# Days & Months



## JML (Dec 28, 2009)

Just curious here but is there any history of Christians casting aside or attempting to cast aside the names of the days of the week and months. Considering that most of the names for the days of the week and the names of months are named after false gods, I was wondering if there had ever been any Christian groups that tried to avoid calling them by these names. If I am correct, I believe the Jews only had the Sabbath and then the other days were numbered and they obviously had different names for the months of the year. Any help? Thanks.


----------



## Skyler (Dec 28, 2009)

The Quakers. They referred to days as "Firstday", "Secondday", etc.


----------



## au5t1n (Dec 28, 2009)

Just as a side note, the Jews also referred to Friday as "The Preparation." In the Didache also, readers are instructed to fast on the 4th day and the Preparation.


----------



## Skyler (Dec 28, 2009)

I believe I've heard that some of the early church also rejected the "contemporary" names of the days of the week, but I'm not at all certain on that point, so don't quote me.


----------



## au5t1n (Dec 28, 2009)

Skyler said:


> I believe I've heard that some of the early church also rejected the "contemporary" names of the days of the week, but I'm not at all certain on that point, so don't quote me.



If that's the case, it was inconsistent of them. Many of the early Gentile Christians had pagan names and some were named after pagan gods and such, yet Paul didn't have any problem calling them by their Gentile names in his letters.


----------



## Skyler (Dec 28, 2009)

austinww said:


> Skyler said:
> 
> 
> > I believe I've heard that some of the early church also rejected the "contemporary" names of the days of the week, but I'm not at all certain on that point, so don't quote me.
> ...



If there's one thing the early church was not, it's consistent.


----------



## Tim (Dec 29, 2009)

An interesting fact. It is my understanding that in modern day Greece, the first day of the week is called 'Lord's Day'. Babel Fish online translation confirms this:

Sunday
η Κυριακή

I have often thought that it might be nice to consider Saturday to be 'Preparation Day', since Christians today still need to prepare ourselves for the Sabbath/Lord's Day.


----------



## TimV (Dec 29, 2009)

You get odds and ends of it in several languages. In Spanish Saturday was changed to Sabbath, Sunday to Lord's Day. In German Odin's Day was changed to Midweek, but the other Germanic languages like English and Dutch kept the old word.


----------



## JML (Dec 29, 2009)

One of our fellow PBers posted this on his blog regarding the subject. He granted me permission to post it. Great stuff. Thanks VirginiaHuguenot.


Virginia is for Huguenots: Pagan Calendar Names


----------



## TimV (Dec 29, 2009)

> 3. Mars, Tuesday, dedicated to Mars. Our Tuesday is a Saxon name, from Tuisco, who they say was, since the Tower of Babel, chief leader and ruler of the German nation, who, in honour of him, called this day Tuesday, Tuisco's day



Actually in the Germanic languages Tuesday is like Mars, the god of war, and named Tyr. He was one of the Aesir.

Easter is another odd one in the Germanic languages with English and German using the name of the goddess but Dutch, Afrikaans and the Scandinavian languages using the word for Passover.

Here where I live it's mostly English and Spanish, and on Easter Sunday you walk into an English church and both Easter and Sunday are pagan gods but in Spanish it's Passover and the Lord's Day. I can't see how that's any different from naming a girl Tara or a boy Elvis, although I had a pastor who hated the word Tara for it's heathen connotations. Seemed a bit arbitrary to me, since half the nouns we use are probably from pagan gods somewhere down the line like, well, the English word God.


----------



## bemer (Jan 12, 2010)

A fringe group of covenanters, the "Russellites," among other things rejected the conventional names of days as pagan. The mainstream covenanters, led by Renwick, denounced them in the Informatory Vindication (1687).


----------

