Rethinking the Historical Shavuot Holiday

The traditional narrative

The liturgy of the day sums up the modern view of the holiday by calling it “this day of Shavuot, the time of the giving of the Torah.”^[1] The Talmud also states this clearly by remarking that “Atzeret [Shavuot] is the day that the Torah was given.”^[2] Indeed, most of the day’s customs surround this theme. Many Jews stay up all night learning Torah to commemorate the Torah revelation. Others eat dairy products with the various symbols connected to Mt. Sinai. And at synagogue, the Ten Commandments are read aloud from the Torah scroll.^[3]

Jewish sources say that the reason we count the 50-day Omer is since our forefathers leaving Egypt did the same in anticipation of receiving the Torah. Thus the count is considered a build-up to the giving of the Torah on Shavuot.^[4]

A minor part of the contemporary Shavuot celebration is the agricultural element – the New Fruits season. Called Yom HaBikkurim in the Torah, the day celebrates the wheat harvest and the summer fruit season. The biblical verses about this aspect are recited in the Amidah prayer and are read aloud from the Torah scroll in synagogue.

 

Issues with the narrative

However, upon closer examination, the idyllic image starts to unravel. There is much doubt that Shavuot was the day of matan torah (giving of the Torah) and even more doubt that it is what the day’s celebration is about.

1. The first issue is more of a clarification than a question. The entire Torah was not given on one day, of course. “The Giving of the Torah” can only be referring to the Ten Commandments section of the Torah, which was indeed given on a single day.^[5] Moses received the remaining laws gradually over a 40-year period at the Tent of Covenant. At the end of the 40-year period, Moses is said to have written down these laws (called torahs).^[6]
2. The next issue is substantial. Shavuot is described several times in the Torah account, never as the day of the Mt. Sinai revelation. Instead, it is repeatedly described as an agricultural holiday celebrating the new harvest.^[7] The Torah has no issue extensively elaborating on the historical element of the Passover holiday, making it odd that by Shavuot there is not a single mention of it. This absence suggests that the Torah may not have intended a historical commemoration for the holiday of Shavuot, instead seeing it as an agricultural celebration.
3. The Torah does say that the Sinai Revelation was in the third month of the year (i.e., Sivan) but gives no exact date in the month.^[8] To understand why the Torah does not designate the day of the Sinai revelation as a holiday, refer to the footnote here.^[9]
4. In fact, even the rabbis themselves don’t unanimously accept Shavuot as the day of revelation. The Talmud has a dispute between the sages and Yossi about whether the Sinai revelation was on the 6th or 7th of the month.^[10] Shavuot is now celebrated on the 6th of Sivan (with an extra day outside of Israel for technical reasons). According to Yossi, the revelation was only on the 7th.
5. But even if the sages were correct and the revelation occurred on the 6th of Sivan, it remains unrelated to Shavuot. You see, Shavuot is the only holiday not connected to a particular calendar date. Instead, it is always 50 days after the first Omer offering. In today’s established calendar (which was implemented in the 4th century CE), that day will always be on the 6th of Sivan. But before this modern calendar, Shavuot could land on either the 5th, 6th, or 7th of the month, depending on that year’s particular lunar sightings. So if in the year 250 CE, for example, Shavuot fell on the 5th of the month, it could not have been celebrating the revelation at Sinai.
6. There’s a popular Talmudic tradition that the 10th of Nissan, at the time of the exodus from Egypt, was on a Shabbat (now called Shabbat HaGadol, the Great Sabbath).^[11] Also, according to the Talmud, the Torah was given on a Shabbat (both according to the sages and Yossi).^[12] Yet if we count the 50 days of the Omer plus the additional 6 days from the 10th of Nissan, you end up with Shavuot of that particular year^[13] landing on a Friday, a day before the alleged Shabbat that the Talmud claims the Sinai revelation was.
7. Some rabbis have noted these issues and have concluded that Shavuot is not the day of the Torah revelation.^[14] Albeit, they generally still regard it as the day of celebration for the Torah revelation.

So when did this change of celebration happen?

The exact time of the development of the Torah-Shavuot celebration is unknown. At some unknown point, for some unknown reason, the celebration morphed into a celebration of the Torah rather than the agricultural celebration it once was about. The first clear reference to Shavuot being a Torah celebration is in the Talmud (written in the 6th century CE).^[15] Some make the claim that Second Temple literature already hints at the Torah-Shavuot connection.^[16] But in all fairness, these hints are very unconvincing; the first surviving reference to Shavuot being the day of the giving of the Torah remains in the Talmudic era.

If we were to speculate, the most likely time and reason for the change in the holiday’s celebration was the exile from Israel after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE). While in the land of Israel, the Jews still had a connection to the Levantine agricultural cycle, with the Shavuot season being the time of collecting grains and fruits. It was a relatable holiday, especially to the overwhelmingly agrarian society of Levantine Jews. But then most Jews went into the diaspora and took on new jobs other than farming. Even those that did take on farming did so mostly in Mesopotamia, whose agricultural seasons are different from that of the Levant.

Shavuot turned into an unrelatable agricultural relic of the past with minimal reason to celebrate in the post-farming era. To fix this, the sages may have begun to link the holiday in Sivan with the giving of the Ten Commandments, which is also in Sivan. Over time, the misconception would have developed that the Torah was given specifically on the day of Shavuot and eventually became the primary focus of celebration of that holiday.

This all becomes increasingly more difficult once we factor in yet another dilemma with the Shavuot-day celebration. Are we even celebrating the proper day?

 

From when to count the 50 days

Unlike the other holidays, Shavuot is not celebrated on a particular calendar day. Instead, it follows exactly 50 days after the giving of the Omer offering during the Passover season. When was the Omer offering brought? According to the Torah, it is to be brought on the “day following the Sabbath.”^[17] The identification of this sabbath has been a fierce debate between the ancient Pharisees and Sadducees during the Second Temple era. The Pharisees saw the “sabbath” as referring to the first day of Passover, while the Sadducees saw it as a literal sabbath, the sabbath following the first day of Passover.

The Pharisees based their interpretation on the fact that holidays are sometimes called sabbaths, since they too consist of a day of rest (e.g., Lev. 23:32). They argued that if it were a literal Sabbath, there would be 52 Sabbaths a year to choose from, so that wouldn’t be a possible reading.^[18] In the context of Passover, they argued that “the sabbath” is identifiable, i.e., “the sabbath” just talked about earlier, the first day of Passover.

This dispute led the Pharisees and Sadducees to usually celebrate Shavuot on two different days. The Pharisees celebrated it 50 days after the first day of Passover, while the Sadducees celebrated 50 days after the first Sunday of Passover. In addition to these two dominant views, there were another two possible interpretations of the verse’s ambiguous “the day after the sabbath.”^[19] The Pharisee view became dominant in the post-Temple era and is now the established Jewish practice.

But what if all these four opinions are missing the simple reading of the text? What if the Pharisees interpreted the verse wrong, marking the Shavuot celebration on the wrong calendar day? Let’s take a look.

כִּֽי־תָבֹ֣אוּ אֶל־הָאָ֗רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֤ר אֲנִי֙ נֹתֵ֣ן לָכֶ֔ם וּקְצַרְתֶּ֖ם אֶת־קְצִירָ֑הּ וַהֲבֵאתֶ֥ם אֶת־עֹ֛מֶר רֵאשִׁ֥ית קְצִירְכֶ֖ם אֶל־הַכֹּהֵֽן׃

When you enter the land that I am giving to you and you reap its harvest, you shall bring the first sheaf of your harvest to the priest.

וְהֵנִ֧יף אֶת־הָעֹ֛מֶר לִפְנֵ֥י יְהֹוָ֖ה לִֽרְצֹנְכֶ֑ם מִֽמׇּחֳרַת֙ הַשַּׁבָּ֔ת יְנִיפֶ֖נּוּ הַכֹּהֵֽן׃

He shall elevate the sheaf before Hashem for acceptance in your behalf; the priest shall elevate it on the day after the sabbath…

וּסְפַרְתֶּ֤ם לָכֶם֙ מִמׇּחֳרַ֣ת הַשַּׁבָּ֔ת מִיּוֹם֙ הֲבִ֣יאֲכֶ֔ם אֶת־עֹ֖מֶר הַתְּנוּפָ֑ה שֶׁ֥בַע שַׁבָּת֖וֹת תְּמִימֹ֥ת תִּהְיֶֽינָה׃

And from the day on which you bring the sheaf of elevation offering—the day after the sabbath—you shall count off seven weeks. They must be complete:

עַ֣ד מִֽמׇּחֳרַ֤ת הַשַּׁבָּת֙ הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔ת תִּסְפְּר֖וּ חֲמִשִּׁ֣ים י֑וֹם וְהִקְרַבְתֶּ֛ם מִנְחָ֥ה חֲדָשָׁ֖ה לַיהֹוָֽה׃

you must count until the day after the seventh week—fifty days; then you shall bring an offering of new grain to Hashem.

• Lev. 23:10-16.

The simple reading of the verses implies that the new harvest is brought to the priest whenever that year’s first batch is ready. The priest would then wait until the upcoming Sunday—the day after the Sabbath—to bring the first Omer sacrifice. “The sabbath” is thus referring to the first sabbath of the New Grain, not the first day of Passover (as the Pharisees assumed) and not the first sabbath following Passover (as the Sadducees assumed). This simple explanation of “the sabbath” has the fewest assumptions and is therefore perhaps the most likely original intention of the Torah.

There are other arguments in favor of this interpretation.

While sabbath occasionally refers to holidays, it almost always refers to the seventh day of the week. So when it says the “sabbath,” it most likely means what it usually does—the weekly day of rest.

Furthermore, while the Pharisees explain the term “the day after the sabbath” in verse 11 to be referring to the first day of Passover, the same cannot be said about the exact same phrase used in verse 16. There, the phrase “the day after the sabbath” cannot be referring to Passover. This is since it is seven weeks afterwards—yet it is still called a sabbath. Which sabbath repeats itself to come around both on the first day of a 50-day period and at the end of a 50-day period? It is only the literal Sabbath, recurring every 7 days (i.e., 7×7=49, with the first and last day included totaling 50). Thus the recurrence of this term necessitates the simpler meaning of the “Sabbath,” the seventh day of our week.

If this interpretation is true, as we argue here, then the Shavuot celebrated today, 50 days after the first day of Passover, is not the same Shavuot intended by the Torah. To be clear, this is not an argument to necessarily reschedule our current Shavuot observance to reflect the original intentions of the Torah author. Rather, the discussion here is simply a historical one—the original date and celebration of Shavuot in biblical times.

 

Why even count 50 days? The origins of the Omer and Shavuot

The counting of the 50 days from the first Omer offering during the Passover season is a unique Torah ritual. It is not practiced for any other biblical holidays or sacrifices. The reason for the counting or its origins remains elusive to us, but we may have indeed found the possible origins of the practice in the much older temple rituals of Mesopotamia.^[20]

Mesopotamian influence on biblical rituals is not new—most of the temple rituals were borrowed from the ancient Babylonians, Assyrians, Mariotes, Ugarites, and Egyptians. This includes the temple structures, architecture, animal sacrifices, sacrifice menus, sacrifice rituals, the incense, the libations, and priestly affairs. The parallels are so apparent that Maimonides understood the biblical sacrifices to be a replacement for the desire to worship pagan gods in the same manner.^[21] The same can be said about the 50-day count for the Omer offerings and Shavuot.

The ancient Amorites had an agricultural cycle known as the Pentecontad Calendar, called Hamushtum in ancient Assyrian texts, and it was similar to the neighboring Babylonian Shappatum.^[22] It was an annual cycle that consisted of 7 periods, each containing 7 weeks, with the 50th day perhaps being a holiday. Each 50-day period focused on another agricultural element. The Assyrian texts talk of “the seizing of the sickle” or of “the plucking of the grapes, and, most notably, “the [time] of the First Fruits.”^[23] The seven 50-day periods totaled a 350-day year, and to synchronize it with the solar cycle, they added a 15-day addition called “Sappatum.”^[24]

In Qumran, the Temple Scroll mentions a Feast of the New Wine, 50 days after the Feast of the New Fruit, and an oil festival 50 days after that.^[25] This Second Temple era celebration by the Qumran sectarian group may have been a remnant of the ancient celebrations in the ancient Near East. Interestingly, the Fellahin of Southern Israel still use a 50-day cycle in their calendar.^[26] But there is no proof that this was the only calendar; it seems to have been used with other calendars, especially lunar months in the ancient Near East. Nevertheless, they played a role in the ancient holy days and, arguably, in the biblical holiday of Shavuot.^[27]

This theory can perhaps extend farther than the Shavuot celebration to the other biblical holidays, in a rather fascinating way. The other two biblical holidays related to agriculture were Passover at the beginning of the spring season and Sukkot at the early fall season. They each are remarkably similar—they are exactly 6 months apart, starting on the 15th of the month and lasting 7 days (with Sukkot having an adjacent “Atzeret” holiday); both mark the beginning/end of an agricultural cycle and commemorate the exodus in one way or another, with a day of cessation (from work-related activities) on the first and last days of the 7-day holidays.

Further highlighting the parallels is the fact that both months—Tishrei and Nissan—are often regarded as the first month of the year. In the biblical calendar, Nissan is called the first month of the year, whereas in the biblical agricultural and rabbinic calendars, Tishrei is regarded as the first month. Why are strikingly similar holidays (Passover and Sukkot) each celebrated on the same day of the first months?

Perhaps the answer lies in the Babylonian/Assyrian Shappatum mentioned earlier. If the 50×7 pentecostal seasons equaled 350 days, we would need another 15 days to reach that solar cycle completion of 365 days. Just as the Babylonians added days to the calendar after the Shappatum period at the end of the year, perhaps the Israelites also added these days. But instead of adding them all at once at the end of the year, they split the addenda into two annual periods. One 7-day period in Nissan and another 8-day period (Atzeret included) in Tishrei. Atzeret was indeed regarded as the last day of the year in the agricultural cycle.^[28] The combined total of 15 days compensated for the difference between the pentecostal calendar (of 350 days) and the solar calendar (of 365 days).

Of interesting note is that the great Babylonian city-states of Uruk and Ur also observed two Akitu annual celebrations, one in Nissanu (Nissan) and one in Tishritu (Tishrei). These celebrations were practically identical. This is most probably since they too had two Shappatu periods 6 months apart, each marking the New Year in some regard.

If this theory is correct, it shows the connection between all three biblical holidays, the origins of these Israelite holidays, and, most relevant to our discussion, the origin of the Omer count and Shavuot celebration.

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1. Amidah of Shalosh Regalim, based on the Siddur of Amram Gaon (9th century CE). ↑
2. Pesachim 68b. ↑
3. Shulchan Aruch 494:1. ↑
4. Aruch Hashulchan Orach Chaim 489:2, quoting Ran, end of Pesachim. ↑
5. See Talmud Shabbat 68b, where the Ten Commandments and “the Torah” are used interchangeably. See here for more on this subject. ↑
6. Deut. 31:24. Also see both opinions in Talmud Gittin 60a. ↑
7. Ex. 23:15, 34:22, Lev. 23:15-21, Num. 28:26, and Deut. 16:9-12. ↑
8. Ex. 19:1. ↑
9. https://thelehrhaus.com/timely-thoughts/shavuot-zeman-mattan-torateinu/ ↑
10. Shabbat 86b. ↑
11. Shabbat 87b among other places. ↑
12. Shabbat 86b. ↑
13. Which, by the way, we have no reason to assume they celebrated or were even aware of yet. ↑
14. See Be’er Hetev OC 494 where he quotes in the name of Maharsha. ↑
15. Pesachim 68b. ↑
16. https://www.thetorah.com/article/shavuot-how-the-festival-of-harvest-grew ↑
17. Lev. 23:11. ↑
18. Menachot 66a. ↑
19. https://www.thetorah.com/article/when-does-counting-the-omer-begin ↑
20. https://www.design-of-time.com/sabbatwn.htm ↑
21. Moreh Nevuchim 3:32. ↑
22. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23506437 – The Origin of the Week and the Oldest Asiatic Calendar, Hildegard Lewy, Julius Lewy. Hebrew Union College Annual, Vol. 17 (1942-43), pp. 1-152c (155 pages). See page 47.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentecontad_calendar

    See also https://sites.google.com/view/yhwh-calendar/quotes/month11/day17-pentacontad?authuser=0 ↑

23. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23506437 – The Origin of the Week and the Oldest Asiatic Calendar, Hildegard Lewy, Julius Lewy. Page 52. ↑
24. Ibid. p. 76.This concept is similar to the larger division of time in the biblical texts, consisting of 7-year cycles (called shemita, sabbatical in English), with an even larger cycle consisting of 7 shemita cycles, with the 50th year being a Jubilee. Thus, we have the cycle of 7 in days, weeks, years, and sabbaticals. The significance of the number 7 might be the number of visible plants, a spiritual symbolism, or the quarter mark of the lunar cycle. ↑
25. https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-three-shavuot-festivals-of-qumran-wheat-wine-and-oil ↑
26. Ibid., p. 99. ↑
27. This leaves us with yet another possibility on the identity of “the sabbath’’ discussed earlier. The “sabbath” mentioned in the verse may not be referring to the weekly sabbath nor the holiday. Instead, it may be a reference to the Babylonian Shappatu (also called Shabbatu), specifically, the one at the Passover season. But this theory needs more research. ↑
28. Ex. 23:16, 34:22, Deut. 31:10. The last day of Shemini Atzeret, in particular, marked a time transition. It is when, in the rabbinic tradition, we begin praying for rain rather than dew in the daily prayers. This is the time, according to rabbinic tradition, when we begin praying for rain instead of dew in our daily prayers. ↑