Week

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Creation Week

If you take Genesis literally, Creation Week looks like this. We should probably have named the days after this stuff instead of demons.

English Days of the Week

Japanese Youbi

Note that their months are not named after anything. They are numbered. For instance, November is １１月, literally "month 11." The days having special names is interesting to me!

I haven't studied the etymology, but the days seem to correspond to planets which correspond to similar gods as our days. For instance, the 火 in 火曜日 means fire. 火星 is their word for the planet Mars, which literally reads like "fire star." I don't know if they also associate this planet with the Roman god Mars like we English speakers do, but it's curious that their Mars's day is our Tyr's day. Wikipedia says that, "The interpretatio romana generally renders the god as Mars, the ancient Roman war god" and "By way of the opposite process of interpretatio germanica, Tuesday is named after Týr ('Týr's day'), rather than Mars, in English and other Germanic languages." It's a match!

(Wikipedia - Týr @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BDr, accessed June 19, 2023)

Tactitus is identifies Tyr with Mars. Tyr is "a warrior god, and the protector of champions and brave men."

Odin with Mercury.

Thor represents Jupiter.

Frigg, Venus, nor Freyja is mentioned in The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus, but they are all goddesses of love, in a way, so I'd imagine the Greeks and Romans would render Venus as either of them.

Saturn is directly honored in both languages.

(The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus by Tacitus @ https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7524/7524-h/7524-h.htm, footnotes 62, 64)

Hebrew

Germanic languages (and bizarrely, Japanese?) seem to be influenced by that Egyptian-Norse-Roman pantheon. Hebrew speakers have been dispersed everywhere, including the Roman Empire during the time of the New Testament, but at the same time, they have an undeniable historical identity that stands apart from the Egyptian pantheon. Maybe they named their days differently?

I don't speak Hebrew, so hopefully this random website's right:

  • יום ראשון - Yom Rishon, "head-day"
  • יום שני - Yom Sheni, "day 2"
  • יום שלישי - Yom Shlishi, "day 3"
  • יום רביעי - Yom Revi’i, "day 4"
  • יום חמישי - Yom Hamishi, "day 5"
  • יום שישי - Yom Shishi, "day 6"
  • שבת - Shabbat, "he stopped"

(Days of the Week in Hebrew: Learn Hebrew online @ http://lp.eteacherhebrew.com/lp_modern_hebrew_weekdays-en.html?blog=1)

The days are numbered, with the exception of the week's "header," and the Sabbath Day. It is different, though! Biblical, even.

(The days of the week isn't the only time I've seen Japanese honor Western gods. Their temple chant ホイ サー エッサー essa hoisa is a curious religious-linguistic connection between Japan and Israel. Weird!)