Community of the Holy Spirit

The followers of Jesus in the days following Pentecost were a community established by the Holy Spirit. On that day, the Jewish harvest festival of Shavuot, more than 3000 people in Jerusalem, for one of required Pilgrimage Festivals, were participating recipients of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a Jerusalem event that was the talk of the town for many years. Josephus was born in 37 C.E. and served as a priest in the Temple in Jerusalem five times a year including Shavuot. Josephus must have heard the miraculous stories about the Jews of the Diaspora being in Jerusalem for the festival who had experienced an incredible event that could not be explained.

Josephus had to recognize that the words of Isaiah that had been proclaimed in 32:14-17 had been fulfilled at a festival celebrating the relation between Yahweh and His worshippers. Isaiah had declared that the Holy Spirit is now promised to be conferred upon not a few chosen ones but upon an entire community of believers in a new era. Within a few years, there were numerous communities throughout the Diaspora founded by individuals who had experience the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Since Josephus considered himself to be a prophet, these events must have had a profound but disturbing effect on him. What did Josephus do? In his rewriting of sacred scriptures he omitted numerous references to the Holy Spirit appearing in sacred scriptures and all references to the Prophet Isaiah.

This is a work in progress.

Copyrighted 2008

Religion

Christianity

Gospel of Luke