Part 1 of 2
THE Jewish Feast of Weeks was kept fifty days after Passover, so in Greek the feast was called Pentecost, from the word for ‘fiftieth’.* It celebrated both the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai and the first-fruits of Spring, and Jewish law required everyone to go to Jerusalem for it.
Jesus’s apostles, together with his mother Mary and other women from his entourage, had remained in Jerusalem since his death and resurrection. Now, on the Feast of Weeks, they were gathered, as had become their habit, in an upper-storey room for prayer.
Suddenly, a sound like a powerful wind filled the room, and forked tongues of fire flickered above the heads of Peter, John, and the other apostles (including Matthias, chosen in Judas’s place). And they began to speak: not in their accustomed Aramaic or Greek, but in the various languages and dialects of the milling crowd of pilgrims, visitors from all across the Roman world – an oddity which soon attracted attention.
In Hebrew, it is called ‘Shavuot’. It marks the occasion when on the peak of Mount Sinai God gave to Moses the Law by which Israel was to live when she entered the Promised Land; and also the gathering of ‘first fruits’, i.e. the first ripe products of the growing season, which are then offered to God. For Christians, it marks the gathering in of the Gentiles, the first-fruits (so to speak) of the Apostles’ evangelisation of the world; and the coming of the Spirit marks the fulfilment of the prophecy of Ezekiel 36:26, renewing the Law by making it more internal: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” See also Stone Tablets and a Golden Calf, and Passover to Pentecost.
Précis
The apostles used to gather in a room in Jerusalem, and on the Feast of Weeks, fifty days after Passover, they were met for prayer when the sound of a strong wind came, and flames appeared above their heads. Afterwards, they found they could speak dozens of languages, something which soon attracted attention to them. (55 / 60 words)
Part Two
A NOISY crowd quickly gathered. Those who could not understand what was being said dismissed it all as drunken babble, but dozens of others assured them that those strange flames had turned unlettered Galilaean fishermen into wise and persuasive speakers of every language of the world.
Amid the hubbub, Peter rose to address them. With a smile, he countered that you can’t get that drunk by nine in the morning. No, what they were seeing was the fulfilment of a prophecy. For generations, Jews had longed for the day when God would act to save his people through his Anointed servant. That day, he said, had come.
Jerusalem’s crowds were witnessing the gift of God’s Spirit, promised in Scripture, a gift offered even to them - the same crowds that had so shamefully demanded Jesus’s crucifixion fifty days before - if they would only repent, and be baptised. Some three thousand stepped forward. The wise fishermen were drawing their net around the whole world.
Précis
When people heard the apostles speaking in strange tongues, some thought it was drunken nonsense but others recognized their own languages. Then Peter stood up, and told the crowd that what they were witnessing was the prophesied gift of God’s Spirit, and if they repented of their part in the crucifixion of Jesus, they too could share in it. (59 / 60 words)