Pentecost and Babble/Babel

Seven weeks after Easter each year, Christians celebrate Pentecost. Along with Easter and Christmas, it is one of the three major Christian festivals.

Its roots are in Judaism, for Pentecost was (and still is) a Jewish festival. Occuring 50 days after Passover and linked to both Israel's agricultural cycle and her religious history, it celebrated the completion of the spring harvest and commemorated the giving of the Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai.

According to Jewish tradition, the Law was offered to Gentile nations as well, but only Israel accepted it. Pentecost thus called to mind both the universality of Israel's God and the particularity of Israel's relationship with God.

For Christians, Pentecost celebrates the coming of the Spirit upon the followers of Jesus some 50 days after Good Friday and Easter, fulfilling a promise made by the risen Christ. The result was the beginning of the post-Easter mission of the early Christian movement.

The Christian story of Pentecost is found in the second chapter of Acts, written near the end of the first century by the same person who wrote the Gospel of Luke. The story is filled with richly symbolic language drawn from the Jewish tradition.

As the author tells the story, the Spirit came upon the community with the sound of a "rushing wind" and with "tongues of fire" resting on each of them. In the Hebrew Bible, "wind" and "fire" are both associated with the presence of God. In Hebrew, the same word means both "wind" and "spirit," as in the creation story where the divine wind (or spirit) moves over the primordial waters (Genesis 1:2).

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