From antiquity, man’s fascination with time is
demonstrated in the remarkable archaeology still visible at places like
Stonehenge, the flat topped pyramids in South America, or Newgrange in Ireland.
The sun, moon, and stars seemed alive to ancient man and he came up with
stories, legends, gods and religions based on his imagination and his view of
the changing sky.
Today, we have a calendar which
adds one day to the next in a rising numerical progression. We still pay
attention to the changing seasons as we count through the twelve months of the
year. The term month has a connection to the lunar cycle even though our months
no longer consult the phases of the moon. We do, however, look carefully at the
rotation of the Earth around the Sun and our calendar is designed to closely
monitor the annual cycle.
As each year ends, we add a digit to our yearly count; a practice that
was arbitrarily started over 2,000 years ago. Another practice that affects our
measurement of time is the twenty-four hour times sixty minute day. This base
of sixty mathematical system has been used in one form or another since
Babylonian and Egyptian times. Therefore, what we have today is a breakdown of
three extraterrestrial cycles for the purposes of measuring time.
First, the rotation of the earth equals a day which we arbitrarily broke
down to twenty-four sixty minute hours. Second, the rotation of the moon around
the earth, which takes twenty-nine to thirty days, we arbitrarily broke into
months and then solidified them in the annual calendar which is based on the
third extraterrestrial cycle we use to determine time, the annual cycle of the
Earth around the Sun. We view the annual cycle as the most important cycle since
it effects our seasons of planting and harvest. (This idea apparently has its
origins in the Greco/Roman period.) All of this has a certain logic to it and
is normal to us. In our part of the world, much of North America, corn is
planted April or May and harvested in September or October. The sun’s angle on
the earth is at a very similar angle on May 1, year after year, thus giving
confidence that a warm spell in late April or early May should mean that frost
is over for this growing season and planting should proceed.
That the time element of a single day is broken down as it is also has a
logic; high noon or 12 o’clock, should mean the sun is directly overhead and at
its zenith or highest point. (Daylight Savings Time is a whole other subject.)
It seems our modern sense of time is mostly affected by the sun; its turning on
its axis gives us our days and its rotation around the sun gives us our years.
Our modern months are a nod to the old lunar calendar, but we rarely connect
the phase of the moon to any element of time which affects our lives.
This leaves one mysterious element of time in our modern lives, the
seven day week. While all the other elements of time have clear connection to
some celestial rotation, the seven day week has no anchor in an extraterrestrial
cycle. Follow me for a moment; 60 seconds times, 60 minutes times, 24 hours makes
a complete day, 365 days make a complete year. (Of course, every four years we
have to add a day for leap year to keep things on track.) Even our months, though
not tied specifically to the moon's cycle, are set up to range from
twenty-eight to thirty-one days at least closely resembling the old lunar moon.
But a week hinges on what? How did week come to be and what is its
story? How did a seven day time element become so important having no celestial
support?
This is a study of those seven days; how
they came to be, how they changed the world and how a little imaginative use of
them can improve your life and change our world.
The story goes that a young man was
kidnapped by his jealous brothers and sold into slavery. More than twenty years
later, those same brothers were standing in front of him begging for food and
worried for their lives. Joseph’s story has a key element, not of seven days,
but seven years; in fact two sets of seven years. One set of seven fat years
and one set of seven lean years. Interestingly this story, found in the first
book of Hebrew Bible, seems to echo some elements of the seven day creation
story found in the very beginning of the Hebrew Scriptures. It would be
difficult indeed to divorce our modern practice of a seven day week from that
well know writing, Genesis chapter one.
But if Joseph’s story implies value to seven years, could it be that
there is significance not only for the seven day week which we practice to this
day, but for seven years? Indeed, the foundational Biblical texts known as the
five books of Moses includes instructions for not only seven days, but also
seven months and seven years and also seven sets of seven years; in other
words, forty-nine years to which one additional year is added to create a fifty
year Jubilee cycle.
Absolutely none of these segments of time has any obvious connection to
the celestial cycles of the sun, the moon, or the stars. There is no obvious
sign in the sky when these sevens begin or end. For many, it is a question that
they exist or have value at all, yet the fact is, that the seven day week
endures. Could it be a sign to us that the others are out there somewhere also?
Could it be that though modern man often does his best to ignore a seven day
week, its persistence in sticking around is telling us we need to consider the
other sets of seven laid out in the ancient texts?
What did Joseph know? Was he just lucky? Is it just a story? Even if it
is just a story, what was the story teller trying to communicate? Is it any
more unusual to contemplate old words or stories and what they mean than to
ponder old structures or archaeology findings and what they tell us about our ancestors?
The Books of Moses are unique in many ways, but in their use of a
variety of seven segments of time, the Hebrew Bible stands alone and seems to
beg us to explore its unusual ways.
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