Growing Importance of Planetary Days

Several factors played important roles in the shift from a seventh-day Sabbath to a first-day sabbath in the early Christian church. Yet, without the importance of planetary days in the first centuries, a major impetus toward selecting Sunday as the new worship day is removed. We will now examine what planetary days are, when they came into being, and what effect this system had upon the Roman Empire and its selection of Sunday as its day of worship.

Within the system of sun worship, there were many facets that created its function. For example: men were deified when they died and planets were named after these "gods"; Astrology purported to tell the future by interpreting the will of the "star gods"; sacrifices were made to gods who affected different aspects of life in order to assure their good will. One of the facets of sun worship became the naming of months and days after different gods as a way of honoring them. For example: Saturn was honored on the day Saturday, Sun was honored on the day Sunday, Moon was honored on the day Monday, and so on. March was named after the god Mars, and so on. The effect that this system of planetary days had on early Christianity will soon be seen.

It is important to note that anti-Judaism |0+| could not have been a sufficient factor in the first centuries to cause Christians to adopt Sunday as their worship day. Although a strong anti-Jewish sentiment prevailed in the Roman Empire in the first centuries, the Christians could have chosen another day, such as Friday, as a new worship day to distinguish themselves from the Jews. Some other set of factors helped influence their tendency to choose Sunday as an alternative to the Jewish Sabbath. This is where the concept of planetary days becomes important.

We will now show that the concept of the planetary week was already in force before the other factors (i.e. anti-Judaism, etc.) affected Christians. We must do this because if the planetary day system came into effect after the second century AD (when the change to Sunday was becoming apparent), we would be left without a plausible reason for the change to Sunday (during the second century) as opposed to some other day. Fortunately, however, history provides many evidences that the planetary week was accepted in Roman religion even before any strong anti-Jewish sentiment gained force.

The Roman historian Dio Cassius, who wrote his ROMAN HISTORY between AD 200-220, reports that Jerusalem was captured both by Pompey in 63 BC and by Gaius Sosius in 37 BC "on the day even then called the day of Saturn." (Dio Cassius, HISTORIA 49, 22, LCL 5, p.389.) Josephus, in his Wars of the Jews, confirms Dio Cassius' account, saying that the Romans succeeded in capturing the city because they understood that Jews on the Sabbath (the day of Saturn, or Saturday) would only fight defensively. Please note that the Jewish Sabbath was known as "the day of Saturn" or Saturday even 63 years before Christ.

Another important evidence of the widespread acceptance of the planetary week was unearthed in Pompeii and in Herculaneum (which were destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79). Uncovered were two mural pictures of the seven planetary gods in an excellent state of preservation. Also there were numerous wall-inscriptions and graffiti either listing explicitly the planetary gods of the week or giving the planetary name of the day of a particular date. A certain inscription reads, for example: "the 9th day before the Kalends of June (May 24) the Emperor... it was the day of the Sun." There were many such inscriptions showing that the planetary week was fully accepted and used by Pompeii in the first century AD.

A final evidence will be cited, not because there is a lack of many more, but because space prohibits their inclusion here. A pictorial calendar found on the wall of the ruins of the baths of Titus (AD 79-81) shows a very original approach to the use of planetary days. In a square frame there appear in the upper row twelve signs of the zodiac representing the months and on the two sides appear the numbers of the days, on the right the days 1 to 15, and the left, the days 16 to 30. Beside each of these there are holes where knobs were inserted to indicate the month, the number of the day and the protecting planetary god for that day. Its location in such a public building indicates its popular use.

Clearly the concept of numbering each day of the week, assigning a protective god for the day, and naming the day after the god was well established and widespread throughout the Roman empire by the end of the first century AD In fact, the planetary week was well accepted in many areas even before the time of Christ.

During the first century, the planetary day of the Sun (Sunday) began to assume greater importance to the pagans because the sun god was the primary god in their religion. So, Sunday became the most important day of the week (the "venerable day of the Sun"). However, as yet, there was no particular requirement for pagans to participate in special feasts or other rituals on Sunday.

We do not know for certain when Sunday became the preeminent feast and holy day of the Roman empire. However, the famous astrologer Vettius Valens, in his ANTHOLOGY, composed between AD 154 and 174, tells us how to find the day of the week of any given birth date by stating, "And this is the sequence of the planetary stars in relation to the days of the week: Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn." (Vettius Valens, ANTHOLOGIARUM 5, 10, ed. G. Kroll, p.26) This shows that the Sun had obtained the first place in the week by that time. Other rather obscure references show that the prevailing sun cults pushed for the importance of Sunday in the first centuries. It is clear, however, that by the beginning of the second century, Sunday had assumed the primary place in the empire as the holy day.

When sun worship became the official religion of the empire in the second century, Sunday worship became firmly established as the holy day of that official religion. So, we see that by the end of the second century, Sunday had attained a position to provide a viable alternative worship-day for Christians who were seeking to separate themselves from anything that smacked of Judaism (i.e. Sabbath-keeping).