What made Lukan community to have their own understanding of the Holy Spirit? On this question, many scholars have concentrated on the social and religious background of Lukan community such as Old Testament, Judaism, Gnosticism, and Hellenism. Howeve...
What made Lukan community to have their own understanding of the Holy Spirit? On this question, many scholars have concentrated on the social and religious background of Lukan community such as Old Testament, Judaism, Gnosticism, and Hellenism. However, Acts 19:2 shows us that most of people who lived under Jewish and Hellenistic background in the first century did not have specific concept of the Holy Spirit (and he said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said to him, “No, we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spiht.”). So, we can not easily accept that Luke‘s understanding about Holy Spiht was derived from directly background of Old Testament or Hellenism. This article is an exegetical study of Acts 2:1-4 that is the key text, I believe, to find the origin of Luk’'s understanding on the Holy Spirit.
The main reason or origin to have specific understanding of the Holy Spirit to Lukan community was special ‘experience’ that they had on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4). What happened on that day? Acts 2:1-4, Luke‘s first description about being filled with the Holy Spirit, is composed with fact and interpretation. The only fact that disciples of Jesus experienced actually on Pentecost was that ’they spoke in other tongues‘(Acts 2:4b).
When disciples had experience of speaking tongues, they must have been very surprised. After that, they must have needed theological explanation on this mysterious experience. And Eventually, they must have interpreted speaking Glossolalia as the result of fullness of the Holy Spirit naturally because they were waiting for the promise of Jesus that “you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”(Acts 1:5). The Lukan community's pneumatology was started and affected by this interpretation and developed on the basis of this interpretation.