The Spirit and Pentecost

Over the past few posts in this series on the development of beliefs about the Holy Spirit, we’ve seen a growing sense of expectation that God was going to unleash the Holy Spirit in an unprecedented way upon the world. This began like a distant roll of thunder in the Prophets, grew more insistent throughout the Second Temple Period, and reached fever pitch in the Gospel birth narratives and Jesus’ final promises before his Ascension. Today comes what in the Christian tradition has always been understood to be the fulfillment of that expectation on the Day of Pentecost.

But before we get into that fateful day, we need to take a step back and look at what that feast meant in its Jewish context, so we can better understand how those first Christians would have understood what was happening to them.

As I’ve previously written:

Like all the major Christian feasts, Pentecost has its origins in a Jewish Holy Day, in this case the feast of Weeks [Shavuot in Hebrew], celebrated seven weeks (i.e., a ‘week of weeks’) after the Passover. The feast was originally connected to the end of the seven-week grain harvest. The feast therefore had connotations of fruition, fulfillment and thanksgiving (much like our own Thanksgiving celebrations). These meanings flowing from the feast’s role in the agricultural cycle were echoed in the theological meaning the feast took on, as a celebration of the receipt of the Law. Moses’ receiving the Tablets of the Law was understood as the fulfillment of Israel’s liberation from Egypt, and therefore as the sealing of the gift of salvation and freedom.

I’ve never seen any clear explanation of when or why the feast took on this theological significance, but there are some possible hints at this connection in the instructions for the feast in Leviticus 24. For example, uniquely among the major feasts, Shavuot includes a communal peace offering, which likely hearkens back to the similar offering made upon receiving the Law in Exodus 24. At any rate, it does seem clear that the connection was well-established during the Second Temple period. One scholar refers to Weeks “as the covenantal festival par excellence” during the period, including not only the covenant of Moses, but those of Abraham and Noah too (Moshe Weinfeld, Normative and Sectarian Judaism in The Second Temple Period). This is evidenced by the calendrical calibrations of both the apocalyptic Book of Jubilees and the Qumran sect, where the date of Weeks was claimed to be the date when both the covenants of Noah and Abraham were sealed. For example, speaking with God’s voice, Jubilees says: “On that day we made a covenant with Abram, just as we had covenanted with Noah in this month and Abram renewed the festival and ordinance for himself forever” (Jubilees 14.20).

Because of the covenantal connections, Second Temple writings on the events surrounding Moses receiving the Law are also important for understanding what’s happening in Pentecost texts in the New Testament. Texts as diverse as the Aramaic Targums (explanatory paraphrases of the Bible) and Philo’s Hellenized theological writings interpreted Exodus 20.18 (’all the people saw the voices and the flashes’) literally, linking the words of God at Sinai both to loud noises and blazing flames (see Targums of Ps. Jonathan, Neofiti, and Genizah and Philo’s On the Ten Commandments 46). Philo makes a further connection between these loud flames and intelligible human languages:

And a voice sounded forth from out of the midst of the fire which had flowed from heaven, a most marvelous and awful voice, the flame being endowed with articulate speech in a language familiar to the hearers, which expressed its words with such clearness and distinctness that the people seemed rather to be seeing than hearing it. (On the Ten Commandments 46)

While later than the period we’re looking at, the Babylonian Talmud also shows a similar belief in the multiplicity of the voice of God:

R. Johanan said: What is meant by the verse, The Lord giveth the word: They that publish the tidings are a great host? — Every single word that went forth from the Omnipotent was split up into seventy languages.  The School of R. Ishmael taught: And like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces. just as a hammer is divided into many sparks, so every single word that went forth from the Holy One, blessed be He, split up into seventy languages. (b. Shabbat 88b)

Combining this belief with the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Seventy Elders in Numbers 11, there was also a convention that the judges of the Sanhedrin were supposed to be able to speak seventy languages. This common, internationalizing thread in these traditions, seems to be connected to a tradition in which the presence of the Holy Spirit undoes the curse of Babel, granting the gift of communication and mutual understanding.

All this is cultural context for the story of Pentecost as we find it in the New Testament. We left off our narrative with the two Gospel witnesses in slightly different spots. In John, Jesus has been promising the gift of the Holy Spirit to be ‘another advocate’ (the Greek word, parakletos, indicates a role something like a defense attorney, but with perhaps an added sense of exhortation and encouragement, like a coach) throughout his ‘farewell discourse.’ In this version of the story, Jesus appears to his disciples shortly after the Resurrection:

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” (John 20.21-23)

So John ends with this initial fulfillment of these promises surrounding the Holy Spirit, but only to the small group gathered in the Upper Room. It’s a fulfillment, but not quite yet what it seemed like Jesus had in mind.

Luke, who was less grand with the promises made about the Spirit, takes us through the whole fifty-day period of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances until his Ascension. At the start of Acts (which is part 2 of Luke’s two-part work), he summarizes this period as follows:

After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. … But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1.3-5, 8)

These promises set the stage for what happens next:

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. (Acts 2.1-4)

At this point, some bells should be going off from all that cultural context from the start of the post. We could do a targum of our own there, something like this:

On the feast celebrating and renewing the covenant between God and God’s people, the disciples were together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there was a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house. Just as it had on Sinai, the noise manifested in divided tongues of fire, resting on each one of them, causing them to speak in foreign languages, just as it had on the elders of the people, who prophesied and became prototypes for inspired, multilingual leadership, undoing the curse of Babel.

In seems, then, that every detail in Luke’s description is intentional, explaining events that we can only assume were messy and chaotic, through the lens of Jewish beliefs and traditions about the feast of Pentecost and the renewal of the covenant. The message seems clear: the Holy Spirit is at work renewing God’s people in an unprecedented way.

The narrative then goes through a list of the peoples who were in Jerusalem and witnessed the events, amazed that they are all hearing this rag-tag band of Galileans speaking intelligibly in their own languages (2.5-11). Then comes another crucial passage which is worth quoting in full:

All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Fellow Jews and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit,
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ (2.13-21)

What Peter is saying here is that the events of this Pentecost morning are nothing other than the Apocalyptic Day of the LORD. Just as God had promised through the prophet Joel, the Holy Spirit has come upon the faithful. The Kingdom of God is not just ‘at hand’, but has come. It’s here. Now.

He concludes:

Fellow Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know—this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having released him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. …
This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you see and hear.
Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” …
Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. (2.22-24, 32-38)

As we saw earlier in this Easter season, this is a typical message from the start of Acts, focusing — in true nonviolent atonement form — on God’s vindication of Jesus, whom we had put to death through a collusion of religion and politics. Where humanity kills, God brings life. Now this new life bestowed upon Jesus is being poured out for everyone in fulfillment of that prophetic hope and expectation.

So, we see just how much is happening here in Acts 2. The text understands the events of Pentecost to mark the renewal of the covenant between God and God’s people, the fulfillment not just of the events of Sinai and feast of Weeks, but also of the prophetic hope and expectation of the new messianic life, sealed by the particular gift of the Holy Spirit poured out on all the faithful. This is HUGE.

Where this goes in the rest of Acts will have to wait until next time.