Shavuot and Matan Torah
In an interesting article in the Jerusalem Post, Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg wrote that the connection between Shavuot and the giving of the Torah is a post-destruction reinterpretation by the rabbis at Yavneh.
But today, for some reason Shavuot is no longer the end of the barley harvest. It is no longer anything agricultural, it is all about mattan Torah, the giving of the Law, both written and oral, at Mount Sinai.
How did that come about? At times of occupation and revolt, the original ceremonies could not take place, and after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, the ceremonies seem to have ceased altogether. Was Shavuot then to be discontinued? No, certainly not, and the rabbis at the academy of Yavne, who strove to give new meaning to the Torah after the loss of the Temple, worked hard to find an alternative reason to celebrate. In time, they made the calculation that the Torah had been given to the children of Israel on the sixth of Sivan, the date fixed for Shavuot.
While this view is held by a number of scholars, it is by no means unanimous. There is strong evidence that already during the Second Temple Period there were Jews who saw a connection between Shavuot and the covenant between Israel and God. In the Book of Jubilees, chapter 6 it says,
And on the new moon of the third month he [i.e. Noah] went forth from the ark, and built an altar on that mountain. And he made atonement for the earth, and took a kid and made atonement by its blood for all the guilt of the earth; for everything that had been on it had been destroyed, save those that were in the ark with Noah…And He gave to Noah and his sons a sign that there should not again be a flood on the earth. He set His bow in the cloud for a sign of the eternal covenant that there should not again be a flood on the earth to destroy it all the days of the earth. For this reason it is ordained and written on the heavenly tablets, that they should celebrate the feast of weeks in this month once a year, to renew the covenant every year.
Jubilees does date Shavuot differently, but many scholars see this as evidence of an association between Shavuot and the giving of the Torah already during the Second Temple period. See here, here, here, and here (in Hebrew). In addition, there is no uniform opinion as to the date of Shavuot in rabbinic sources. Rosenberg refers to the discussion found in B. Shabbat 86b.
“Our Rabbis taught: On the sixth day of the month [of Sivan] the Ten Commandments were given to Israel. R. Jose maintained: On the seventh.”
He writes that,
Although one of the sages, Rabbi Jose, calculated it to be the seventh of Sivan, the majority said it was the sixth, and so it remained that the date of Shavuot, 50 days after the Exodus from Egypt, was the date of the giving of the Torah. Thus it was that the people could continue to celebrate Shavuot in the knowledge that they were commemorating one of the most important events in Jewish history.
If the sixth of Sivan was the accepted day and Shavuot was associated with the giving of the Torah, why does the Tosefta Archin 1:9 speak about the possibility of Shavuot being on the fifth, sixth, or seventh?
“Atzeret (=Shavuot): If it falls on the fifth [of Sivan]-it is a bad sign for the world, if it falls on the sixth-it is a moderate sign for the world, if it falls on the seventh-it is a good sign for the world. Abba Shaul says: Any time that the day of Atzeret is clear, it is a good sign for the world.”
It seems that attributing to rabbis at Yavneh the formation of a connection between Shavuot and the giving of the Torah as a response to the destruction of the Temple might not be the most convincing claim. Among some Jews it seems to have been earlier and in rabbinic circles it may not have gained ground until the beginning of the third century (see here). While some scholars may be over zealous in their early dating of certain traditions, this may be a case in which it is justified.
Sources:
Gedaliah Alon, “On Philo’s Halakhah” in Jews, Judaism and the Classical World, 132-134, n. 91; Josef Tabory, Moadei Yisrael be-Tekufat ha-Mishnah ve-ha-Talmud, 151-154