as Whitsun day. The other days of the week are sometimes called Whit Monday, Whit Tuesday, and so on. Background In Judaism the Festival of Weeks () is a harvest festival that is celebrated seven weeks and one day after the first day of Passover (the Feast of Unleavened Bread) in or seven weeks and one day after the Sabbath referred to in . The Festival of Weeks is also called the feast of Harvest in and the day of first fruits in . In it is called the "firstfruits of the wheat harvest." The date for the "Feast of Weeks" originally came the day after seven full weeks following the first harvest of grain. In Jewish tradition the fiftieth day was known as the Festival of Weeks. The actual mention of fifty days comes from . During the Hellenistic period, the ancient harvest festival also became a day of renewing the Noahic covenant, described in , which is established between God and "all flesh that is upon the earth". By this time, some Jews were already living in Diaspora. According to there were Jews from "every nation under heaven" in Jerusalem, possibly visiting the city as pilgrims during Pentecost. In particular the hoi epidemountes () are identified as "visitors" to Jerusalem from Rome. This group of visitors includes both Jews and "proselytes" (, prosēlytos); sometimes translated as "converts to Judaism", proselyte referred to non-Jews who adhered fully to the Mosaic laws, including circumcision. The list of places represented in the biblical text includes Parthia, Media, Elam, Mesopotamia, "Judaea", Cappadocia, Pontus, "Asia", Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Cyrene, and Rome. Scholars have speculated about a possible earlier literary source for the list of nations including an astrological list by Paul of Alexandria and various references to the Jewish diaspora by writers of the Second Temple era (particularly Philo of Alexandria). After the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD offerings could no longer be brought to the Temple and the focus of the festival shifted from agriculture to the Israelites receiving the Torah (the Five Books of Moses or the Law at Sinai). It became customary to gather at synagogue, stay up all night learning Torah, and reading from the Torah the Ten Commandments and the Israelites acceptance of and promise to live by the Torah. New Testament The narrative in Acts 2 of the Pentecost includes numerous references to earlier biblical