The Week (Colson)/Appendix
| 1) | French | Italian | Spanish | Portuguese |
| Dimanche | Domenica | Domingo | Domingo | |
| Lundi | Lunedi | Lunes | Segunda Feira | |
| Mardi | Martedi | Martes | SegundaTerça Feira„ | |
| Mercredi | Mercoledi | Miercoles | SegundaQuarta Feira„ | |
| Jeudi | Giovedi | Jueves | SegundaQuinta Feira„ | |
| Vendredi | Venerdi | Viernes | SegundaSexta Feira„ | |
| Samedi | Sabato | Sabado | Sabado | |
| (2) | Dutch | German | Danish | Norwegian and Swedish much the same |
| Zondag | Sonntag | Sondag | ||
| Manndag | Montag | Mandag | ||
| Dinsdag | Dienstag | Tirsdag | ||
| Woensdag | Mittwoch | Onsdag | ||
| Dondersdag | Donnerstag | Torsdag | ||
| Vrijdag | Freitag | Fredag | ||
| Zaterdag | Samstag | Loverdag | ||
| (3) | Welsh | Gaelic | Irish | |
| Dydd-sul | Di-domhnaich | Much the same | ||
| Dydd-llun | Di-luain | |||
| Dydd-mawrth | Di-mairt | |||
| Dydd-mercher | Di-ciadain | |||
| Dydd-iou | Diar-daoin | |||
| Dydd-gwener | Di-h-aoine | |||
| Dydd-sadwrn | Di-sathirne | |||
| (4) | Russian | Polish | Czech | Hungarian |
| Voskresénie (also Nedélya) | Niedziela | Nedele | Vasarnap | |
| Ponedelnik | Poniedzialek | Pondeli | Hetfo | |
| Vtornik | Wtorek | Uterek(j) | Kedd | |
| Sredá | Środa | Strèda | Szerda | |
| Chetvérg | Czwartek | Čtvrtek | Csötörtök | |
| Pyátnitsa | Piatek | Pátek | Pentek | |
| Subbota | Sobota | Sobota | Szombat | |
| (5) | Modern Greek | (6) | Albanian | |
| κυριακή | Dielli | |||
| δευτέρα | Hanε | |||
| τρίτη | Martε | |||
| τετάρτη | Mεrkurrε | |||
| πέμπτη | Enjεtε | |||
| παρασκευή | Prεmtε | |||
| σάββατον | Ṡhtunε |
Most of the remarks that need to be made on the first three groups will be found in the preceding pages. In the first or Latin group, the most noticeable point is the dropping of the five planetary names in Portugal and their replacement by numerical terms, or in other words the complete adoption of the regular ecclesiastical nomenclature. In the second or Teutonic group the chief variations are those concerned with the seventh day (v. pp. 110, 111). Kinship of tongue and obvious identity of origin in some of the names makes it natural to class the three Celtic languages of Group 3 together, but I have already pointed out on p. 109 the vital differences between the Welsh and the other two.
The fourth or Slavonic group has not hitherto been dealt with. The ordinary Russian name for Sunday means 'resurrection.' Those for Tuesday, Thursday and Friday in all three languages mean respectively 'second,' 'fourth' and 'fifth,' that for Wednesday means 'middle,' like the German 'Mittwoch.' 'Subbota' or 'Sobota' is obviously 'Sabbath,' as in most European languages. The variant in Russia for Sunday, 'Nedélya,' which is said to be used in South Russian dialects, is, it will be seen, the regular name in Polish and Czech, and its original meaning is 'not working.' In all three languages it is also the ordinary term for the week in general—clearly a secondary use exactly analogous to the New Testament use of 'Sabbata' for week as well as Sabbath. Since 'po' means 'after' we see that 'Monday' is expressed as the 'day after the non-working day.' This helps to explain a curious feature in the Slavonic terminology. The fact that Tuesday, Thursday and Friday are spoken of as the second, fourth and fifth days instead of third, fifth and sixth, shews that the week is thought of as beginning on Monday. This is a natural idea from the point of view of the worker, who conceives of the rest-day as following his working-days. But it is entirely opposed to ecclesiastical and biblical usage. It is thus in marked contrast with the strong religious feeling expressed in the ordinary Russian name of 'Resurrection-day' for Sunday.
Hungarian or Magyar is not a Slavonic nor indeed an Indo-European language; but the names of the last four days have every appearance of an identical origin with those of their Slavonic neighbours. The name for Monday may perhaps mean 'beginning of the week.' But I have not met with any expert in the language who could assure me of this or interpret the other two names.
In Group 5 the meaning of the names is obvious to any one who has the slightest knowledge of Greek. But for the benefit of those who have not, I may add that they are Lord's-day, second, third, fourth, fifth, Preparation and Sabbath. The name for Friday is of course the biblical name, which is regularly used by the Greek Fathers. The reader will note the point already mentioned on p. 26 that the Eastern Church succeeded generally if not entirely in suppressing the planetary names.
Albanian (Group 6) is an Indo-European language, but of a family distinct from either Italian or Greek. Here I have had the advantage of consulting one who has made a considerable study of the language, Dr B. Atkinson, as well as of a discussion by Dr A. Thumb in the article mentioned on p. 45. The names so far as we can interpret them are purely planetary. Those for Sunday and Monday are the vernacular words for 'sun' and 'moon,' which shews that the names were not mere borrowings, but had a meaning for the Albanians. Tuesday and Wednesday speak for themselves, and the equivalence of 'Ṡhtunε' and 'Saturn' though not free from philological difficulty seems probable. The other two are mysterious. 'Enjεtε,' it has been suggested, may come from the name of a local deity sometimes identified with Zeus. 'Prεmtε' is supposed by some scholars to be akin to the Albanian word for 'evening.' If this is accepted, two explanations would be possible: (1) that it means 'eve' or 'vigil' and is the equivalent of the Church term 'preparation'; (2) that we have here the other name for Venus, 'Hesperus' or 'evening-star,' v. p. 102. The freedom from Church influence shewn in the other names tends to support the latter.
The question whether these were originally connected is discussed by Boll (articlon 'Hebdomad' in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-cycl. VII, 2551), and Nilsson (v. Note C, p. 330). Boll adduces several passages from Varro, Philo, Clement and others where it is assumed that the moon completes its circuit in four periods of seven days each. The earliest and therefore the most important of these is a Babylonian 'Creation Epic,' in which the Creator addresses the moon as follows: 'At the beginning of the month shine in the land. Beam with thy horns, to make known. six days. On the seventh day halve thy disc. On the fourteenth thou shalt reach the half of the monthly growth.' (The rest is lost or at least does not indicate the days.) The question however is whether this loose idea of the moon's movements has produced the septenary arrangement, or (as Nilsson argues) been produced by it. In Babylonia, as has been stated, the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first and twenty-eighth were marked days, that is to say the months had been subdivided into periods in which seven predominated, or in other words they had what I have called lunar weeks, though not that very different thing, the continuous week. When this has once been done, the septenary periods are for practical purposes so near to the lunar phases, that the latter are in popular language expressed in terms of the former. I think we should all to-day follow this practice and speak of the full-moon as coming a 'fortnight' after the new moon.
Since the main body of this book was in type, I have come across some discussion of the above subject in a work on Primitive Time-Reckoning by the Swedish professor Martin P. Nilsson (English translation, Oxford University Press). He mentions but does not accept a theory which has received some favourable consideration in Germany that the Sabbath was originally and up to the time of the Exile a Full-moon festival. While he writes very cautiously he inclines to the view that it was originally a market-day. Primitive time-reckoning shews many such market-weeks (pp. 333 ff. and for examples the previous pages). They are of three, four, five, six, eight and ten days. 'The market-day is a rest-day, since the people go to market; since they rest and gather together it is therefore a festival.…The development of market and rest-day into a day of taboo is everywhere natural and is attested in the above examples from Africa.' He adds that it is an accident that we do not find any other example of a seven-day week of this kind.
The word 'accident' prompts me to take the opportunity of making one point clear. Throughout I have taken the view that the Jewish Week and the Planetary Week, though they met and became intertwined round about the time of our era, are distinct in origin. I may seem thus to have treated the fact that they both consisted of seven days as an accident or coincidence. But coincidences are open to suspicion. And those who still conceive of the week as an immemorial institution taking different associations and forms of nomenclature at different times, may feel that this 'coincidence' is for them and against me. Therefore let me add that I would so far modify the word as to admit that in both cases the number may be due to the number of the planets. The Planetary Week is obviously based directly on it. The Jewish Week may be indirectly based on it; that is to say the number of the planets may well have contributed to consecrate the number seven, and this sense of consecration may have led the Israelitish mind to make each rest-day or market-day the seventh from the preceding one. I have implied this already on pp. 4 and 56, but feel that a definite statement of it here may disarm some criticism.
It is worth noting that not only does Cicero so far vacillate about the order of the planets, that in one place he puts Venus below Mercury, but this order is also given by Philo (Quis Rer. Div. Her. 4.5 (224)) who declares his preference for it, though he states that others have been suggested. As Philo lived some 80 years after Cicero, the statement on p. 19 that the order on which the week hour-system was based, which I have called the normal order, was the accepted order from the second century B.C. requires perhaps some modification. And this also has some bearing on the value of Dion's statement that the planetary week emanated from Egypt. For Dion also calls the 'normal order' the 'order accepted by the Egyptians' (v. p. 44). If the belief in this order was especially characteristic of Egypt, it is strange that the Alexandrian scholar should give a different one.
It will be seen that an hour-cycle with Mercury in the fifth place and Venus in the sixth, would produce a day-cycle with Mercury in the sixth and Venus in the fourth place, or in other words Wednesday and Friday would change places. It is perhaps possible that this form of the Planetary Week may have been current for some time side by side with the form that has survived. There is nothing in any evidence existing for the Planetary Week (v. pp. 32–35), till we come to the discoveries at Pompeii, which would forbid this.
καὶ τὰ μὲν κατ᾽ ἐκεῖνον, τίς τε ἔστι καὶ ὅθεν οὕτως ἐτιμήθη, ὅπως τε περὶ αὐτὸν ἐπτόηνται, πολλοῖς τε εἴρηται καὶ οὐδὲν τῇδε τῇ ἱστορίᾳ προσήκει· τὸ δὲ δὴ ἐς τοὺς ἀστέρας τοὺς ἑπτὰ τοὺς πλάνητας ὠνομασμένους τὰς ἡμέρας ἀνακεῖσθαι κατέστη μὲν ὑπ᾽ Αἰγυπτίων, πάρεστι δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ πάντας ἀνθρώπους οὐ πάλαι ποτὲ ὡς λόγῳ εἰπεῖν ἀρξάμενον· οἱ γοῦν ἀρχαῖοι Ἕλληνες οὐδαμῇ αὐτό, ὅσα γε ἐμὲ εἰδέναι, ἠπίσταντο. ἀλλ᾽ ἐπειδὴ καὶ πάνυ νῦν τοῖς τε ἄλλοις ἅπασι καὶ αὐτοῖς τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ἐπιχωριάζει, καὶ ἤδη καὶ τοῦτό σφισι πάτριον τρόπον τινά ἐστι, βραχύ τι περὶ αὐτοῦ διαλεχθῆναι βούλομαι, πῶς τε καὶ τίνα τρόπον οὕτω τέτακται. ἤκουσα δὲ δύο λόγους ἄλλως μὲν οὐ χαλεποὺς γνωσθῆναι, θεωρίας δέ τινος ἐχομένους. εἰ γάρ τις τὴν ἁρμονίαν τὴν διὰ τεσσάρων καλουμένην, ἥπερ που καὶ τὸ κῦρος τῆς μουσικῆς συνέχειν πεπίστευται, καὶ ἐπὶ τοὺς ἀστέρας τούτους, ὑφ᾽ ὧν ὁ πᾶς τοῦ οὐρανοῦ κόσμος διείληπται, κατὰ τὴν τάξιν, καθ᾽ ἣν ἕκαστος αὐτῶν περιπορεύεται, ἐπαγάγοι καὶ ἀρξάμενος ἀπὸ τῆς ἔξω περιφορᾶς τῆς τῷ Κρόνῳ δεδομένης, ἔπειτα διαλιπὼν δύο τὰς ἐχομένας τὸν τῆς τετάρτης δεσπότην ὀνομάσειε καὶ μετ᾽ αὐτὸν δύο αὖ ἑτέρας ὑπερβὰς ἐπὶ τὴν ἑβδόμην ἀφίκοιτο, κἀν τῷ αὐτῷ τούτῳ τρόπῳ αὐτάς τε ἐπιὼν καὶ τοὺς ἐφόρους σφῶν θεοὺς ἀνακυκλῶν ἐπιλέγοι ταῖς ἡμέραις, εὑρήσει πάσας αὐτὰς μουσικῶς πως τῇ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ διακοσμήσει προσηκούσας. εἷς μὲν δὴ οὗτος λέγεται λόγος, ἕτερος δὲ ὅδε. τὰς ὥρας τῆς ἡμέρας καὶ τῆς νυκτὸς ἀπὸ τῆς πρώτης ἀρξάμενος ἀριθμεῖν καὶ ἐκείνην μὲν τῷ Κρόνῳ διδούς, τὴν δὲ ἔπειτα τῷ Διί καὶ τρίτην Ἄρει, τετάρτην ἡλίῳ, πέμπτην Ἀφροδίτῃ, ἕκτην Ἑρμῇ καὶ ἑβδόμην σελήνῃ κατὰ τὴν τάξιν τῶν κύκλων, καθ᾽ ἣν οἱ Αἰγύπτιοι αὐτὴν νομίζουσι, καὶ τοῦτο καὶ αὖθις ποιήσας, πάσας γὰρ οὕτω τὰς τέσσαρας καὶ εἴκοσιν ὥρας περιελθών εὑρήσεις τὴν πρώτην τῆς ἐπιούσης ἡμέρας ὥραν ἐς τὸν ἥλιον ἀφικνουμένην. καὶ τοῦτο καὶ ἐπ᾽ ἐκείνων τῶν τεσσάρων καὶ εἴκοσιν ὡρῶν κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν τοῖς πρόσθεν λόγον πράξας τῇ σελήνῃ τὴν πρώτην τῆς τρίτης ἡμέρας ὥραν ἀναθήσεις, κἂν οὕτω καὶ διὰ τῶν λοιπῶν πορεύῃ, τὸν προσήκοντα ἑαυτῇ θεὸν ἑκάστη ἡμέρα λήψεται.
Horace, Sat. II, 3, 288–292 has the following:
mater ait pueri menses iam quinque cubantis
'frigida si puerum quartana reliquerit, illo
mane die, quo tu indicis ielunia, nudus
in Tiberi stabit.'
('Jupiter, who givest and removest heavy trouble,' says the mother of the child who has lain on a sick bed for five months, 'if the chill quartan ague leave my child, on that morning on which thou enjoinest a fast, he shall stand naked in the Tiber.')
This passage in which Horace is satirising superstition as a form of madness is sometimes supposed to shew week usage, on the authority of the commentator Porphyrio, who gives as an explanation of 'illo die' 'dies Iovis,' meaning no doubt Thursday. The fact that Thursday was a Jewish fast-day might be adduced as an additional argument; and it seems to be true that we know of no regular 'ieiunia Iovis' in these times, as there were 'ieiunia Cereris.'
Nevertheless the idea does not seem to me to have any real foundation, for: (1) Though Porphyrio's date is vague, he certainly lived at a time when the name of 'Jupiter's day' had come into general use and it was not unnatural that he should interpret the phrase in this way. If we knew that he got the interpretation from any of the earliest commentators, the case would of course be different. (2) Horace is clearly not thinking of Jewish superstitions such as he satirises elsewhere. This is shewn by the address to Jupiter in line 288, and a few lines further down he speaks of the mother as actuated by 'fear of the Gods.' (3) On the other hand supposing he knew the planetary week, it is not likely that he would have any reason for supposing that those who observed it would regard 'Jupiter's day' as a fast-day. Jupiter as I have often said is a beneficent planet.
Anyhow, even if the allusion to Thursday is accepted, it will not bring us to a substantially, if at all, earlier date than the Tibullus passage (v. p. 35). The second book of the Satires was written in or about the year 30 B.C.
A good deal has been written about the origin of this name, and it has sometimes been suggested that it was formed on the analogy of the name σεβαστή, i.e. Augustan, given as we learn from inscriptions and papyri to different days in Egypt and elsewhere, presumably in honour of the emperor. Mention of these 'Augustan days' is very common in the first century. The idea that the name suggested to the Christians a title for their own meeting-day, was, I think, originally a consequence of another conjecture, viz. that the σεβασταί were the first days of each month. Further discoveries however shew that they were quite sporadic, and I believe that no one has yet found any principle which governs their distribution.
I see no reason to go outside Christian thought to account for the name Lord's-day. As we find the Eucharist called by St Paul the Lord's Supper (κυριακὸν δεῖπνον), and as one of the chief purposes, indeed the chief purpose of the Christian meeting was to celebrate this, nothing seems to me more natural than that the day should also be called κυριακή.
One point in connexion with the σεβασταί may be mentioned here. A theory has been put forward by Deissmann and others that they were some particular day of the week. (Deissmann for some reason unknown to me selected Thursday.) Those who suggested this might have reflected that the hypothesis is easily tested. The name σεβαστή is often appended in the Papyri to particular days in which both the month and year are given. As we have exact knowledge of the Egyptian reformed calendar (v. p. 52), we can in these cases easily ascertain the week-day. I may take two or three examples from Grenfell and Hunt's Oxyrynchus Papyri, vol. II (v. Index III). Thus we find the following days described as σεβασταί:
| A.D. 41 | Neos Sebastos 20 | = Nov. 16th (Thursday) |
| A.D. 56 | Payni 20 | = June 14th (Monday) |
| A.D. 57 | Germanicus 18 | = May 13th (Friday) |
For what seems to me a clear as well as learned discussion of the subject, I refer my readers to Hussey's Bampton Lectures (1860) on 'Sunday.'
CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY W LEWIS, M.A., AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS