Editing Week (section)

===Achaemenid period===
The [[Zoroastrian calendar]] follows the Babylonian in relating the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th of the 29- or 30-day lunar month to [[Ahura Mazda]].<ref name="TSZ">Boyce, Mary (ed. & trans.). ''Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism''. University of Chicago Press, 1984, p. 19-20.</ref>
The forerunner of all modern Zoroastrian calendars is the system used to determine dates in the [[Achaemenid Empire|Persian Empire]], adopted from the Babylonian calendar by the 4th century BCE.

[[Frank Senn|Frank C. Senn]] in his book ''Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical'' points to data suggesting evidence of an early continuous use of a seven-day week; referring to the Jews during the [[Babylonian captivity]] in the 6th century BCE,<ref name="Senn 1997">{{cite book
| last = Senn
| first = Frank C.
| title = Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical
| publisher = Fortress Press
| year = 1997
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=g5c7C2rQzU0C
| isbn = 978-0-8006-2726-3}}</ref> after the destruction of the [[Temple of Solomon]].
While the seven-day week in Judaism is tied to [[Genesis creation narrative|Creation account]] in the [[Book of Genesis]] in the [[Hebrew Bible]] (where [[Elohim|God]] creates the heavens and the earth in six days and rests on the seventh; Genesis 1:1-2:3,<ref>{{bibleverse||Genesis|1:1–2:3}}</ref> in the [[Book of Exodus]], the fourth of the [[Ten Commandments]] is to rest on the seventh day, ''[[Shabbat]]'', which can be seen as implying a socially instituted seven-day week), it is not clear whether the Genesis narrative predates the [[Babylonian captivity]] of the Jews in the 6th century BCE. At least since the [[Second Temple Judaism|Second Temple period]] under Persian rule, Judaism relied on the seven-day cycle of recurring [[Sabbath]]s.<ref name="Senn 1997"/>

Tablets{{citation needed|date=April 2015}} from the Achaemenid period indicate that the [[lunation]] of 29 or 30 days basically contained three seven-day weeks, and a final week of eight or nine days inclusive, breaking the continuous seven-day cycle.<ref name=ere/>
The Babylonians additionally celebrated the 19th as a special "evil day", the "day of anger", because it was roughly the 49th day of the (preceding) month, completing a "week of weeks", also with sacrifices and prohibitions.<ref name=ere/>

Difficulties with [[Friedrich Delitzsch]]'s [[origin theory]] connecting Hebrew ''[[Shabbat]]'' with the Babylonian [[lunar cycle]]<ref name=landau>{{cite book
|url=https://archive.org/stream/sabbath00land/sabbath00land_djvu.txt|title=The Sabbath
|author=Landau, Judah Leo
|publisher=Ivri Publishing Society, Ltd
|access-date=26 March 2009
|location=[[Johannesburg, South Africa]]
|pages=2, 12
}}</ref> include reconciling the differences between an unbroken week and a lunar week, and explaining the absence of texts naming the lunar week as ''Shabbat'' in any language.<ref name=orr>{{cite book
|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Tn4PAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA2630
|title=The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
|editor=Orr, James
|editor-link=James Orr (theologian)
|page=2630
|chapter=Sabbath: Critical Theories
|author=Sampey, John Richard
|publisher=Howard-Severance Company
|year=1915}}</ref>