How Monotheistic Israel and Pagan Rome Gave the World Its Weeks

Got a question for Philologos? Ask him yourself at philologos@mosaicmagazine.com.

As observed in our previous column, when the seven-day week was widely adopted in the Roman empire in the early centuries of the Common Era, there were two competing ways of naming its days. One was the pagan way of associating these days with the sun, moon, and five visible planets Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. The other was the Jewish way of numbering them.

It is difficult to say, historically, how much Jews and Judaism had to do with the early stages of the seven-day week’s spread. They certainly influenced it to some extent. By the 1st century CE, there was a Jewish presence in almost all parts of the Graeco-Roman world, and judging from the many references to them by Latin and Greek writers, the Jewish week and its Sabbath were well-known to non-Jews, as was the Sabbath’s association in their minds with the planet Saturn. In a fanciful account of the Jews’ origins in the exodus from Egypt, during which they supposedly found water after seven days of thirsting in the desert, the Roman historian Tacitus (56–120 CE) wrote: