On 5/7/02 (1:02:15 PM EDT), Charles Gehring ([log in to unmask]) posted,

"Pinkster is a Dutch noun derived from the Greco-Latin pentecoste, meaning
50th (day), i.e., after Easter. Pfingsten is the German reflex of the same
loan word, exhibiting sound changes as result of the High German Sound Shift
(eg., p>pf). Pinksteren is a verbal development of the same loan word."

The Christian Pentecost is based on the Jewish Festival of Shavuot.

The 2-day (1-day if you are in Israel) Feast of Shavuot occurs each year 7
weeks from the Second Seder of the Passover (on the 6th and 7th days of
Sivan), which this year is from sundown, Thursday, May 16 to sundown,
Saturday, May 18 on the civil calendar.

Shavuot commemorates the day when G-d gave the Jewish people the Torah
following Moses' descent from Mount Sinai.  However, nowhere in the Torah
(the 5 Books of Moses) is Shavuot actually linked to "Matan Torah", the
giving of the Torah.

Shavuot is the second of the "shalosh regalim", the 3 annual pilgrimage
feasts of Pesach (Passover), Shavuot, and Sukkot, when Jews from all over
Israel and beyond converged onto Jerusalem to celebrate during Temple times.
(The Christian versions of these 3 Biblically-mandated feasts are Easter,
Pentecost and Tabernacles.)

The Torah commands that Shavuot be celebrated exactly seven weeks after the
Second Seder of Pesach.  This explains the name "Shavuot" -- which is Hebrew
for weeks.  If you count from one day earlier, from the First Seder of the
Passover, there are 50 days or as it's known in Greek -- Pentecost -- meaning
the fiftieth day and this is what Christians call their celebration of the
giving of the laws.

Shavuot in the days of the Temple celebrated the bounty of the spring harvest
season.  However, with the destruction of the Temple by the Romans under
Titus in 70 C.E., the focus of the feast began to shift to "Mattan Torah",
the giving of the Torah.


Regards,

Walter Greenspan