This past Sunday, May 11, 2008, many churches commemorated Pentecost—the day Christ’s disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit. Did you know that Pentecost as a religious day of remembrance didn’t begin with the early church? It’s true. Pentecost was already celebrated among the Jews as the culmination of their feast of weeks (See Exodus 34:22, Deut. 16:10). For generations Pentecost had been a holy day in Israel to remember Yahweh’s protection and to celebrate his blessings on their harvests.
But the story of Pentecost doesn’t begin with Israel: This harvest celebration has a history that precedes its Hebraic day of remembrance.
Many scholars of ancient religions claim that what the people of Israel call Shavu’ot derives its origin from an ancient pagan harvest festival in Canaan. These scholars say that as the Israelites settled in the Promised Land after their exodus from Egypt, they found Canaanites celebrating their first grain harvests by making sacrifices to various fertility gods. Because the Israelites understood themselves as set apart for the one Lord, Yahweh, they refused to participate in such harvest festivals.
Instead, they transformed one such pagan festival into a national religious holy day of thanking Yahweh for their harvests in the Promised Land and for their enjoyment again of leavened bread after their deprivations in the wilderness. Shavu’ot became Israel’s day of Thanksgiving and was celebrated fifty days after Passover, the day in which all Jewish people remembered Yahweh’s protection in Egypt when the Angel of Death passed over their children.
Later, after Israel’s Exile in Babylonia, Pentecost gained additional significance—it became one of the great pilgrimage feasts of Judaism. At first this celebration of the harvest became a pilgrimage to rural shrines to remember the works of Yahweh. But as the Israelite kings centralized religious worship, these pilgrimages to regional shrines became consolidated into one journey by all Jewish people to Jerusalem.
Pentecost in Jerusalem became a Jewish tradition. So that by the week of Christ’s crucifixion, many of those Jews who lived in remote areas of the Roman Empire had already made their way to Jerusalem for the annual Passover feast and were staying in the city for the feast of Pentecost. Their journeys to observe these traditional feasts explain why so many pilgrims were in the city during the time of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling of the disciples in the upper room.
In the Book of Acts, it’s recorded that the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples of Jesus during this feast of Pentecost (which means “fifty” in ancient Greek). You remember the story: Before Jesus ascends to heaven he instructs his disciples to remain in Jerusalem until they receive power from on high. Then fifty days after Jesus’ death these disciples are praying in an upper room in Jerusalem, when suddenly, with a mighty wind, the Holy Spirit descends upon them all and manifests God’s presence through tongues of fire above their heads. The Bible says that the disciples each begin to speak in other languages and become empowered to preach boldly in the name of Jesus. The result of their spirit-filled preaching that day was the conversion of 3,000 people.
Since then the church has continued to remember the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples and the disciples’ powerful evangelism by designating the seventh Sunday after Easter as Pentecost Sunday. And to this day we remember that just as the early disciples of Christ were a first harvest of souls for the kingdom of God, we too are part of God’s continuing great harvest.
