Change of Times and Laws
And he shall seek to change times and laws…
Dan 7:25 And he shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and plot to change times and laws. And they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and one-half time.
Days
Where did the names of the days of the week come from?
The names originated with the ancient Romans, who used the Latin words for the Sun, the Moon, and the five known planets! Our English names also reflect the influence of the Anglo-Saxons (and other Germanic peoples). Learn all about the days of the week origins.
In renaming the seven days of the week as checkpoints in time, the ancient Romans choose seven celestial bodies that could be seen with the naked eye: the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn. For example, “Sunday” is the Sun’s day and “Monday” is the Moon’s day.
When it comes to the English names that we use today for days of the week, we can also see the influence of the Anglo-Saxons and the old German gods. For example, “Wednesday ” comes from Woden, the Anglo-Saxon king of the gods; in Saxon, the name is “Wodnesdaeg.” (Now you know why Wednesday is spelled that way!)
See the complete days of the week origins across multiple languages.
Days of the Week Origins
English | Latin | French | Italian | Spanish | Saxon |
SUNDAY | dies Solis
(Sol’s day. Sol was an ancient Roman sun god.) |
dimanche
(from the Latin for “Lord’s day”) |
domenica
(from the Latin for “Lord’s day”) |
domingo
(from the Latin for “Lord’s day”) |
Sunnandaeg
(Sun’s day. Day of Sun) |
MONDAY | dies Lunae
(Luna’s day. Luna was an ancient Roman moon goddess.) |
lundi | lunedì | lunes | Monandaeg
(Moon’s day. Day of Moon.) |
TUESDAY | dies Martis
(Mars’s day. Mars was an ancient Roman god of war.) |
mardi | martedì | martes | Tiwesdaeg
(Tiw’s day. Tiw was an Anglo-Saxon god of war.) |
WEDNESDAY | dies Mercurii
(Mercury’s day. Mercury was a messenger of the ancient Roman gods, and a god of commerce.) |
mercredi | mercoledì | miércoles | Wodnesdaeg
(Woden was the Anglo-Saxon king of the gods.) |
THURSDAY | dies Jovis
(Jupiter’s, or Jove’s, day. Jupiter, or Jove, was the king of the ancient Roman gods, and a god of sky and thunder.) |
jeudi | giovedì | jueves | Thursdaeg
(Thor’s day. Thor was a Norse god of thunder, lightning, and storms.) |
FRIDAY | dies Veneris
(Venus’s day. Venus was the ancient Roman goddess of love.) |
vendredi | venerdì | viernes | Frigedaeg
(Frigga’s day. Frigg was a Norse goddess of home, marriage, and fertility.) |
SATURDAY | dies Saturni
(Saturn’s day) |
samedi
(from the Latin for “Sabbath”) |
sabato
(from the Latin for “Sabbath”) |
sábado
(from the Latin for “Sabbath”) |
Saeterndaeg
(Saturn’s day. Saturn was an ancient Roman god of fun and feasting.) |
THE GREGORIAN CALENDAR CHANGING OF THE DATE
Ten Days That Vanished: The Switch to the Gregorian Calendar
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Ten Days That Vanished: The Switch to the Gregorian Calendar”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 25 Jan. 2019, https://www.britannica.com/story/ten-days-that-vanished-the-switch-to-the-gregorian-calendar. Accessed 25 December 2023.
Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
When it comes to calendars, small errors can add up over time. The Julian calendar—the prevalent calendar in the Christian world for the first millennium CE and part of the second millennium—was an improvement over the Roman republican calendar that it replaced, but it was 11 minutes and 14 seconds longer than the tropical year (the time it takes the Sun to return to the same position, as seen from Earth). The result was that the calendar drifted about one day for every 314 years.
One of the most pressing problems caused by the error was the increasing difficulty of calculating the date of Easter, which the Council of Nicaea in 325 had decreed should fall on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox, which at the time fell on March 21. The growing discrepancy between the date set by the council and the actual vernal equinox was noted in the 8th century CE, if not earlier, and a number of proposals for reform were brought before popes in the Middle Ages. But no action was taken, and the Julian calendar, flawed as it was, remained the official calendar of the Christian church.
In its session of 1562–63, the Council of Trent passed a decree calling for the pope to fix the problem by implementing a reformed calendar. But it took another two decades to find a suitable fix and put it into place. After years of consultation and research, Pope Gregory XIII signed a papal bull in February 1582 promulgating the reformed calendar that came to be known as the Gregorian calendar. The reforms were based on the suggestions of the Italian scientist Luigi Lilio, with some modifications by the Jesuit mathematician and astronomer Christopher Clavius.
The most surreal part of implementing the new calendar came in October 1582, when 10 days were dropped from the calendar to bring the vernal equinox from March 11 back to March 21. The church had chosen October to avoid skipping any major Christian festivals. So, in countries that adopted the new calendar, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi on October 4, 1582, was directly followed by October 15. France made the transition separately in December.
Something as complex as implementing a new calendar couldn’t go off without some complications, though. The Protestant and Orthodox countries didn’t want to take direction from the pope, so they refused to adopt the new calendar. The result was that Catholic Europe—Austria, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland, and the Catholic states of Germany—suddenly jumped ahead of the rest of the continent by 10 days, and traveling across a border often meant traveling forward or backward on the calendar.
Eventually, non-Catholic countries did begin to adopt the Gregorian calendar. The Protestant regions of Germany and the Netherlands switched in the 17th century. Great Britain and the territories of the British Empire followed suit in 1752, spreading the Gregorian calendar around the globe.
Gregorian Calendar Reform: Why Are Some Dates Missing?
By Konstantin Bikos and Aparna Kher
The Gregorian calendar, the calendar system we use today, was first introduced in 1582. To make up for the inaccuracies of its predecessor, the Julian calendar, a number of days had to be skipped.
Notice in the following dating that the count goes from 1, 2, 14, 15. The correction of the 11 days took place by just dropping those 11 days. Tuesday was followed by Wednesday and Thursday Etc.. The Sabbath was never changed as some modern calendar liars try to say. As you can see the days of the week never changed.
Skipped Several Days
Over the centuries since its introduction in 45 BCE, the Julian calendar had gradually drifted away from astronomical events like the vernal equinox and the winter solstice. To make up for this error and get the calendar back in sync with the astronomical seasons, a number of days had to be dropped when the Gregorian calendar was adopted.
In North America, for example, the month of September 1752 had only 19 days, as the day count went straight from September 2 to September 14 (see illustration).
Number of Lost Days Varied
The papal bull issued by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 decreed that 10 days be skipped when switching to the Gregorian calendar. However, only five countries adopted the new calendar system that year—namely, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and most of France.
Since the discrepancy between the Julian calendar year and the astronomical seasons kept growing over time in the centuries that followed, more days had to be skipped in countries that switched to the Gregorian calendar in later years.
The US, Canada, and the UK dropped 11 days in 1752; Japan cut the year 1872 short by 12 days; and some countries, such as Russia, Greece, and Turkey, switched calendars as late as the early 20th century, so they had to omit 13 days (see table).
Switch Took More Than 300 Years
In total, more than three centuries passed until the Gregorian calendar had been adopted in all countries, from 1582 to 1927. The table below shows when the calendar reform occurred in some countries, including the first and the last.
Gregorian Calendar Introduction Worldwide
Year of Switch | Country | Days Removed |
1582 | France (most areas), Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain | 10 days |
1583 | Austria, Germany (Catholic states) | 10 days |
1587 | Hungary | 10 days |
1610 | Germany (Prussia) | 10 days |
1700 | Germany (Protestant areas), Switzerland (Protestant areas) | 10 days |
1752 | United States (most areas), Canada (most areas), United Kingdom (and colonies) |
11 days |
1872/1873 | Japan | 12 days |
1916 | Bulgaria | 13 days |
1918 | Estonia, Russia | 13 days |
1923 | Greece | 13 days |
1926/1927 | Turkey | 13 days |
Note: The list only includes countries that officially used the Julian calendar before the Gregorian calendar was introduced; countries that switched from a different calendar system to the Gregorian calendar, such as Saudi Arabia in 2016, are excluded. In some cases, it shows a simplified version of events. Each country is listed by its current name, although its official name may have changed since the calendar reform. |
Calendar Chaos
The delay in switching meant that countries followed different calendar systems for a number of years, resulting in differing leap year rules.
In the Gregorian calendar, most years that are evently divisible by 100 are common years, but they are leap years in the Julian calendar. This meant that the years 1700, 1800, and 1900 were leap years in countries still using the Julian calendar at the time (e.g., Greece), while in countries that had adopted the Gregorian calendar (e.g., Germany), these years were common years.
Double Leap Year
The Swedish Empire, roughly comprising the areas of today’s Sweden and Finland, even had a “double” leap year in 1712. Two days were added to February, creating February 30, 1712 after the leap day in 1700 had erroneously been dropped, and the calendar was not synchronized with either the Julian or the Gregorian system. By adding an extra leap day in 1712, they were back on the Julian calendar. The Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1753.
Many Variations
In some non-western countries, the calendar reform took on many different guises to accommodate differing cultural and historical contexts. For example, Japan replaced its lunisolar calendar with the Gregorian calendar in January 1873 but decided to use the numbered months it had originally used rather than the European names.
The Republic of China (1912-1949) initially adopted the Gregorian calendar in January 1912, but it wasn’t actually used a due to warlords using different calendars. However, the Nationalist Government (1928-1949) formally decreed the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in China in January 1929.
Conversion between Julian and Gregorian Calendars
Currently, the Julian calendar is 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar. So, to convert from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, add 13 days; to convert in the opposite direction, subtract 13 days.
The gap between the two calendar systems will increase to 14 days in the year 2100.
The Jewish calendar is out of sync. Fix it
The ‘Blessing of the Sun’ occured in April 2009 – 19 days ahead of schedule.
By STEPHEN GABRIEL ROSENBERG MAY 21, 2007 18:56 We observant Jews count the Omer – 50 days from Pessah to Shavuot – because the Torah commands us to.
Every night we’ve been reciting the number of days and weeks that have passed and look forward to the coming festival, rightly called Shavuot, or Weeks.
In Greek it is Pentecost – the counting of 50. This counting of 50 days between festivals seems to have been an ancient custom among farmers. Many of the festivals are two months apart. If the farmer celebrated seven days of harvest festival, added an extra day, as the eighth day of Shemini Atzeret is added to Succot, and if he then counts 50 days, he is on to the eve of the next festival.
This basic count of 59 days, or just two full months, would have applied between Pessah and Shavuot if we counted as the pre-rabbinic Ethiopians did, taking “from the morrow of the Sabbath” (Leviticus 23:15) to be the day after the whole festival, thus bringing Shavuot to 15th of Sivan.
It was the Pharisees who changed all that so as to bring Pentecost forward to coincide with their date for the Theophany at Mt. Sinai.
THE JEWISH calendar has been a lunar one, confirmed by the sighting of the new moon, at least from the time of the little tablet, the so-called Gezer Calendar excavated in 1908, considered to be of the 11th century BCE, which counted the agricultural year in consecutive months, four of them in pairs.
In matters of time, the month is a natural phenomenon, as are the day and the solar year, although the three are difficult to correlate. The month is actually 29.530588 days long and the solar year 365.2422 days, which makes calculation difficult.
In the early Roman Empire the year was still counted as a lunar one and correlation with the seasons was chaotic and unwieldy. It was so until the time of the Emperor Julius Caesar, who was advised by astronomers to scrap the lunar count and fix a solar year of 365 and 1/4 days. That fraction of a day was not practical so it was decreed to have three years of 365 days, and one of 366 days every four years. Known as the Julian Calendar, it had the desired effect of regulating the days and months with the seasons. The new reckoning was introduced in 45 BCE and was expected to be correct for time everlasting.
But it was not to be. THE CALENDAR year was more than 11 minutes too long, which meant an increase of one day in about 130 years. Thus by medieval times, after a period of say, 1,000 years, the calendar year was already seven days in advance of the sun.
By the time reform came, under Pope Gregory XIII, the calendar was 10 days ahead of the solar system, and consequently in March 1582, the new Gregorian Calendar took 10 days out of the month of October of that year.
It was not an easy reform to swallow, and Great Britain was the last major country to adopt it, not doing so until nearly 200 years later in 1752. It was then that popular riots called for “the return of our 11 days,” that led to the Treasury being forced to move the tax year 11 days forward from the quarter-day of March 25 to April 5.
As the Julian year had been too long by about three days in 400 years, the Gregorian Calendar solved the problem by declaring that the leap day should be ignored at every century year and only used in those centuries divisible by 400, as is still the practice today.
SO FAR, so good, but how does that impact on the Hebrew calendar?
We are very meticulous in our counting, as for instance in counting the Omer between Pessah and Shavuot; and, after all, we did invent the seven-day week. It is now adopted all over the world, while the 10-day week of the ancient Egyptians and the five-day week of the more recent French Revolution never took hold.
Our calendar has been a very ingenious one, having solved the problem of relating the lunar counting to the solar reality, and ensuring that festivals did not fall on unsuitable days of the week, like Yom Kippur on a Friday or Pessah on a Monday.
But its very ingenuity should not lead us into thinking it infallible.
When confirming the calendar by sighting of the moon became impractical, tradition has it that a fixed calendar was set down by the Patriarch Hillel II in 358 or 359 CE. It is not certain that this was so as, for instance, Maimonides does not mention it, though he says that monthly sightings did cease some time before the end of the Babylonian Talmud.
Although some flexibility may have continued, it is clear that by the time of the Geonim in the ninth century a fixed calendar was being adhered to.
That calendar, like all previous ones, divided the year into four tekufot or seasons, which conformed to the solstices and equinoxes of the earth around the sun.
The first division was the tekufa of Nissan, or the spring season. It was in that season that the festival of Pessah had to fall, as the Torah tells us to “Observe the month of Aviv (Spring) and make Passover” (Deuteronomy 16:1), so the calculation of the four seasons was of paramount importance.
ALTHOUGH we do not know when the fixed calendar started, whether in the fourth century or not, it is our guiding light today and 26 years ago it told us that the “Blessing of the Sun” was to be on April 8, 1981. It is a ceremony held every 28 years, when the sun is considered to be in the same position as the one it held in the days of Creation, that is, on a Wednesday. If the year is held to be 365 days long, then the date of its “birth” – its birthday – falls on the same day of the week every 28 years.
But when we celebrated that in 1981, the tekufa date was April 8, or 18 days after the true astronomical equinox of March 21.
In other words, the Jewish calendar was 18 days out of sync with the heavenly facts. How did this happen?
Quite simply because the original calculations, whether by Hillel II or others, were based on the Julian Calendar of their time and, as we have seen, the Julian Calendar would now also be about 15 days out of line with the sun.
Does this really matter?
As the tekufa of Nissan, or Spring, continues to progress ahead of the sun, by more than 11 hours a year, we shall find that in time it will approach nearer and nearer to the astronomical summer, and the festival of Pessah will no longer fall in our tekufa of Nissan. It can be calculated that this will occur in about 640 years, and then we will be in breach of the Torah law. The festival may still be in the spring, but the tekufa of Spring will be in the summer.
SO GREAT BRITAIN was not the last country to adopt the Gregorian correction of the Julian calculations.
The Hebrew calendar has not yet recognized the discrepancy but it is something we should consider very carefully and quite soon, for the next “Blessing of the Sun” will occur in two years’ time, in April 2009, so it would be sensible to reform the calendar before then, so that our prayers will be in line with God’s Creation, and not 19 days ahead of it. As in England, that change may well cause riots in the streets, this time in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak – but is it sensible to let this time bomb go on ticking any longer?
The writer is a Fellow of the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem.
To date, the Hillel II Calendar has not been corrected.
In 2024, the discrepancies for following the Feast’s commencement has spread across 3 months, depending on which Calendar is being observed. Holy Days are God’s Appointed Times – we best be observing them at His Appointed Times and not our own.
The Biblical (Sabbatical Jubilee) Calendar
There has been a re-discovery of the Biblical Sabbatical Jubilee Calendar, starting in the month of Abib (Aviv), both at the sighting of the sliver of the new moon and the AVIV Barley, in Israel. It is validated backwards in time and brings forth understanding of the prophetic times were are living in. It is also aligned the Gregorian Calendar with it so we understand in it terms of today’s calendars.
Let’s now explore:The Missing 76 Years