Why there are Seven Days in a Week

Have you ever imagined why we have seven days in a week? Why don’t we have three, four or five days in a week instead of seven? In this article we will try to find out the fact about having seven days in a week.

As we all know that the period of seven days represents one week, it is considered as the historical division of time of Hebrew origin. We can also see the mention of seven days of week in many of the divine scriptures. Also we can see the division of week into seven days in a lunar calendar. This is perhaps based on the divine idea that the creation of universe took place in six days and perhaps the seventh day was added by Jews for the rest and recreation purposes. In former days, a Roman week based on eight days and was reduced to seven days later on in the light of Christian creed demanded Sabbath fall on every seventh day. As a legacy to Roman tradition, the British follow the same seven day a week division. The English titles of the week days, i.e. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday are of Norse or Roman origin.

These are mere assumptions. No one can assure the authenticity of any of the above point. To tell the truth, there is no solid information available in the history about the division of weeks into seven days. Every second scholar has his/her own opinion related to the seven days’ week principle. No matter what are the religious or secular backgrounds related to the seven days’ week division, today in the whole world, the week comprises of the seven days. This 24/7 clock routine is followed in the entire world to manage their day to day activity accordingly.

In many Indo-European languages, the names of the week days are based on the names of the planets or gods. There is a rumor that in past, the people were familiar with only seven planets and hence they named the seven week days after those planets’ titles of Roman or Greek deities, i.e. Sun, Saturn, Mars, Moon, Mercury, Venus, etc. The primitive man was under a great spell of supernatural creatures. He assumed every object a supernatural that was heavenly or more powerful than him. These heavenly bodies influenced the primitive man a lot and they were under awe and worship them, considering it as his divine being or deity. So, every day he had to worship a separate deity. So, these were seven in total and may provide us the logic of having seven days a week.

We have several such types of logics throughout the history, but we cannot take any of them as perfect evidence. These are nothing more than approximations and speculations which cannot be taken as account to base the evidence of seven days’ week principle on them. We might have to work little more to find out the truth behind having seven days in a week.

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