Sundays

[Bill.Stewart.4K435.x0705]

In article <174 at watmath.UUCP> ddyment at watmath.UUCP (Doug Dyment) writes:
>
>> For several hundred years sunday has been the first day of the
>>week. Look at any calandar[sic].
>>
> For several thousand years Sunday has been the last day of the
>week.  Look at any bible.
>
Funny, my Bible refers to the Sabbath, but it doesn't use the modern
names, which are mostly of pagan European origin.  However, the Jews,
for whom the Sabbath is a way of life, still think Saturday is the
Sabbath, and I doubt they'd have gotten it wrong.  There are early
records from the Romans which refer to Christians getting together on
the *first* day of the week for their meetings, i.e. Sunday, in honor
of the resurrection.  Gradually this absorbed many of the Sabbath
traditions (most early Christians *were* Jewish), and many groups have
treated Sunday as the Sabbath;  others, such as the Seventh-Day
Adventists, point out that the Sabbath is still Saturday.

I get the impression that renumbering the days of the week so they
start with Monday is a recent European rationalization of "Sunday is
our Sabbath so it must be the 7th day of the week"; customary usage in
the USA is that the week starts on Sunday, whereas I remember learning
the days of the week in French as "<monday>, <tuesday>..." (Sorry, but I
never could spell them)

				Bill

Arrgh! An electrical virus is eating my terminal!
-- 
## Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs