Before I read what Wright has to say, I went ahead and looked up some things myself. Just for some more context, Pentecost is a Jewish tradition that happens 50 days after Passover. According to Leviticus 23, it was one of the holy festivals that the Jews were to observe: 1) Sabbath; 2) Passover / Feast of the Unleavened Bread; 3) Offering of First Fruits; 4) Festival of Weeks; 5) Festival of Trumpets; 6) Day of Atonement; and 7) Festival of Booths. What is of interest to us here is the 4th festival listed, the Festival of Weeks. The New Oxford Annotated Study Bible gives the following information:
The Festival of Weeks (also called "Pentecost," from the Gk for "fifty"), roughly fifty days after the Festival of Unleavened Bread, celebrates the wheat harvest. Though early Judaism connects the festival to the giving of the Torah, it is a purely agricultural festival in all of the Bible's calendars. Cf. Ex 23.16; 34.22; Num 28.26; Deut 16.10,16.¹I read Lev 23:15-21, and there's not too much my mind can gather at this point. There are rules about what food to bring and what kind of grain and animal sacrifices should be made, and as it is with the other festivals there is a rule about not working.² I tried to find what might be particularly unique about this specific festival. As stated above, it celebrates the wheat harvest. But what else I gathered was from Lev 23:19, talking about making one sin offering and a sacrifice of well-being. What's a sacrifice of well-being? I'm glad you asked. For that we need to look at Lev 3:1-17, which basically says that people couldn't eat domesticated animals unless they took it to the sanctuary to sacrifice it. Then the people would get most of the meat (that's where they get their meat protein sustenance, I think), and the rest of the meat goes to the priests. So essentially I think what we can gather here about Pentecost is that it is a festival commemorating God's sustenance.
I think it's significant here for us to pay attention that Luke records the Holy Spirit coming on this particular holy convocation which commemorates God's sustenance. Since Judaism seemed to connect this festival also to the giving of the Torah, we can also take this into consideration (maybe a symbol of both physical and spiritual sustenance).
After reading Wright's commentary, the following stood out to me as relevant to what I was examining: "But, for the Jew, neither Passover nor Pentecost were simply agricultural festivals. These festivals awakened echoes of the great story which dominated the long memories of the Jewish people..." ³ He goes on to talk about Israelite story from Exodus, where they came out of Egypt (led by Moses) and crossed the Red Sea. Wright continues:
Then, 50 days after Passover, they came to Mount Sinai, where Moses received the law. Pentecost, the fiftieth day, isn't (in other words) just about the 'first fruits,' the sheaf which says the harvest has begun. It's about God giving to his redeemed people the way of life by which they must now carry out his purposes.⁴I guess this is a little different from what I gathered in my reading of it - while I saw the context as God giving us something to help sustain us, Wright says it is about God giving us (through the Law) a way to carry out his purposes. Initially I thought that I might be wrong in my interpretation - we'd have to think more about what the Holy Spirit is and does, and whether this could be interpreted as giving us sustenance like the Scriptures are supposed to give us sustenance). These verses aren't about God giving us the Bible on Pentecost, though, but rather giving us the Holy Spirit.
On the other hand, Wright also later discusses this parallel⁵ between Moses going up to Sinai and coming down with the Law, and Jesus ascending into heaven and the Holy Spirit (a law "designed to be written on human hearts") coming down to Jesus' followers. So perhaps I could be correct and there is more of a twofold message: The Festival of Weeks is celebrated to remember God's sustenance; also to remember God's sustenance through the Law. So, too, the Christian Day of Pentecost celebrates the sustenance of the Law designed to be written on human hearts; we also commemorate the day the Holy Spirit came to work in us, to help us carry out God's purposes.
In reflecting on my reflections, I think my observations may probably be considered the more boring insights on these verses. I imagine most people tend to focus on the power of the Holy Spirit rushing in and filling people and then making them go on fire for God, speaking in tongues and causing a great exciting stir. And so we, too, must go out and do the same, and be filled with the Holy Spirit! Go! Go now! Wright does talks about this too in his commentary. He says a lot of thought-provoking things worth considering (probably in just about every paragraph), and I can probably give a few thoughts on them... But I guess right now I'm more interested other things (like intertextuality). I'm also trying to focus on what might be new (or re-new) to me and not what might fuel the part of me that gets complacent about stories I've grown up with. So maybe it's less interesting to other people, but it's kind of fascinating to me.
I imagine that if I am still motivated to stick with reading, then something might happen later and those things other people find more interesting might begin to be things I also find interesting. I'll leave that part up to the Holy Spirit. 🔥
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(1) The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha. Michael Coogan, ed. Oxford (2007): 175 Hebrew Bible.
(2) On a side note, I think it's interesting here that Scripture places such a great emphasis on the importance of coming together ("holy convocation") and resting - it's repeated after each time the festivals are prescribed, so the repetition signifies its emphasis and importance.
(3) Wright, NT. Acts for Everyone: Part I. Westminster John Knox Press (2008): 21.
(4) Ibid.
(5) As another side note, I was interested in noting other parallels (allusions?) here between the Old and the New. Another one that I thought of (or maybe heard somewhere else) was between the Tower of Babel story, where God scattered the people and confused them with different languages, and this Pentecost story, where God brings the people together and they are able to speak in different languages.
