Pagan Origins of the Modern Week

The King James Version (KJV) is mostly used in these lessons. Click here to access the KJV online.

The decline of the eight-day Roman week was caused by two factors: A) the expansion of the Roman Empire¹which exposed the Romans to other religions and led, in turn, to B) the rise of the cult of Mithras.²The role Mithraism played in restructuring the Julian week is significant for it was a strong competitor of early Christianity.³

It seems as if some spiritual genius having control over the pagan world had so ordered things that the heathen planetary week should be introduced just at the right time for the most popular Sun cult of all ages to come along and exalt the day of the Sun as a day above and more sacred than all the rest. Surely this was not accidental.⁴

Under these two factors, the Julian week began a centuries-long evolutionary process that ended in the week as it is known today. The original seven-day planetary week is the third and final piece of the puzzle proving that Saturday is not the Bible Sabbath, nor Sunday the first day of the Biblical week. This transformation took several hundred years. Franz Cumont, widely considered to be a great authority on Mithraism, links the acceptance of the seven-day week by Europeans to the popularity of Mithraism in pagan Rome:

It is not to be doubted that the diffusion of the Iranian [Persian] mysteries has had a considerable part in the general adoption, by the pagans, of the week with the Sunday as a holy day. The names which we employ, unawares, for the other six days, came into use at the same time that Mithraism won its followers in the provinces in the West, and one is not rash in establishing a relation of coincidence between its triumph and that concomitant phenomenon.⁵

In Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans, Cumont further emphasizes the pagan origins and recent adoption of a seven-day week with its holy day being Sunday:

The pre-eminence assigned to the dies Solis [day of the Sun] also certainly contributed to the general recognition of Sunday as a holiday. This is connected with a more important fact, namely, the adoption of the week by all the European nations.⁶

The immense significance of this for Christians is found in the fact that Sunday cannot be the day on which Christ arose from the dead, because Sunday did not exist in the Julian calendar of Christ's day. Nor can Saturday be the Biblical seventh-day Sabbath because the pagan planetary week originally began on Saturday.

The following drawing of a stick calendar found at the Baths of Titus (constructed A.D. 79 – 81) provides further proof that neither the Biblical Sabbath nor the day of Christ's resurrection can ever be found using the Julian calendar. The center circle contains the 12 signs of the zodiac, corresponding to the 12 months of the year. The Roman numerals in the left and right columns indicate the days of the month. Across the top of the stick calendar appear the seven planetary gods of the pagan Romans.

Roman Stick Calendar

Saturday, (or dies Saturni – the day of Saturn) was the very first day of the week, not the seventh. As the god of agriculture, he can be seen in this preëminent position of importance, holding his symbol, a sickle. Next, on the second day of the pagan planetary week, is seen the sun god with rays of light emanating from his head. Sunday was originally the second day of the planetary week and was known as dies Solis. The third day of the week was dies Lunæ (day of the Moon – Monday). The moon goddess is shown wearing the horned crescent moon as a diadem on her head. The rest of the gods follow in order: dies Martis (day of Mars); dies Mercurii (day of Mercury); dies Jovis (day of Jupiter); and dies Veneris (day of Venus), the seventh day of the week.⁷

When the use of the Julian calendar with its recently adopted pagan planetary week spread into northern Europe, the names of the days dies Martis through dies Veneris were replaced by Teutonic gods.⁸Mars' Day became Tiw's Day (Tuesday); Mercury's Day became Woden's Day (Wednesday); Jupiter's Day became Thor's Day (Thursday); and Venus' Day became Friga's Day (Friday.) ⁹The influence of the pagan astrological day-names is still seen today. Latin-based languages, such as Spanish, retain astrological names for Monday through Friday, with the Christian influence being seen in their words for Sunday (Domingo, or Lord's day) and Saturday (Sabado, or Sabbath.)

According to Rabanus Maurus (A.D. 776-856), archbishop of Mainz, Germany, Pope Sylvester I attempted to rename the days of the planetary week to correspond with the names of the Biblical week: First Day (first feria), Second Day (second feria), etc.¹⁰Bede, the "Venerable", (A.D. 672-735), renowned English monk and scholar, also reported Sylvester's attempts to change the pagan names of the days of the week. In De Temporibus, he stated: "But the holy Sylvester ordered them to be called feriæ, calling the first day the 'Lord's [day]'; imitating the Hebrews, who named [them] the first of the week, the second of the week, and so on the others."¹¹The astrological names, however, were too deeply ingrained. While the official terminology of the Roman Catholic Church remains Lord's Day, Second Day, Third Day, etc., most countries clung in whole or in part to planetary names for the days.

The astrological influence is obviously even more pronounced around the fringes of the Roman Empire, where Christianity arrived only much later. English, Dutch, Breton, Welsh, and Cornish, which are the only European languages to have preserved to this day the original planetary names of all the seven days of the week, are all spoken in areas that were free of any Christian influence during the first centuries of our era, when the astrological week was spreading throughout the Empire. ¹²

"The ecclesiastical style of naming the week days was adopted by no nation except the Portuguese who alone use the terms Segunda Feria etc." ¹³

The fact that both the Julian calendar and the pagan planetary week have been accepted for use by Christians reveals an amalgamation of Christianity with paganism of which the apostle Paul warned when he wrote:

For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth¹⁴will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom Yahuwah shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause Yahuwah shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie; That they all might be damned¹⁵ who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. ¹⁶

The pagan planetary week, like the Julian calendar that adopted it, is irreparably pagan. Historical facts reveal that neither the Biblical Sabbath nor the Biblical First Day can be found using the modern calendar. If it is important to worship on a specific day, than it is also important to know which calendar to use and when the change in calendation occurred.