Whitsunday is of equal rank with the two other chief festivals, but has no special season either preceding or following it, and is unattended by any lesser festivals depending upon it. Whitsunday is the close of the whole period which began with Easter, called in the early centuries _Quinquagesima_, because it extended over fifty days. This entire period is festal in character, and therefore so long as it lasted people in ancient days prayed standing upright, and no fasting was practised.[245] The ascetics did not observe a single fast during this time,[246] and it seems that even the day before Whitsunday was not a fast in the earliest ages, any more than it is now among the Greeks. A number of ascetics were of opinion that this period of joy should last only forty days, because our Lord appeared to His disciples for only forty days, and that the following ten days, as far as fasting, prayer, and kneeling were concerned, should be like the rest of the year—an opinion which Cassian, among others (Coll. 20, 21), strongly opposed.[247] This divergence of opinion, which was rather widespread, seems to have resulted in Whitsunday being passed over and ignored. So, for example, it is entirely omitted from the oldest Gallican Sacramentaries, the series of festivals ending with the Ascension.[248] In the later service-books, it appears simply under the name _Quinquagesima_. Pentecost meant originally the entire period from Easter to Whitsunday, and this terminology had been already in use among the Jews, and is employed by St Luke in Acts ii. 1 (_cum complerentur dies pentecostes_). The Greek word Pentecost was gladly adopted by the Latins in early times, and more especially, later on, since the Latin term _quinquagesima_ might easily be confused with the Sunday of the same name. Whitsunday, of course, commemorates the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles and disciples. This happened fifty days after the Resurrection, on an ancient Jewish festival called in the Pentateuch the Feast of Weeks,[249] because it was celebrated exactly seven weeks after the Passover. As it fell on the fiftieth day after the Passover, it was also called Pentecost, even in pre-Christian times.[250] The Jewish Pentecost was originally only a festival of thanksgiving for harvest, and, although the Law was given on Mount Sinai and the Mosaic Church came into existence on the same day, yet the feast was not devoted to the commemoration of this event. This purpose was served by the festival of the Simchah Thorah in October, which owed its institution to the Rabbis. On the other hand, the fact that the descent of the Holy Ghost implied the foundation of the Christian Church, afforded the Fathers a parallel which they were not slow to make the most of.[251] The Feast of Weeks was to the Jews only the conclusion of the harvest, in thanksgiving for which, bread, made from the newly gathered wheat, was presented to Jehovah as a sacrifice.