PART 4 –
Let’s now turn to modern Pentecostal/Charismatic ‘tongues’. These are completely different from Biblical ‘tongues’. It’s simply the Christian form of glossolalia. A phenomenon practiced by many other cultures and religions. It’s all done essentially the same way.
Glossolalia itself being simply composed of random free vocalization – essentially “playing with language”, There is another term for modern tongues that I think offers a better summation of the phenomenon: as Robert Zerhusen, a pastor and theologian whose interests include the application of cultural anthropology and linguistics to NT studies, terms it, “non-cognitive non-language utterances” (NC-NLU’s). NC-NLU’s is a term which I think better hits the nail on the head.
Due to the nature of glossolalia, the language producing centers of the brain (particularly the area controlling grammar) are not overly engaged when one practices it, as a study done by the University of Pennsylvania (2010), using SPECT imaging, demonstrated.
As a Linguist, I have studied glossolalia and my findings concur with other previous studies done.
Let’s look at some facts regarding glossolalia/tongues - Glossolalia consists of only those sounds found in the speaker’s native language (and any language they may have been exposed to) ,though typically the phonemic inventory (set of sounds) that any given speaker will use is considerably less than what occurs in his/her native language.
Anyone can learn to produce glossolalia relatively easily in a matter of minutes. Further, ‘word’ stress and general accent are typically those of the speaker’s native language. A person from Georgia is going to sound like a person from Georgia when “speaking tongues”, i.e. there’s no “foreign accent”, so to speak, in glossolalia.
Glossolalia (NC-NLU’s) exhibit simple syllables all of which are almost exclusively ‘open’ syllables. There is no grammar, thus no syntax to speak of.
Concerning sounds, American speakers do however typically trill their r’s when “speaking in tongues” (with some it’s more a what’s called a ‘flap’ – the ‘t’ in “water” – than an actual trilled ‘r’) – it makes the glossic utterance sound more “foreign”.
All of the preceding also applies to the so-called “singing in the Spirit”; it is simply sung glossolalia rather than spoken.
The above, as well as many additional features too lengthy to explain in detail here, demonstrate that ‘tongues’ fail as language on virtually any criteria by which ‘language’ is defined.
Incidentally, just because the sound or tone of someone’s glossolalia/tongues does not match your preconceived idea of what a ‘tongue’ is supposed to sound like, does not make it inherently “demonic”. Further, there is no such thing as “faking tongues” – the question is “faking what?” Faking the fluent production of syllables? To produce syllables fluently is to produce syllables fluently. I would posit a definition of “faking tongues” as the ‘conscious effort of a speaker to produce glossolalia’ as opposed to the natural flowing of syllables as is normally produced by the subconscious.
Glossolalia as practiced in most other cultural and/or faith traditions around the world typically entails a petitioner seeking aid in the emotional and/or spiritual healing process, who is helped by the practitioner (minister, priest, shaman, healer – whatever s/he is called in that culture). It is rarely, if ever, the petitioner him/her self who is engaging in the actual glossolalia; it’s almost always involves a third party.
In these instances glossolalia is used as a tool to establish a ‘connection’ to the divine, a message is received (either directly or indirectly via an interpreter) that is extremely pertinent to this third party’s situation and, as a result, with the message delivered, the petitioner may begin the process of emotional/spiritual healing.
Though this more ‘correct”, if I may call it that, use of glossolalia does occur the context of Christianity, from all accounts I have read or been told about, instances of this are exceedingly rare. Whether or not it is rare because most people do not practice glossolalia ‘correctly’ (due to a misconception of what it actually is) is a matter for further study/debate. In addition, whether or not Christian practitioners realize that glossolalia is simply the tool used to enter into the process (not the means) may also be a matter for debate.
The bottom line is that by far the more common practice used by Pentecostal/Charismatic Christians seems to be one of interpreting Scripture to fit the modern practice/connotation of what glossolalia is perceived to be. The only praying going on with tongues is the deep subconscious praying of the individual (in whatever their native language happens to be); inspired, of course, by their deep faith and beliefs. There is nothing divine or miraculous going on here. There is nothing being done that can’t be explained in natural terms. If you really stop and think about it, the Holy Spirit (being one of three aspects of God, if you subscribe to the concept of the Trinity) does not need to inspire people on how to pray to itself.
Interpretation may again also be inspired by one’s deep faith and beliefs, but the relatively generic messages of most interpretations do not suggest anything that is divinely inspired. This is clearly evidenced in that if one gives the same glossic string to ten different people who can interpret tongues, one will get ten different interpretations typically non-related to each other. In this respect, glossolalia fails even the most basic criteria which define communication itself.
The all too common come-back to this issue of ‘multiple interpretations’ is that God/the Holy Spirit simply gives different interpretations to different people. As one on-line writer quips (and I couldn’t have said it better myself), “Pentecostal Darwinism does not exist – there’s no mutation or transformation of one message into several for the sake of justifying an obvious discrepancy. If this were the case, it would completely eradicate the need for glossolalia in the first place.”
Another internet writer puts it rather bluntly - “People who claim to speak in tongues need to understand that they are making a testable claim. The claim has been tested, numerous times. And the tongues speakers have failed the test, every single time.”
This same writer further goes on to say: “You want this to be real. You’ve convinced yourself it’s real. The only reason it sounds like a language is that you want it to sound like a language. But it’s not. It’s meaningless. You’re not producing a language. It's a purely manufactured experience initially created by psychological manipulation (all the praise music and the sort of altered state that it puts you in to begin with... and the emotional frenzy of the service before that) as well as intense pressure to perform from those standing around you.”
The above is admittedly a somewhat harsh statement from a former tongues speaker, but it begs the question of just how accurate the above paragraph really is. I suspect more than most practitioners would care to admit.
Glossolalia mimics language, but upon further closer examination, it is simply a façade of language.
If T-speech met the criteria of language and had a definite lexicon, structure and grammar, I’d be the first to say, “Hey, you’re on to something here that’s supernatural and really needs to be looked at more closely and studied”, but tongues simply isn’t that. Neither are modern tongues xenoglossy – there are, in fact, no known provable cases of xenoglossy…anywhere.
Despite this fact however, Pentecostal and Charismatic communities are rife with reported examples. Unfortunately, none are backed by any substantial proof; it amounts to essentially hearsay whereby virtually nothing is known of the speaker, his/her background, possible exposure to the purported languages, or the linguistic background of many the ‘hearers’. Are they hearing actual language or something that just “sounds” like ‘language X’? I have to discount reports of non-English speakers speaking in English – it’s just too common a language for people, even in remote areas of the world, not to pick up either consciously or subconsciously. That some tongues are examples of xenoglossy would be a relatively easy thing to test/prove (in theory at least), but to date this has not been attempted.
Aramaic and Hebrew seem to be the “go to” languages for these supposed examples – to the point of taking on the status of “urban legend” to the point of becoming cliché. As the saying goes, if I had a dollar for every variation and version of this story I’ve heard……..
As one of the foremost Aramaic Scholars and Linguists, Steve Caruso, describes it, “I also submit as evidence of oddness the fact that over the 15 years that I was translating Aramaic as my primary profession, over a hundred folks of Pentecostal persuasion came to me to translate their "tongues" because they were told "by the Spirit" (directly or through others, including pastors) that they were Aramaic.
Every case but one was not.
The one that was, I translated from English the year prior and someone was being deceptive with it.
That rather large sample and outcomes -- along with how most "tongues" are completely anemic -- to me, is fairly conclusive.”
The subconscious mind can do some incredible things – who hasn’t struggled with learning a foreign language (the conscious mind at work) only to find that they are able to dream in the language….and, in the dream, speak it flawlessly (the subconscious mind at work).
Let me ask if you have ever heard someone speak in tongues and thought “That doesn’t sound like tongues” or “That sounds demonic”. What was your basis for thinking that? What was it that made you doubt the ‘authenticity’ of their tongues as opposed to yours? I’d be curious to know.
Next time you speak tongues, take out your phone; put it on voice recorder, and record yourself for about a minute. Then play it back and take a listen, truly listen to the utterances – play the recording back over and over and write them down and look at them. Can you see the patterns, the play on sounds, repetitions of syllables, predictability of syllable structures, the constant use of particular vowels over others – then ask yourself, is this language or simply something that mimics it and is only a façade of language? Next, listen to the tongues/glossolalia of say a Shaman from Siberia and you’ll notice he’s producing his tongues the same exact way you are. They may even sound like something you’ve heard before – are his ‘tongues’ any less divine than yours?
As a Linguist who has studied the phenomenon, my take on it is that tongues/glossolalia is to some Christian believers a very real and spiritually meaningful experience, but consisting of emotional release via non-linguistic ‘free vocalizations’ at best – the subconscious playing with sounds to create what is perceived and interpreted as actual, meaningful speech. In *some* extreme cases, it is clearly a self/mass delusion prompted by such a strong desire to “experience God” that one creates that experience.
One of the questions of the day seems to be – ‘Have “tongues” ceased?’ My answer to that is simple – Since Biblical tongues in all cases refer to real languages, no, of course not –we still speak languages today. If you mean the modern concept of “tongues” (glossolalia)– they’ve only existed in the context of Christianity for about 150 years and obviously, people still “speak in tongues”.
I am not condoning glossolalia; particularly if it is a way for the speaker to strengthen his/her own spiritual path, but understand what it really is and, perhaps just as importantly (indeed, if not more importantly), ……understand what it is not.
lol
