Volume 2

A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood.

Date:: [between 1890 and 1899?]

Credit: A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

979/1016 (page 2031)

$accxistomed method and nomenclature. In every citv of the Roman empire which had a syna- gogue, Jews, with proselytes, formed the nucleus round which the church grew; and from these the Gentile believers accepted the Jewish week. Already the seven-day week was widely known by Greeks and Romans, but, for the most part, as a measure of time used by astrologers (Chal- dean and Egyptian). The Sa'>halh, as a Jewish institution, was but one of many superstitions imported into Rome from the East. Christian, Jew, and Gentile alike, whether or not they continued to attach any special sanctity to the Sahmath, appear, from the first, to have cele- brated the Hrst day of the week in memory of the Lord’s resurrection. [Lord’s Day.] Barnes of the Days of the V\'eek.—The names derived from Jewish usage, fx'ia (or Trpc^TTj), (TajSjSdToji/ (or trajSjSctToi;), devrepa^ k. t. A., occur in the New Testament ; occasionally in subsequent times, e.g. Tertull. has “ quarta et sexta sabbati ” (de Jejun. 14, and St. Epiphan. Haer. ixx. 12). But the first day is almost constantly (jux^pa) KvpiaK'fi or KvpLov, dies dominicus or dominica ; (^l)ominicuoi does not necessarily mean “the Lord’s day ” in Acta Martyr. S. Saturnini, Ruinart, 9, 10 : “ non potest intermitti dominicum.” Comp. Tertull. de Ftuja in Persecutione, c. 14: “ quomodo dominica sollemnia celebraAumus ? ”) tou Kvp'iov avaardaifios {Const. Apost. c. ii. 59); “ dies dominicae resurrectionis ” (Tertull. de Orat. 2d). The numerical designation, 6y56r], eighth day, occurs only in mystical expositions, as St. Barn. Ep. 15; St. Iren, de Ogdoad. fragm.; St. Hilar. Praef. in Explan. Psahm. t. i. 7 ; St. Augustine, Ep. 119 ac? Januar. 10-16. By the close of the 2nd century, we find the Wednesday and Friday distinguished as fast-days (or semijejnnia) under the name dies station DM, ardcreis. The Greek names for these days are T€Tpds and Trapotr/ceuf} ; for the latter Epiphan. Expos, fd. § 22, has irpoadfi^aTov, as St. Mark XV. 42, Trapa(TK€vrj S iari Tcpocrdfifiarop ; a law of Constantine (Euscb., Vit. Const, iv. 18) terms the parasceve rrph (ra^fidrov ; the Latin, quarta, sexta sab’mti (Tertull. u. s.); more com- monly fet'ia quarta and parnsceve. Comp. Petri Alex. fr. de Paschate, in Routh, Pell. Sac. iii, 34d ; Constit. Apost. vii. 23. The Greek names most in use for the days of the week are KvpiaKrj, Seurepa, rp(rr), Terpds, Tre^TTTTj, irapaaKevr], adfi^arov ; the Latin, dies dominicus, feria secunda, f. tertia, f. quarta, f. quinta, parasceve, sabb (turn. This ecclesiastical use of the term feria is variously explained. [Feria.] The present writer conjectures that feria secunda, tertia, &c., came into use as Christianized equivalents for the secunda sabbati, &c., objected to as Jewish. Comp. Rosch in Herzog, P. E. Zeitrechnung, t. xviii. 473). The planetary names for each day of the week came to the Romans (probably before the Christian era) from Alexandria, as a purely astrological, not a religious institute. The true explanation of these names is undoubtedly this —the second of the two given by Dion Cassius, xxxvii. 18,* the locus classicus on this subject (see » I<leler(Fd6. der Ckron.i. 179), on the warrant of this passage, hclil that tlie seven-day week, in connexion with the seven planets, w;is early known in Egjqjt. But no truce of such a week, civil, religious or astrological, Tdeler, Edb. der C%?’on. u. s , and ii. 177 ; Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 142, and J. C. Hare, On the i\ames of the Days of the \Ve< k, in the Candoridge Philological Museum, vol. i.), viz. that each of the twenty-four hours of each day, beginning at sun- rise, was assigned to one of the seven “ planets,” taken in the then-received order, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Moon, continued, without interruption, from day to day. Thus, the first hour at starting of the cycle being that of Saturn, that planet is “ regent ” of the whole day, the eighth, fifteenth, twenty-second hours being also his; the twenty-third has Jupiter ; twenty-fourth. Mars ; and the twenty- fifth, or first of the following day, comes to sun, who, therefore, as “ regent,” gives his name to the day. Thus the twenty-second hour being the sun’s, the twenty-third and twenty-fourth fall to Mercury and Venus, and the first hour of the following day to Moon, whence dies Lunae ; and so on to the seventh : first hour, Venus. In this astrological scheme, the first day of the week is Saturday. Dion Cass. (u. s.), who says that the practice of naming days after the seven planets, though in his time universally known, “ had come in, so to say, but recently,” must be understood to speak of its general didu- sion. It was certainly known long before his time. “ Pompey,” he says, “ throughout the siege of Jerusalem (b.C. 63) availed himself for his great operations, of the well-known dpy'ia of the Jews on the seventh day, and so took the city by the final assault ‘ on the day of Saturn.’ ” And by the same name he subsequently calls the day of the taking of Jerusalem by Herod and Sosius (b.C. 37), in both statements clearly iden- tifying Saturn’s day with the Jewish seventh day (Browne’s Ordo Saeclorum, § 207 sq.). The name, “ day of Saturn,” may have been Dion’s own sub- stitute for a “sabbath” or “seventh day” in the contemporary records relating to Pompey and Sosius. But early in our era, Tibullus (i. 3, 17) clearly identifies Saturday with the supposed in- auspicious .Jewish sabbath—“ Aut ego sum cau- satus aves aut omina dira, Saturni aut sacram me tenuisse diem ” (comp. Ovid, Ars Amat. i. 45: “ rebus minus apta gerendis Culta Palaestino sep- tima festa Syro ”). Tacitus {Hist. v. 4) says that some imagined the Jews’ sabbatical rest to have been in honour of c^aturn; Frontinus, in the reign of Nerva {Strateg.n. 1, 17), that Vespasian reserved his chief assaults upon the Jews for the “ day of Saturn,” on which it was unlawful for them to do any work. Between this and the time of Dion Cassius, we have Christian testi- monies to the application of the planetary names to the days of the Jewish week in Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and his contemporary Clement of Alexandria. Plutarch’s Qu. Sympos. iv. qu. 7, is unfortunately lost: according to the heading, its subject was the order of the planetary days, doubtless arising out of the two preceding ques- tions, which relate to the Jewish sabbath. That the planetary week was known, at least to artists, early in our era, is further proved by monuments. In the Pittore di Erculano, iii. pi. 50, is a series of seven heads of planetary deities — Saturn, Apollo = Sol, Diana = Luna, Mars, Mercurius, has been found on Egyptian monuments; the Egyptian week from the earliest times was the decade Lepsius, Chranologie der Aegypter, p. 131 fif.$