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Sunday (mostly)
Sunday afternoon we went to my niece's graduation party. The balance of guests was not what I expected. I was assuming there would be a flock of 17-year-olds and a smattering of folks our age, mostly relatives. As it turned out, the kids were all migrating among many parties, so at any given time the adults outnumbered the kids by, oh, 5 to 1 or so. (Graduation was Friday night, so this was probably the prime party weekend.)
Many of the adults were from the church choir (my father and Kim both sing in it). I noticed that most of the choir members were wearing red, so I asked my father about it. Sunday was Penticost, which I suppose I could have worked out on my own if I'd thought about it, and there is a tradition of wearing red for the holiday. (I think the reason had something to do with an association between the holy spirit and fire, but I didn't quite catch it. Education welcome.) I'm glad that the red shirt I pulled out of the drawer that morning had a spot of something on it (so it went to the laundry pile). I would have given an incorrect impression without meaning to. I much prefer that my incorrect impressions be planned. :-)
I found myself in the uncomfortable position of balancing kashrut concerns against being kind to my family. They went out of their way to make sure none of the side dishes contained dairy so I could eat the meat, when I would have preferred to stick to the dairy/veggie dishes instead. (They also made sure to put meat and cheese cold cuts on different platters, segregate the ham from the turkey, and so on.) I could see that I was going to upset my mother if I didn't eat the meat, though, so I did.
(I'll eat meat meals in my parents' home, and for that matter in my friends' homes, so long as the basics are observed (species, no dairy, etc). I want to be able to eat with my family and friends. In a situation where there's a variety of food, both meat and non-, however, I'll avoid the meat. Most parties are like that, for example.)
Sunday evening we had a lovely dinner with Ralph and Lori (mmm, brownies!) and then played a new-to-us card game that I've forgotten the name of. It was entertaining, whatever it was. It involves cards in rows and columns where you rotate cards to try to make edge patterns line up; if you do that you get to remove cards, which have point values. (The object is to maximize points.) There are enough unusual conditions to make the game interesting while not being so many to be hard to track. Most card games with individualized cards fall down on the latter point for me -- Magic, Illuminati, Chez whatever, etc.
Sometime during the evening it rained, which I didn't think much of at the time. I was surprised to come home to a dark house. Fortunately, we knew where the flashlights, candles, and mechanical alarm clock were, so this was not as inconvenient as it might have been. Pity I can't read by candlelight, though, but it was late enough that this wasn't a real hardship.
Panasonic scores points for at least one model of VCR. I'd noticed before that after brief power outages I had to reset the clock but the programming wasn't lost. A five-hour outage is more than the backup can handle, apparently, so this time the programming was lost -- and the VCR told me that in big letters on the screen. Definite UI points there for warning me that they'd violated an expectation I might have had. (Mind, I was going to check anyway, but still...)
Re: Way more information than you probably meant :-)
A minor correction to your study bible: Shavuot (aka Feast of Weeks, Feast of First Fruits) is 50 days after Passover, not 50 days after the Shabbat following Passover. Christianity is free to reinterpret this, of course, but they misspeak by citing Torah sources for this interpretation.
I suspect most Christians have at best a passing knowledge of Pentecost as a pre-existing holiday
Presumably. And it makes sense to try to place some significant event on the first festival following the death of Jesus; festivals were big-deal events that required pilgrimage to Jerusalem. (If you believe then you can say that God chose this timing; if you don't then you can say that Paul did. I'm not trying to offend those in the former category.)
All that said, there's a problem with the timing in the gospel account, and I wonder how it's been addressed. (I assume it has been.) Specifically, if the famous dinner was a Passover seder, then that means the trial and crucifixion happened on Yom Tov, because the day starts at sunset. According to the gospels, they went first to the Jewish court and only then to Pilate -- but a Jewish court would not have convened, let alone considered a capital case, on Yom Tov. (They didn't on Shabbat, either. Nor would they have begun deliberations in a capital case on a Friday even if it weren't Yom Tov, because Shabbat would pose too much of an interruption.) Yet the gospels make it pretty clear that this all happened on that one Friday. ???
Re: Way more information than you probably meant :-)
Hmm... I checked Leviticus in the NIV, and it also counts from the Sabbath: I also checked my online Strong's, and it's listing original Hebrew for "morning after" (mochorath) and Sabbath (shabbath, of course) so those aren't coming completely out of thin air; maybe different base texts for Leviticus?
Actually, this is pre-Paul. Christianity is still pretty much exclusively within the Jewish community, and the apostles (sans Judas, of course) are still mostly under the radar. In a few more chapters, persecution will start, elements of a local movement get scattered across the larger region, and then Paul (and, by extension, the ministry to the Gentiles) emerges from that. The book of Acts is attributed to Luke, although there's some debate about exactly which Luke and considerable textual support for the idea that Luke, Author of Acts and Paul were (or became) tight.
Interesting question! I don't have a good answer off the top of my head.
Re: Way more information than you probably meant :-)
But I'm not sufficiently fluent to completely put together what's going on here. I wonder if
I wonder if I can find the portion of Talmud that governs the omer (offerings and counting). They would certainly cite sources where practice is codified. (Or, if you feel inclined, you could ask a rabbi; they don't mind. (I might if you don't.)
Actually, this is pre-Paul.
The events are described as occurring pre-Paul. What I meant was that you could argue that this was a Paulean retcon -- the event happened or didn't, but not necessarily at this time, and later editing placed it near Shavuot.
[1] Actually no; there's some calendar-juggling that goes on to ensure that Yom Kippur doesn't fall on a Friday or Sunday because that would be onerous, and that causes ripples. I don't know how that juggling is justified halachically, or what it entails.
Re: Way more information than you probably meant :-)
(blush)
Just catching up now. My understanding is that there's a genuine ambiguity in the original text. According to Arthur Waskow in Seasons of our Joy, the Sadducees interpreted the "Shabbat" in question to mean the first Shabbat after Passover starts, while the Pharisees and, later, the Rabbis of the Talmud favored the interpretation of "Shabbat" as referring to Passover itself. So my response would be that as far as the early Christians were concerned, there was no discrepancy at all in dates. Perhaps they were following the opinion of the Sadducees; perhaps they were making an entirely reasonable interpretation of the text. The Rabbis actually needed the verse to refer to the first day of Passover, because they wanted Shavuot to correspond to a particular date, rather than wandering in the calendar as it would otherwise.
Regarding what day of the week Pesach can fall on, um... working with first Seasons of our Joy and the cal(1) program, and then a 1000-year calendar on line, it seems that (at least in the last 20 years), Passover has fallen on every day of the week except Monday or Wednesday.
Re: Way more information than you probably meant :-)
Coincidentally, my rabbi and I were talking this morning about calendar stuff and he told me that Pesach can't fall on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. He didn't have sources or reasons off-hand, and it was a tangent so I didn't press it.
Re: Way more information than you probably meant :-)
Re: Way more information than you probably meant :-)
<blockquote><i>Pentecost or Weeks</i> (Shabuoth)[276]
The name <i>Pentecost</i> ("the fiftieth day") was common in Greek sources for the Old Testament Feast of Weeks or Feast of Harvest. It fell fifty days "from the morrow after the Sabbath" (Lev. 23:15-16). The Pharisees contended that the Sabbath intended was Passover itself, so Pentecost might fall on any day of the week. The Sadducees understood the Sabbath to be the weekly Sabbath of Passover week. The calendar followed at Qumran (Jubilees 15:1; 44:1-4) counted from the Sabbath following Passover week. Both of the latter methods of reckoning had the effect of putting Pentecost always on a Sunday. Josephus and Philo[277] calculated Pentecost according to the Pharisaic method, hence it has been widely concluded that their method prevailed in the first century. On the other hand, it seems more likely that the practice at Jerusalem and the temple prior to 70 would have followed the interpretation of the Sadducees, who had control of the temple.
<hr width="25%">
276. Exod. 23:15-17; 34:22; Lev. 23:15-21; Philo, <i>Special Laws</i> 2.30.176-87; Josephus, <i>Ant.</i> 3.10.6 [252ff.]; Acts 2:1; 20:6; 1 Cor. 16:8; Tobit 2:1; 2 Macc. 12:32; <i>Megilla Ta'anith</i> 1; b. Menahoth 65a.
277. Philo, <i>Special Laws</i> 2.30.176; <i>Decalog</i> 160; Josephus, <i.Ant.</i> 3.10.5-6 [250ff.]; cf. Lev. 23:15-16 in the LXX.</blockquote>
Re: Way more information than you probably meant :-)