Why 7 days for Creation?

@Leadfoot,

Gonads in Space, perhaps

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@Leadfoot,

That would really be "panspermia"

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@hightor,

Golf with Donald.

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@farmerman,

I would never countenance sperm from that false god Pan.

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@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

From a historical and astronomical perspective, is there any significance to why the standard biblical creation story involves 7 days? Why 7 days in particular?

Much of the bible seems to be based on various astronomical events and on pre-existing stories from various religions, so I'm wondering if there is something special (or historic) about 7 Days.

I'm convinced that its directly related to early development in agriculture. Knowing the right times to plant and harvest helped early farmers. The best way to remember these ideal times is to create a system for tracking when they occur.

Lunar light changes are a great way to keep track. A twenty eight day cycle worked well and it evenly is reduced to four sets of seven days. So seven days were far easier to track than counting six months worth of days.

This seven day week was humanized prior to Babylonian creation stories. Those in which early Jews plagiarized to create their creation story.

There really is no reason why a god would speak in terms of days when the concept of a day is really ground (earth) centric. The spin of the Earth in relation to the light of the sun is this arbitrary day.

Humans invented god, not the other way around. Which is why everything claimed to of been stated by some god is clearly human-centric.

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@Leadfoot,

Me neither, but you've got to admit it sounds pretty important.

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@Krumple,

The simple fact that gods were created by most cultures proves that men are the creators of gods.

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

The simple fact that gods were created by most cultures proves that men are the creators of gods.

But at the same time they occasionally like to use this same argument to justify their belief in a god. That its so universal through every culture that it must have some underline validity.

The thing is there is a neglected aspect that our brains function in a way to grant sentience to inanimate objects and motive to events of nature. These are ingredients for the supernatural. Which by definition is bullshit.

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For those who have lost track in this long thread, here is the best answer to the question so far...

Ionus wrote:

The Sumerians were the first to have the week, and we have essentially kept their system via the Romans , honouring their celestial Gods which started the week with the day dedicated to the sun and then the moon, followed by the five planets visible to the naked eye: Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. Sumer also had the myth of seven creation Gods which became seven days of creation. Seven was therefore the heavenly number and was considered sacred because of its use by the Gods. This tradition was kept by the Semites.

Unless someone has a better one...

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Here is one of the other reasonable answers...

TomTomBinks wrote:

Probably the simplest answer is the best. 7 days from the full moon to the half, 7 from the half to the new moon, 7 from the new to the half, 7 again from the half to the full.

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I can't decide which of those two explanations is more likely. They both seem reasonable. Both are based on physical phenomena which existed all throughout human evolution and predated any known mythologies.

I don't know enough about the anthropology of the neolithic to track this back very well.

And somehow the Norse Calendar ended up with a similar structure (7 days), but I'm not sure if it derived from, or coincided with, other calendars.

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@rosborne979,

Both excellent explanations for the 7 day week. But still not even a clue about Creation.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

Both excellent explanations for the 7 day week. But still not even a clue about Creation.

Please start a thread about "not even a clue about Creation" and I'll be happy to stop in and try to help you out.

In this particular thread I really wanted to focus on the actual anthropological origins of this 7 day fixation which seems to flow from our ancient past and through multiple cultures. I feel we got some satisfactory answers to that, so this thread was a success.

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@rosborne979,

OK, funny choice of words though

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

Image result for origination of calendars
The New Year in 709 AUC began on 1 January and ran over 365 days until 31 December. Further adjustments were made under Augustus, who introduced the concept of the "leap year" in 737 AUC (AD 4). The resultant Julian calendar remained in almost universal use in Europe until 1582.
History of calendars - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_calendars

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@Krumple,

Bullshyt to many of us who claim to be atheists, but we gotta respect the fact that most homo sapiens believe in some super-power up in the sky. If I use my family as an example, all are christians married to christians, and lonesome me as the only non-believer. I prefer to believe in science, and the evolution of primates. The following assumptions are close enough for me over creationism. (No gods in my world.) https://www.livescience.com/32503-why-havent-all-primates-evolved-into-humans.html

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

OK, funny choice of words though

Are you referring to the Headline? It's just a headline. I couldn't jam the whole first post into the headline, there wasn't room.

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On the subject of seven days being related to lunar cycles, I'm not convinced. The lunar "month" is 29.5 days (and even that is not exact). At the end of twelve lunar months, you're at 354 days--a significant divergence from the 365.242 days of a tropical year. Even in the brief lifetime of early modern humans, that lunar cycle is going to fail the observer.

The only plausible explanation for a lunar connection in using seven days would be that shamans, and later priests used four "weeks" of seven days as a rule of thumb, while knowing full well that it was inexact. Astronomy was the first systematically studied science precisely because of the need for accuracy in plotting the seasons.

Therefore, I find the lunar connection debatable.

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By the way, our ancestors may have begun science as we know it with astronomy, but they also subscribed to a good deal of superstitious nonsense along the way--astrology, numerology, gods and demons, the truth will set you free. I would accept superstition as an explanation more readily that accurate, finite observation.

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@Setanta,

Ive always wondered on that "What technology or science" came first. Ive always leaned toward mechanics. The atlatl and then the bow and arrow were big advances, as was a stone tipped plow or a shadoof . The atlatl goes back to maybe +30K years since itd probably correspond to much of the pressure flaked points since they were more designed as higher velocity weapons.
Hand tools and hefty speras have been found in early Neanderthal middens

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Why 7 days for Creation?

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