Topic: Does anybody know WHY - 40 days

[MosJan]

in our Christian Religion we often use 40 days - such Qarasunq -

Qarasunq wan child is born - not to show the child to the outside world for 40 days

 

Qarasun - a Tar Hair has 40 stages or steps to become a Ameniyn Hayots Hovvapet

 

Qarasunq - wan one of us has pasd a way - we hold 40 days

[Sip]

I think it's because Jesus and Moses and a few other guys in the bible did things in 40 days. I know for sure Jesus was wondering around somewhere for 40 days and that's why it's so important.

 

I actually read a while back a few theories of why the number 7 is so prevalant in different contexts ... why some consider it as lucky ... why is the week 7 days. I found some of those theories completely fascinating and they trace the origins back to a VERY VERY long time ago (to the ancient egyptian days). Anyway, let me know if you want to hear about 7.

 

[ July 07, 2002, 11:04 PM: Message edited by: Sip ]

[Arpa]

Yes Seap, please do tell us about the number 7. (Is it beacuse the Lunar month, which is 28 days is evenly divided into 4 seven day periods?)

In the meantime I will tell you about my opinion about the number 40 and the "revelation" that answered long stanting question of of mine.

For a long time I had concluded that number 40 was a mythical numberand nothing more than a superstition of peoples that were so much less sophisticated than we. Of all the people you will understand best as it seems you are well versed in math.

I had come to the conclusion that the number 40 was simply a mythical number and every story and so called historical account that invokes it is nothing more or less than a myth. Consider such stories that are supposed to be the "gospel truth", that we adopted as a new religion, trashing two thousand years of native tradition, has stories like; "It rained 40 days and 40 nights"(the myth of the "flood" and the garbage about Noah. Moses was 40 years old when he was called to lead his people out of Egypt. (Don't forget that according to that mythical book called the Bible there were 7 years of plenty and 7 of famine). Moses led his people in the desert for 40 years. There is no proof that there actually was an Exodus, not even a shred of evidence. When we can still find artifacts from Alexander's trek through Armenia and Persia there is not even a vestige, not even a shoelace to prove that people traversed the desert for 40 years, time enough for at least three generations.

Ali Baba had 40 accomplices(thieves)

Dzenov Ohan had such thundering voice that it could be heard beyond 40 villages. When Sasountsi David pushed Msra Melik into the pit he piled "qarsun gomshu kashi" and "qarsun jaghatsi qar" on top of him. It is customary to celebrate "qarsun or ev qarsun gisher". Traditional mourning period is 40 days hence the "qarasunq". Infants must be baptized before "qarasun or" after birth. There may be scientific reason for the latter since infant mortality is highest after 40 days or thereabouts when the immunity acquired from the mother is lost.

I'm sure you can think of more examples of mythical and superstitious applications of the number 40.

I will use the provincial and colloquial use of the word "qarsun" rather than the formal Armenian form of "qarasun" since the myth is nothing more than a provincial folk myth and superstition.

 

Survey the second picture below and I'll tell you a story.

 

http://www.cilicia.com/armo5_clickmap.html

 

We were standing at exactly the foreground of that picture, about where the chain link fence gate is and surveying the scene. We were admiring the fact that when that church was destroyed during the Eearthquake it was precisely dissected in two and the bell tower (you can't see it in this picture) had fallen almost intact with the bell still attached to the structure with the cross on top undamaged. While we were talking among ouselves I noticed that this native, a mature man (could have been 60 or 70 yrars old) was intently watching us, I could tell that he wanted to paricipate in the conversation. To encourage and engage him I saked if he knew how old that church was. He said; "Oooh, es ekeghetsin shat hin e". I asked him several times in several different ways, his aswer was still the same. Finally, realizing that I was not getting anywhere I came with the genius and asked him if he was baptized at that church. His answer was; Not only he was baptized there but his father before him, his father's father and his father also. I was satified, kind of. If he was 70 years old, his father if living, would have been 90, his gradfather, 110 and his great grandfather... 130.

I thanked him and turned around to relate and translate his answer to my companions when I felt a tap at my shoulder. I turned around, it was him, his deep blue eyes(did I say he was blond and blue eyed?) virtually falling out of their sockes with a bright gleam. He brought his face close to mine and declared; "Es ekeghetsin shat shat hin e, gouste...."qarsun" taru e"!

I could not believe my ears.

That was my revelation and the answer to my years of wonderment about the number 40. QARSUN.

You see? Unlike you, crunching numbers in the billions, trillions and grillions, some time ago people could only count up to the limit of their physical surroundinggs, 10 fingers, 10 toes and that many of ther companion, and voila... qarsun, the highest number imaginable, an eternity, even beyond the stars.

 

Now you tell us why the universe was created in 7 days. Did you say 7 gazillion days!?

 

Speaking of myths and superstitions. I wish we had stuck to our own rather than adopt others idiots' mythology that masquerades as a religion. With religions like that who needs more myths and supertitions. Even I can compose more fantastic and fabulous stories than that.

[Arpa]

OOPs!!

When you got to that URL click at Gumri and survey the second picture.

http://www.cilicia.com/armo5_clickmap.html

[MosJan]

thanks Arpa jan

ther is mor to this / i will get some info soon

i like to se more posts.

 

p.s.

Rafe is duing a good job on cilic.com BRAVO

[Sip]

Very interesting dear Arpa!!!!

 

I fully understand what you mean about numbers and ancients ... many didn't even have the concept of zero till recently (I dont' know the exact story there). But I have heard of American indian tribes that would count 1, 2, many !!! After all, I usually deal with 0, 1, and sometimes a "don't care" which can be either a 0 or a 1.

 

About the number 7 ... please keep in mind that this is probably just theory of some author who happened to write a book on it! Well, it goes back to the ancient Egyptians. They experimented a lot with number systems based on 12 (base-12). This is because the counting method they used, relied on pointing the thumb to the joints on the fingers. Each finger has 3 joints ... with 4 fingers to point to with the thumb, they could count to 12 on each hand.

 

With 2 hands, they got the number 24. That is probably why they divided the day into 24 hours ... they had strictly 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night so they kept adjusting the lengths of their hours depending on the seasons.

 

Also, in some instances, they used to count up to 60 ... They could count to 12 on one hand. With the 5 fingers on the other hand, they could keep track of how many 12s they have counted: 1x12, 2x12 ... 5x12=60.

 

A lot of their bargaining and business dealings were most likely based on the number 60 which happens to be a VERY cool number. If you start listing the factors of 60, you have 1,2,3,4,5,6 that divide it perfactly ... but then OOOPS, 7 does not divide 60 too well. So they really disliked the number 7. It made things difficult for them. They considered it a BAD number ... evil ... so forth.

 

So now the part that I consider kinda "theoretical" .. this author was claiming that the Israelites who were the slaves of the Egyptians and suffered for years and years under their rule ... after moving away and becoming independent, decided to do things completely opposite of what the Egyptians had. So, among other things, they picked the number 7 as a GOOD number. They considered it a lucky one. They rested EVERY 7 days and thus, the 7-day week was born.

 

Of course that is way before the days of the bible and the Roman days when our modern calendars took shape and I don't know too much about exactly how this 7-day week came to be the standard for the modern world. But it does seem to have its roots to very long times ago.

 

If anyone knows more about these things, please post. I am always fascinated by numbers, their origins, and their significance.

 

... but that thing about the old guy and the number "40" is just mind boggeling!!! I can easily imagine people having VERY different concepts of numbers, counting, measurements, and so forth if they have never been exposed to this standard base-10 math that we all learn in school.

 

[ July 10, 2002, 11:39 PM: Message edited by: Sip ]

[Azat]

Very interesting story about the old man Arpa.

 

[ July 11, 2002, 11:15 AM: Message edited by: Azat ]

[Azat]

Here is some info on how the 7 day week was started.

 

---------

 

Origins of the Days of the Week

 

 

Most societies across the world have some form of week, though its number of days can vary from 3 to 16. The Inca used 8-day weeks whereas the Maya, for whom time was a deity, considered a 260-day cycle the most important time unit in the calendar, representing the 9-moons-time between conception and childbirth. For Native North Americans (e.g. Hopi, Navajo), where time was embodied in nature's rhythms and processes, ceremonies were not governed by clock or calendar but by nature's seasons.

 

In ancient Egypt the sun god Ra was the lord of time, setting its measures when he sails in his barge over the upper and lower firmament. Each hour he assumes the shape of a different animal god, thus acquiring changing qualities and becoming manifest in an endless circular procession. Around the 3rd millennium BC the Egyptians, having invented picture writing or hieroglyphs, adopted a civil calendar, derived from the lunar calendar. The civil year1 had 360 + 5 days and started with the seasonal re-appearance of the Dog Star, Sirius, in the eastern sky followed by the annual flood of the River Nile. They used this combination of events to fix their calendar (comprising 10-day weeks) but did not allow for the extra quarter of a day and subsequently their calendar drifted into error2.

 

 

 

 

 

Aboriginal Australians provide an extraordinary model of time, being subtle, ambiguous and diffuse. The Dreamtime or Alcheringa is a sacred time, a Great Time, qualitatively different from ordinary or chronological time. Whereas the Western mind sees past or present or future, the Aboriginal sees them as merging, Dreamtime as always immanent in the land; the wallaby at the waterhole now, this Wednesday or last Wednesday or next Wednesday (i.e. always existing at the totemic waterhole in Dreamtime Wednesday).

 

The cycles of the moon, and above all the course of the sun, gave humankind a measure of time3. Sundials were found in Egypt from the 13th century BC onwards, but probably the Babylonians knew it first. They began to observe the motions of the stars and gather arithmetical information about their movements. They began to realise the existence of a lawful order in this procession of gods or archetypes over the sky; this order they expressed by numbers. Thus the Babylonians translated 'time' into numbered measurements, designed a 7-day week, which was later adopted by Judeo-Christianity to become the Western model of time.

 

But why 7 days of the week? Firstly, the week is an artificial division of time, having no correlation with any astronomical or natural phenomena except in so far as it is a closed system. We can deduce, therefore, that the number 7 had a special or archetypal significance to ancient civilisations, that it was a sacred number or at least a derivative of one. In watching and worshipping the stars the Babylonians, like the ancient Egyptians, attempted to faithfully recreate on earth the celestial order of the macrocosm, the guiding injunction being 'as above, so below.' There can be little doubt that the 7-day week is a legacy of the ordering process of patriarchal cultures of antiquity and mythologies surrounding the 12-month solar and 28-day lunar cycles, linked to the traditional 7 planets, the 7 stars, the Great Bear constellation that is the centre of the World Tree, the navel of the world.

 

Bleakley4supports the notion of the menstrual cycle as a key structural force of human life. He explains that the 4-fold expression of the 7-day creation myth in the book of Genesis is the traditional number of the menstrual cycle, the 28-day lunar approximation. Here is the fountain of Renewal, the navel of the World, a mandala radiating in 4 directions, representing the 4 quarters of the moon cycle and the menstrual rhythm.

 

The Babylonians named each day of the week after one of the 5 planetary bodies known to them, and after the Sun and the Moon; a custom later adopted by the Romans.

 

It was Emperor Constantine in 321AD who, adhering to the concept of linear time, established the 7 day week in the Roman Calender and designated Sunday (Sabbath) as the first day of the week5.

 

Subsequent days bore the names:

 

Moon's-day

Mar's-day

Mercury's-day

Jupiter's-day

Venus's-day, and,

Saturn's-day

The days assigned by the Romans to the Sun, Moon and Saturn were retained for the corresponding days of the week in English (i.e. Sunday, Monday and Saturday respectively).

 

The other weekday names in English are derived from Anglo-Saxon words for the Gods of Teutonic mythology. Tuesday comes from Tiv, or Tiw, the anglo-saxon name for Tyr6, the Norse god of war (equivalent of the Germanic Mars or Ares).

 

Tyr was one of the sons of Odin, or Woden, the supreme deity after whom Wednesday (Woden's-day) was named. Similarly, Thursday originates from Thor's-day, named in honour of Thor, the god of thunder. Friday was derived from Frigg's-day. Frigg (also called Friia), the wife of Odin, represents love and beauty in Norse mythology, ergo promoter of marriage and fertility.

 

---------

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A694848