Speaking in Tongues

Pentecost, according to the calendar of Latin Christianity, is upon us. According to Acts 2, the gift of speaking in tongues was conferred on the followers of the Galilean on that day some 2000 years ago, and Jews and proselytes in Jerusalem for the festival from every nation heard their own tongue in the mouth of Peter and his companions. This event recapitulates another we know of, not from the Bible, but from extra-biblical tradition: a linguistic miracle associated with the gift of the Torah on Mount Sinai. More below the fold.   

Pentecost is so called because the festival occurs on the fiftieth day after Pesach. Referred to as שבועות Shavuot in the Hebrew Bible, it is the second of the three pilgrim festivals, or שלש רגלים Shalosh Regalim, which the Torah enjoins.

Another traditional title is זמן מתן תורתינו ‘The Season of the Giving of our Torah.’ Jewish tradition placed the date of the gift of the Torah on Mount Sinai on the first Shavuot of the wilderness period, a date not far from, but not identical to, the one a plain reading of Exodus 19:1-16 might suggest.

According to a tradition probably going back to the Second Temple period, the Torah was given on Mount Sinai in seventy languages so that the nations would be without excuse insofar as they do not adhere to it (Shab. 88a; Exodus Rabbah, ad loc; Tosefta, Sotah, 8). In a deliberate reprise of that tradition, the preaching of the Gospel is marked by the Pentecostal gift of speech in the languages of all the nations of the world. But this time, the linguistic miracle serves to do more than leave the Gentiles without excuse. It symbolizes their effective acceptance into the covenant.

The technical term for the capacity given to Peter and his companions is xenoglossia. Within the metanarrative of the Christian story, the continuation of that gift across the centuries is located in the history of the translation of the Bible in the vernacular of every nation, and in the cross-linguistic enculturation of the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

The gift of the Spirit to the seventy elders recounted in Numbers 11:16-17, 24-30 is datable by interpolation to the second Shavuot of the wilderness period, just as the giving of the Torah was dated to the first Shavuot by interpolation. Incontrovertible evidence in support of this hypothesis, however, is lacking. Still, it is striking that a role is given to “the original Sanhedrin” at the giving of the Torah on Sinai (Exodus 19:7; 24:1-2, 9), and that knowledge of the seventy languages is said to characterize a proper Sanhedrin, that is, the equivalent to the seventy elders who receive the Spirit in Numbers 11 (Sanh. 17a; also: Meg. 73b; Men. 65a). Proof is difficult to come by, but it seems logical to suppose that the Pentecostal events reported in Acts 2 are meant to recapitulate not only components of Exodus 19-24, but also, of Numbers 11.

As often in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, the gift of the Spirit in Numbers 11 is marked by ecstatic behavior (התנבא). Ecstatic behavior, something of a cultural universal in ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean religions, and religions throughout the world, has been and continues to be viewed with suspicion by many. A helpful discussion of “Ecstatic Prophecy in Israel and the Ancient Near East” is provided in an excursus to Num 11:24-30 by Jacob Milgrom (see below for the complete reference).

A phenomenon often associated with ecstasy and trance-like behavior, though the association will seem an over-generalization to many with experience thereof, is the gift of tongues sic et simpliciter, that is, speaking in a tongue intelligible, so far as is known, to God alone.

In an article published in The Christian Century a few years ago, and republished elsewhere (online here), Lauren Winner describes the fountainhead of the gift of speaking in tongues as experienced in contemporary Christianity with remarkable insight. The fountainhead is gratitude, the immense, overwhelming gratitude that comes with the knowledge of forgiveness and salvation. In her own words:

Hannah, now a Baptist, grew up Pentecostal. I asked her, shortly after we first met, if she still speaks in tongues. "Oh, sure," she said. "I don't have the gift of prophecy, so I don't try to communicate with anyone else in tongues. But I talk to God in tongues all the time. Otherwise, I simply wouldn't know what to say to him. I want to thank God for all the awesome things he has done in my life, but my words are inadequate. When I pray in tongues, the Spirit gives me the words."

That's what all my friends who speak in tongues say. They say speaking in tongues lets them relax into their prayers. They say that they might not know, in their heads, what words to use to thank God, that our vocabularies seem feeble when it comes to thanking God for the wonderful gifts he has bestowed upon us. In their prayer language, the Holy Spirit takes over. He gives voice to their thanksgivings.

[snip]

The first bout of [such gratitude in my life] came the March after I was baptized. I was spending Cambridge's month-long spring break in Charlottesville at my mother's house, a skinny four-story townhouse with a copper roof that the Board of Architectural Review has stamped suitably historic. For most of March, I sat on my bed in the top room of that skinny house, reading books and staring out the window into the treetops and getting over jet lag, writing long letters and learning the Book of Common Prayer. Then one night I was crouched on the floor, on the scratchy new terra-cotta-colored carpet, picking through all the books I couldn't afford to ship to England, and it hit. I couldn't believe what God had done for me, and I was grateful to my toenails. In evangelicals' argot, you might say that right there on the carpet I was convicted of my sinfulness. I was struck by the gaping gulch between perfect God and fallen me, and I was stunned with gratitude that, though I was small and sinful, God in his graciousness saw fit to draw me near to him anyway. It lasted for months, on and off, that feeling. I was on my knees all the time, giving praise, thinking I had some taste of what it meant to be an angel and do nothing but sing hosannas all day.

You don’t have to speak in tongues to feel that way, but those who speak in tongues, as they themselves attest, express their gratitude thusly.

On Pentecost, my prayers are with those around the world who assist in the translation of the Bible into the languages of the world. People like David Ker, who are Pentecostal twice over, in the two senses of glossolalia described above.

Nick Norelli has a nice roundup of recent posts on this subject.

Bibliography

“Shavuʿot,” in The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion (ed. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky and Geoffrey Wigoder; New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) 628-29; Kaufmann Kohler and Isaac Broydé, “Nations and Languages, the Seventy,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia (1901-1906) (online here); Jacob Milgrom, “Excursus 25: Ecstatic Prophecy in Israel and the Ancient Near East,” in idem, Numbers (JPSTC; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990) 380-383; Lauren F. Winner, “Tongue-tied (Glossolalia and me),” The Christian Century 9/25/2002 = “Speaking in Tongues,” in The Best Christian Writing 2004 (ed. John Wilson; introd. Miroslav Volf; San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004) 179-184 (online here)

Comments

[david]

Great post. I happen to work and teach in a charismatic environment - and I find myself often cautioning people against the misappropriating of Gods blessings and instructions. I have to be careful I don't do the baby / bathwater thing in reaction. Here you list a couple of tongues - how about music and song? :-)

[JohnFH]

David,

Thanks for commenting here. Your passion for the message of the Word evidenced on your blog is heartening.

[Lindsay]

Hi my name is Lindsay and ive been looking for the serenity prayer in hebrew and was wondering if you could translate for me i would really appreciate it thank you

[JohnFH]

Hi Lindsay,

I composed a post about the Serenity Prayer. I hope you find it helpful. For Hebrew words you don't know, try milon morfix online.

[thigpen9692]

Hi
I will like to know about speaking in tongues, is it true some people can speak in tongues. I was told that speaking in tongues is not true.

[JohnFH]

People do "speak in tongues," that is certain. Whether it was, in New Testament times, a gift of God's Spirit to do so, whether it is so in our day, are matters about which sincere Christians disagree.