galician , and Portuguese . The earliest evidence of an astrological significance of a seven-day period is decree of king Sargon of Akkad around 2300 BCE. Akkadians venerated the number seven, and

3149-445: The newly converted to take a joyful retreat. The development of octaves occurred slowly. From the 4th century to the 7th century, Christians observed octaves with a celebration on the eighth day, with little development of the liturgies within the intervening days. Christmas was the next feast to receive an octave, and by the 8th century, Rome had developed liturgical octaves not only for Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas, but also for

3216-473: 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." The astrological concept of planetary hours is an innovation of Hellenistic astrology, probably first conceived in the 2nd century BCE. The seven-day week was widely known throughout the Roman Empire by

3283-520: The occasion under the title " Week of Prayer for Christian Unity ", but it is still often referred to as an octave, especially within the Roman Catholic , Lutheran and Anglo-Catholic traditions. The Week of Prayer is observed at various times around the world, especially in the Southern Hemisphere where it is commonly observed from Ascension to Pentecost. Each year, Luxembourg celebrates

3350-653: The octaves of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost were kept, as these did not repeat the same liturgy daily. All other octaves in the Roman Rite were suppressed, including those of local calendars (see General Roman Calendar of Pope Pius XII#Octaves ). In 1969, the Church further revised the Calendar by deleting the Octave of Pentecost. The first eight days of the Easter Season were made the Octave of Easter and celebrated as Solemnities of

3417-434: The path of the Moon , a week is 23.659% of an average lunation or 94.637% of an average quarter lunation. Historically, the system of dominical letters (letters A to G identifying the weekday of the first day of a given year) has been used to facilitate calculation of the day of week . The day of the week can be easily calculated given a date's Julian day number (JD, i.e. the integer value at noon UT ): Adding one to

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3484-428: The planetary system was brought to Japan by the Japanese monk Kūkai (9th century). Surviving diaries of the Japanese statesman Fujiwara Michinaga show the seven-day system in use in Heian Period Japan as early as 1007. In Japan, the seven-day system was kept in use for astrological purposes until its promotion to a full-fledged Western-style calendrical basis during the Meiji Period (1868–1912). The seven-day week

3551-457: The pre-Christian Roman calendar ). The "eighth day" or octava dies was associated with the weekly Christian celebration of the resurrection of Christ every "eighth day", which became a name for Sunday . As circumcision is performed in Judaism on the “eighth day” after birth, the number 8 became associated in Christianity with Baptism , and baptismal fonts have from an early date often been octagonal . The practice of octaves

3618-447: The repetition of the same liturgy for several days, Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius X made further distinctions, classifying octaves into three primary types: privileged, common, and simple. Privileged octaves were further arranged in a hierarchy of first, second, and third orders. For the first half of the 20th century, octaves were ranked in the following manner, which affected holding other celebrations within them: In addition to these,

3685-448: The rest of the world. In English, the names of the days of the week are Sunday , Monday , Tuesday , Wednesday , Thursday , Friday , and Saturday . In many languages, including English, the days of the week are named after gods or classical planets. Saturday has kept its Roman name, while the other six days use Germanic equivalents. Such a week may be called a planetary week (i.e., a classical planetary week). Certain weeks within

3752-406: The seven classical planets , which included the Sun and Moon. This naming system persisted alongside an "ecclesiastical" tradition of numbering the days in ecclesiastical Latin beginning with Dominica (the Lord's Day ) as the first day. The Greco-Roman gods associated with the classical planets were rendered in their interpretatio germanica at some point during the late Roman Empire, yielding

3819-404: The seventh day, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, in honor of God's creation of the world in six days and then resting on the seventh. Most Christians observe Sunday (the Lord's Day ), the first day of the week in traditional Christian calendars, in honor of the resurrection of Jesus . Muslims observe their "day of congregation" , known as yaum al- jum`ah , on Friday because it

3886-400: The theme of the Feast being celebrated. Most of these Great Feasts (except Feasts within the moveable Paschal Cycle) also have a day or more of preparation called a Forefeast . Forefeasts and Afterfeasts will affect the structure of the services during the Canonical Hours . The last day of an Afterfeast is called the Apodosis (lit. "giving-back") of the Feast. On the Apodosis , most of

3953-413: The universe by Allah. Abu Huraira reported that Muhammad said: Allah, the Exalted and Glorious, created the clay on Saturday and He created the mountains on Sunday and He created the trees on Monday and He created the things entailing labour on Tuesday and created light on Wednesday and He caused the animals to spread on Thursday and created Adam after 'Asr on Friday; the last creation at the last hour of

4020-459: The week are designated the first and the last, though virtually all have Saturday, Sunday or Monday as the first day. The Geneva -based ISO standards organization uses Monday as the first day of the week in its ISO week date system through the international ISO 8601 standard. Most of Europe and China consider Monday the first day of the (work) week, while North America, Israel, South Asia, and many Catholic and Protestant countries, consider Sunday

4087-427: Was adopted by the ancient Romans , but they later moved to a seven-day week, which had spread across Western Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean due to the influence of the Christian seven-day week, which is rooted in the Jewish seven-day week. In 321 CE, Emperor Constantine the Great officially decreed a seven-day week in the Roman Empire, including making Sunday a public holiday. This later spread across Europe, then

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4154-419: Was apparently discussed in Plutarch in a treatise written in c. 100 CE, which is reported to have addressed the question of Why are the days named after the planets reckoned in a different order from the actual order? (the text of Plutarch's treatise has been lost). Dio Cassius (early 3rd century) gives two explanations in a section of his Historia Romana after mentioning the Jewish practice of sanctifying

4221-475: Was described as a sacred day of congregational worship in the Quran . The English word week comes from the Old English wice , ultimately from a Common Germanic * wikōn- , from a root * wik- "turn, move, change". The Germanic word probably had a wider meaning prior to the adoption of the Roman calendar , perhaps "succession series", as suggested by Gothic wikō translating taxis "order" in Luke 1:8. The seven-day week

4288-464: Was established in 1895 by Pope Leo XIII for the period between Ascension and Pentecost . In 1909, Pope Pius X approved the transfer of this octave to the period between the former feast of the Chair of St. Peter (then on January 18) and the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (January 25). In 1968, the World Council of Churches and the Vatican 's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity agreed to jointly publish prayer materials for

4355-406: Was first introduced under Constantine I , when the dedication festivities of the basilicas at Jerusalem and Tyre, Lebanon were observed for eight days. After these one-off occasions, annual liturgical feasts began to be dignified with an octave. The first such feasts accorded such were Easter , Pentecost , and in the East , Epiphany . This occurred in the 4th century and served as a time for

4422-515: Was known in India by the 6th century, referenced in the Pañcasiddhāntikā . Shashi (2000) mentions the Garga Samhita , which he places in the 1st century BCE or CE, as a possible earlier reference to a seven-day week in India. He concludes "the above references furnish a terminus ad quem (viz. 1st century) The terminus a quo cannot be stated with certainty". The seven-day weekly cycle has remained unbroken in Christendom , and hence in Western history , for almost two millennia, despite changes to

4489-452: Was received by the Greeks in the 4th century BCE (notably via Eudoxus of Cnidus ). Although some sources, such as the Encyclopædia Britannica, state that the Babylonians named the days of the week after the five planets, the sun, and the moon, many scholars disagree. Eviatar Zerubavel says, "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

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