On Mon, 23 Jun 1997 15:25:02 -0700, Tracy Johnson wrote
>Am given to understand our current Christian week was copied from the
>Roman standard.  Even though there are Catholic legends that provide
>religious reasons in Christian context.

In the Ancient and Golden periods of Roman history, there was no real
concept of weeks.  Months varied in length seemingly almost on whim, and
especially when there were drawn out wars, no corrections were made.
Generally every other year, they add 22 or 23 days, plus on the even years
they added an extra 23rd of February.  Once after the 2nd Punic war, they
added about 117 days!  Rather than weeks, there was generally a period of 8
days between the market days, but this was not used for recording of events,
and the days weren't named.

Even in the Silver period, after the introduction of the Julian calendar (45
BC), months were of varying lengths very similar to our current months, but
there generally weren't day names.  There were three important times in a
month: the Kalendae (Calendar!) on the 1st day of the month, the Nonae on
either the 5th or 7th (depending on whether there were 31 days in the month
or not) and the Idus on either the 13th or 15th (again depending on the
number of days in the month).  Days were generally referred to by the number
of days before ("ante dies") the next of these events.  Thus, what we know
as the 11th of April would be referred to as "2 days before the Ides of
April" ('ante dies tutium Idus Aprilis', or written 'AD II IDU APR').
Remember..."Caves Idus Martias"?

Now the Romans were always great copiers, not innovators -- where have I
heard that about a nation before? -- adopting much of their language from
the Greek language, still more cultural and religious from the Etruscans,
fighting techniques from Carthage, mining techniques from Spain...anything
that could be useful elsewhere soon became as Roman as the Capitoline Hill.
So as the first emperor to adopt the Christian religion, by 392 or 393AD the
days had names: dies Solis, dies Lunae, dies Martis, dies Mercurii, dies
Iovis, dies Veneris, dies Saturni.

Incidentally, the Romans adopted another far eastern custom of splitting the
day into two periods of twelve hours each.  Unfortunately, the day was
measured from sun-up to sun-down.  So as the days got longer, each day hour
got longer, and each night hour got shorter, while the reverse occured on
the approach to winter solstice.

That all said, I can only presume that as the early scribes of Jesus would
have been Jewish, the recording of Good Friday and Easter Sunday must have
come from them, rather than any Roman documents.  Heck, as far as I know,
Roman documents make little or no reference to a 'Pontius Pilot' being in a
position of authority in that area at the time.

Cheers.
----
Jim Wowchuk                Vanguard Computer Services
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