How did the feast of Pentecost develop into the form that our celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit now takes? In the first part of an article in which he unfolds our understanding of Pentecost, Nicholas Lash describes how a
How did the feast of Pentecost develop into the form that our celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit now takes? In the first part of an article in which he unfolds our understanding of Pentecost, Nicholas Lash describes how a Jewish harvest feast gradually acquired new significance and changed over time to become Christian Pentecost, which we will celebrate on Sunday 31st May.
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all gathered together in one place. What happened on the day of Pentecost, or rather, what aspect of the ‘whole mystery of Christ’ do we celebrate on the feast of Pentecost? In view of the fact that the event described in the Acts of the Apostles took place on a Jewish feast, it would seem, at first sight, that an investigation into the Jewish feast would be an adequate background for an understanding of the Christian Pentecost. In fact, it is not quite so simple as that. In this article we shall try to do three things: firstly, outline the historical development of the feast; secondly, place the doctrine of the ‘sending of the Spirit’ in the context of the whole paschal mystery, of which it is an essential element; thirdly, draw some conclusions for our own understanding and celebration of Pentecost.
Pentecost - Jewish and Christian
When the chosen people conquered Canaan, they tended to adopt the religious customs of the country and adapt them to their own understanding of theology and of history. Thus the greatest feast of the Jewish year was the result of the fusion of two distinct celebrations: the Passover, ‘the spring-time sacrifice of a young animal in order to secure fecundity and prosperity for the flock’ and the feast of Unleavened Bread, the celebration of the beginning of the harvest. The two feasts were finally combined about the time of King Josiah, and marked the beginning of the great annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
But the whole life, and therefore the liturgy, of the chosen people was dominated by the memory of one event: the exodus from Egypt. It is therefore hardly surprising that the Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread, at first separately, and then together, increasingly lost their original significance and became the annual celebration of the exodus, of their liberation from Egypt, and of the covenant that had made them God’s own people.
In addition to the feast of Unleavened Bread, there was another feast which had its origins in the agricultural life of Canaan. This feast marked the end of the harvest, and was the feast of the first fruits. It took its title, the feast of Weeks, from the fact that it was celebrated fifty days (seven times seven plus one) after the feast of Unleavened Bread. However, in contrast to the other Jewish feasts, this feast did not develop into one of the annual celebrations of saving history. ‘It remained a harvest festival which in course of time diminished in significance and in the time of Christ had become merely the joyous concluding day of the Jewish Passover - the time when one went on pilgrimage’. This, then, was the day on which that special outpouring of the Spirit took place which Luke fastens on to develop his theology of the sending of the Spirit from the side of the glorified Christ.
Before passing rapidly on to consider the development of the Christian feast, there is one further fact to be taken into consideration. About the beginning of our era the Jewish Pentecost did acquire significance in terms of salvation history. The sealing of the covenant on Mount Sinai had taken place fifty days after the escape from Egypt: there is evidence that, by the second century A.D., the feast of Weeks had also become a covenant celebration, and the annual commemoration of the giving of the law to Moses. Did this development have any influence on the early Church? One of the greatest of modern biblical scholars is emphatic that it did not:
… there is no connection between the Christian feast of Pentecost and the feast of Weeks as understood by the Qumran community or, in later days, by orthodox Judaism. The story in Acts contains no allusions to the sinaitic covenant nor to the new covenant of which Christ is the mediator.
But this judgement perhaps demands qualification. The theophany recorded in Acts (the ‘mighty wind’, and the ‘tongues as of fire’) not only bears a general resemblance, in terms of imagery, to many Old Testament theophanies, but it seems quite particularly to recall the events at Mount Sinai. Moreover, the ‘little Pentecost’  when the descent of the Spirit was accompanied by the shaking of the ‘place in which they were gathered’, is strongly reminiscen