Culture · 6 pages · 12 min
Why the week is seven days
Seven does not fall out of the month or the year. It is an inherited count.
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From the opening
The week is seven days because two old institutions fixed that number and then the count never stopped: the Jewish cycle that ends in Shabbat, and the planetary week that named days for heavenly bodies. Neither number is produced by dividing a month or a year into equal whole pieces. The opening covers not a clean slice of the moon, shabbat cycle, planetary day names, and the count ignores the month.
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Inside
- Not a clean slice of the moon
- Shabbat cycle, planetary day names
- The count ignores the month
- A ten-day week did not last
- Where the idea stops applying
- A distinction worth keeping
Sources
- The seven-day Shabbat week
- The planetary week and European day names