Was the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost) always on a Sunday?

[JTB.SDG]

Pentecost happened 50 days (hence the name) after, it seems, the sabbath associated with the waving of the first fruits. The waving of the first fruits was explicitly said to be done "on the day after the sabbath" (Lev. 23:11) which would have always been a Sunday (pointing us to the significance of Christ's Sunday resurrection). Leviticus 23:15 says: "You shall also count for yourselves from the day after the sabbath, from the day when you brought in the sheaf of the wave offering; there shall be seven complete sabbaths. You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh sabbath. . ." It seems this is telling us Pentecost always took place on a Sunday--is that right?

 

[VictorBravo]

That's how I always understood it.

 

[JTB.SDG]

I found this to be really interesting: http://abluethread.com/2014/05/01/going-karaite-shavuot/. Basically, there are two lines of interpretation in Judaism about the dates for Pentecost (the feast of weeks) or as it's called, Shavout. It depends how you take "sabbath" in Leviticus 23:11,15. If you take it as the normal, weekly Jewish sabbath (as it seems to be the plain reading of the text), then the feast of weeks indeed takes place on the seventh Sunday after Passover. This is how the Sadducees interpreted this passage, and it's how "Karaite Judaism" continues to understand and interpret the date. They are interestingly are a sect that stresses the written Torah exclusively for authority as opposed to anything in the Talmud. The Pharisees' interpretation is what Judaism as a whole now accepts, which is taking "sabbath" in those passages as figuratively--IE, the day of rest on the first day of the feast of unleavened bread); and thus the feast of weeks always falls on the 6th day of Sivan (which always varies which day of the week it falls on).

A Jews for Jesus article claims that "As long as the Temple stood and the Sadducees were in charge, their view prevailed." (https://jewsforjesus.org/jewish-resources/jewish-holidays/shavuot/). This would mean that whatever Judaism now subscribes to, when Pentecost actually happened in Acts 2, it was indeed on a Sunday--which also means it took place during a worship service.

Thoughts? This is really intriguing.

I'm particularly interested in fact-checking whether Shavout was indeed celebrated on Sundays during second temple Judaism.