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Tobit and Acts both refer to the Hebrew Festival of Weeks by its Greek name Pentecost, demonstrating how the term was already in use among Jewish communities of the Hellenistic and Roman periods and later incorporated into Christian tradition.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Tobit 2:1
Deuterocanon
1 And when Esarhaddon was king I came home again, and my wife Anna was restored to me, and my son Tobias. And at our feast of the Pentecost, which is the holy Feast of the Weeks, there was a good dinner prepared me; and I laid me down to dine. 2 And the table was set for me, and abundant food was set for me, and I said to Tobias my son, Go, my boy, and whatever poor man you shall find of our kindred of the Ninevite captives, who is mindful of God with his whole heart, bring him and he shall eat together with me; and lo, I wait for you, my boy, until you come.
Date: 225–175 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Acts 2:1
New Testament
1 Now when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like a violent wind blowing came from heaven and filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 And tongues spreading out like a fire appeared to them and came to rest on each one of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them. 5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven residing in Jerusalem.
Date: 70–90 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... the designation “Festival of Weeks” was known well from the Bible, and is now known from an Aramaic Enoch text as well (4Q196); on this and other evidence see Fitzmyer, Tobit, 131–132. Moreover, variation of diction is precisely what we would expect from our author. Finally, note that substitution of Passover for Pentecost would also raise a real problem: why would Judas interrupt his campaign with a seven-week long break early in the season, after Passover? Or why would our author skip whatever Judas was doing during that long period? For these reasons we have retained the usual reading ... so-called Pentecost. This is the usual Greek name for the holiday in this period; see e.g. Tobit 2:1; Josephus, War 1.253 and Antiquities 13.252; Acts 2:1 ..."
Daniel R. Schwartz, 2 Maccabees (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 436.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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