The claim that the seven-day week originates with the Babylonians is an assumption based on the fact that the days of the week are named after the seven planets in Hellenistic astrology, which drew heavily on earlier Babylonian astrology. 3/ - ThreadSky

spencermcdaniel.bsky.social • 27 days ago

The claim that the seven-day week originates with the Babylonians is an assumption based on the fact that the days of the week are named after the seven planets in Hellenistic astrology, which drew heavily on earlier Babylonian astrology.

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spencermcdaniel.bsky.social•27 days ago

There is no compelling evidence, however, that the Romans got the seven-day week with days named after the seven planets from the Babylonians. Its origins are murky. Peter Gainsford has a detailed blog post on this subject if you want to read more.

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https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2024/04/weekdays.html

jasmineelmer.bsky.social•27 days ago

Hello- thank you for your comments. I have deleted the original post as I do not want to be the source of any confusion. However nothing I have said is incorrect, simply the original post lacks nuanced discussion of the evidence and scholarly debate and doesn’t point out what is theoretical.

jasmineelmer.bsky.social•27 days ago

My work is about accessibility, so I tend to post something simple and then use comments to discuss things in more detail. However I will concede that that particular post may have been too generalised, hence why I chose to delete it.

spencermcdaniel.bsky.social•27 days ago

It's fine. I only pointed it out because I personally made the same mistake of attributing the seven-day week to the Babylonians (based, I think, on what I read on Wikipedia or someplace) in a blog post I made eight years ago.

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spencermcdaniel.bsky.social•27 days ago

That being said, I do not think that accessibility is a good excuse for not carefully distinguishing between what is supported by evidence and what is speculation. If anything, accessibility *requires* that we communicate such distinctions clearly.

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jasmineelmer.bsky.social•27 days ago

I’m not sure we will agree. It wasn’t “incorrect” to say that the 7 day week originated with the Babylonians but it might be construed as misleading if you don’t include the word “possibly” or make a distinction about the debate. I agree with you on this hence why I deleted the post…

jasmineelmer.bsky.social•27 days ago

There are a number of general (yes) but reasonable sources that state this, but agree they are secondary and I did not interrogate primary source material to corroborate for a social media post. For this, I agree it’s important to do this!

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