IF. The Time at which this Festival ivns celebrated. — Tiie time fixed for the celebration of Pentecost is the liftietli day reckoning from "//«« m-irroio after the Sabbath" (pZ'^rt n^n^p) of the Passover (Lev. xxiii, 11, 15, 16.) The precise moaning, however, of the word rS'J in this connection, wliich determines the dite for celcbratinu' this festival, has been matter of dispute from time inimeuiorial. The Bocthusians (2'Sir"'::) and the Sadducees in the time of the second Temple (Mishna, Menachoth, x, 3). and tiio Karaites since the 8th century of the f'hristi m era (comp. Je- hudah Hedessi, jEi/iM lla-Kophtr, Alpliab. p. 221-224;
ibid. p. 85 b), took TD'ZJ in its literal and ordinarj' sense as denoting the seventh day of the week, or the Sabbath of creation), and maintained tliat the omer was olfered on the day following that weekl}' Sabbath which might happen to fall within the seven daj's of the Passover, so that Pentecost would always be on the first da}- of the week. But against this it is urged ((/.) that Josh. v,ll, where nosn miTC^ isusedforT^'lTl r~ri-":, shows that T- w in Lev. xxiii, 11 denotes the first day of Passover, which was to be a day of rest, (b.) The definite article in P- wTI in Lev. xxiii, 11 refers to one of the preceding festival days, (c.) The expression r^ttJ is also used for the Day of Atonement (Lev. xxiii, 32), and the abstract "iir^UJ is applied to the first and eighth days of Tabernacles (ver. 39) and the Feast of Trumpets (xxiii, 24), as well as to week (xxiii, 15; XXV, 8); hence this use of adfiiSaTOV in the N. T. (Mark xvi, 2, 9; Luke xviii, 12). (rf.) According to Lev. xxiii, 15 the seventh week, at the end of which Pentecost is to be celebrated, is to be reckoned from this Sabbath. Now, if this Sabbath were not fixed, but could happen on any one of the seven Passover d.iys, possibh' on the fifth or sixth day of the festival, the Passover would in the course of time be displaced from the fundamental position which it occupies in the order of the annual festivals, (e.) The Sabbatic idea which underlies all the festivals, and which is scrupu- louslj' observed in all of them, shows that tlie reckon- ing could not have been left to the fifth or sixth day of the festival, but must have fixedly begun on the IGth of Nisan. Thus, each Sabbath comes after six even periods: 1. the Sabbath of da3-s, after six daj's; 2. the Sabbath of months, after six months ; 3. the Sabbath of years, after six years ; 4. the Sabbath of Sabbatic years, after six Sabbatic years ; 5. the Sab- bath of festivals = the Day of Atonement, after six festivals [see "Jtbilee, the Year of] ; hence the Sabbath of weeks, i. e. Pentecost, must also be at the end of six common weeks after Passover, which could be obtained only by reckoning from the 16th of Nisan, as this alone yields six common Aveeks ; for the first week during which the counting goes on belongs to the feast of Passover, and is not common, (f) The Sept. (// tTTai'piov r//(; Trpwrijc), Josephus (ry civrepg, rwv c\L,i<i.inii' I'ifnpct, Ant. iii, 10, 5, 6), Philo {Opp. ii, 294), Onkelos (N-- N";"!^ TT^^), and the sj-nagogue have understood it in this way, and most Christian com- mentators cs|Hiiise tlic traditional interpretation. See, however, SAiiiiATii. Still more objectionable is the hypothesis of liitzig ( Oslern und Pfingsten, Heidel- berg, 1837), defended by Hupfeld (^Dc primit. et vera festorum ap. Ilebra-os ratione, ii, 3 sq.), and Knobel (/>ie Biicher Exodus und Leviticus, Leipsic, 1857, p. 544), that the sacred or festival year of the Hebrews always began on the .Sabbath, so that the 7th (i. e. the first day of Passover), the 14th (i. e. the last day of the festival), and the 21st of Nisan, were always Sab- Ijath days ; and that tlie omer was offered on the 22d day of the month, which was " the morrow after the Sal)bath'' terminating the festival, and from which the fifty days were reckoned (Hitzig, Hupfield), or that the omer was offered on the 8th of the month, which was also " the morrow after the Sabbath," thus preventing it from being post feslum (Knobel). It will be seen that this hy])othcsis, in order to obtain Sabl)atlis for the 14th and 21st days of the month as the beginning and termination of Passovei-, is always obliged to m ike the religious new year begin on a Sabbath day, and hence has to assume a stereotyped form of the Jewish year, which as a rule terminated with an incomplete week. Now tliis assumption — 1. Is utterly at vari- ance with the unsettled state of the Jewish calendar, which was constantly regulated by the apperirance of the disk of the new moon [see New Moon, Day
PENTECOST
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PENTECOST
OF the] ; 2. It rudely disturbs the weekly division, which is based upon the works of creation, and which the Jews regarded with the utmost sanctity ; and 3. It is inconceivable that the Mosaic law, which, as we have seen, regarded the Sabbatic division of time as so peculiarly sacred that it made it the basis of the whole cycle of festivals, would adopt a plan for fixing the time for celebrating the Passover whereby the last week of almost every expiring year is to bs cut short, and the hebdomadal cycle, as well as the celebration of the Sabbath, interrupted (comp. Keil, On Leviticus xxiii, 11). It is therefore argued that the Jews, who during the second Temple kept Pentecost fiftj' days after the IGth of Nisan, rightlj' interpreted the injunc- tion contained in Lev. xxiii, 15-22. The fiftieth day, or the feast of Pentecost, according to the Jewish can- ons, may fall on the 5th, 6th, or 7th of Sivan (p"'0), the third month of the year from the new moon of Jlay to the new moon of June {Rosft I/a-Shana, G b; Sab- bath, 87 b). The fifty daj's formallj' included the pe- riod of grain-harvest, commencing with the offering of the first sheaf of the barley-harvest in the Passover, and ending with that of the first two loaves which were made from the wheat-harvest, at this festival. It was the of- fering of these two loaves which was the distinguishing rite of the day of Pentecost. See Wave-offering.