What does Pentecost actually celebrate?

Many Christians think of Pentecost solely as a Christian holiday without realizing it goes back much farther. The Feast of Weeks is a feast initially prescribed by God to celebrate the first of the wheat harvest (Leviticus 23:15-21, Numbers 28:26-31, Deuteronomy 16:9-12). In Hebrew, it is called Shavuot, which means “weeks” (7 weeks after Passover); in Greek, it is Pentecost, meaning “fiftieth” (50 days after Passover). By the era of Jesus (and still today), it also became a time to celebrate God giving the Torah on Mount Sinai. Jewish sages had studied the Scriptures and made this time correlation between […]