When Paul said he spoke in tongues more that the Corinthian church, he was not talking about speaking languages he knew. He was talking about speaking in tongues, the manifestation of the gift of the Holy Spirit. When a person speaks in tongues, he does not know what he is saying (1 Cor 14:2). If a person understands what he is saying, he is not speaking in tongues.
In the context of our conversation, "tongues" is the manifestation of the gift of the Holy Spirit called speaking in tongues. It is speaking a language you do not know as the utterance (the words) are given to you through the gift of the Holy Spirit that lives in you.
These are both the modern Pentecostal/Charismatic definition of tongues. There are no Biblical references to tongues that do not describe real language(s); therefore, the languages Paul knew had everything to do with his ability to speak tongues (read “languages”).
Modern T-speech is not language; angelic, heavenly, or otherwise – it is non-cognitive non- language utterance.
The point is that when a person speaks in tongues he does not know the language he is speaking (1 Cor 14:2).
Again, more of a modern Pentecostal/Charismatic understanding of tongues.
Many use 1 Cor. 14:2 as “proof” of tongues being spiritual language(s) – but upon closer examination, it simply describes real language, though a foreign one to the “hearers”. Note that nowhere does the passage state or even remotely suggest that the speaker does not understand what he himself is saying.
To explain it further, think of it this way; if I showed up at a Bible study and began to speak in German, but no one else in the room could speak German, I might impress a few people, but no one would understand me. So if I speak in a language that no one else in the room can speak, I am in fact not speaking to men, but to God (who alone can understand all languages). Anything I say would be a mystery to those in the room. That is what Paul was trying to convey” by people speaking a foreign language at a public worship.
Another way to look at it is this: if I attend a worship service in ‘East Haystack’, Alabama two things are going to be evident: one; there’s only going to be so many people at that service (i.e. there will be a finite given amount of people there) and two; the chances that anyone in East Haystack speaks anything but English is pretty slim to nil. If I start praying aloud in say Lithuanian, there’s no one at that service that’s going to understand a bloody word I’m saying. Even though I’m speaking a real language, no one there will understand my “tongue”. That does not mean or imply that no one else understands Lithuanian; just no one at that particular service. So it ends up being a “real language no one understands” (within that given context). To the people listening to me, I am speaking ‘mysteries” (i.e. ‘we have no clue what you’re saying’) in the Spirit (i.e. I’m praying earnestly from my heart and from deep within my being = praying ‘in the spirit’). I myself however understand every word I’m saying; I’m speaking my native language; you’re the ones who don’t understand.
I think people read into this verse something that simply is not there to fit a modern notion of what Biblical ‘tongues’ are supposed to be.
It was not possible to manifest the gift of the Holy Spirit by speaking in tongues before the gift was given, and the gift was not given until the day of Pentecost.
In the context of Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity, yes.
However, the only gift given on Pentecost with respect to language was dispensing with the idea of ecclesiastical diglossia; that the proper language for religious instruction, prophesying, etc. was/should be/must be Hebrew; the holy/sacred language of Judaism. The apostles broke from this tradition and spoke to the people in the local vernaculars of Aramaic and Greek (both of which they knew). All Jews there would have spoken one of these languages (if not both, in some cases) as their mother tongue; Jews living in Judea would have been Aramaic speaking (though some were Greek speaking), Jews of the Western Diaspora would have been Greek speaking and Jews of the Eastern Diaspora would have retained Aramaic. The ‘list’ in Acts has nothing to do with languages or linguistic diversity; it’s a list of the lands of the Diaspora (both eastern and western, though two places are inadvertently missed). There are a few schools of thought as to the actual meaning/implications of the list in Acts which are quite interesting, but neither has to do with linguistic diversity.
The apostles were keenly aware that in order for their message to spread, it could not be done in the tradition way of using a language (Hebrew) that hardly anyone knew anymore; but to do so was sort of a cultural social/religious taboo of sorts. For lack of a better way to put it, the Holy Spirit gave them the courage to dispense with this religious/social taboo and to just teach the people in languages they were comfortable with, without fear of any reprise. Some, though, did accuse them of being drunk for doing such a thing - most however were just obviously shocked that such a thing was being done.
The 'miracle' of Pentecost, it may be argues, was the spreading of the message of Jesus in local vernaculars, rather than the expected Hebrew, for the first time in a public setting.
'Tongues' in the Bible are indeed languages- real identifiable languages; not modern T-speech.
With Eloi/Eli……
We're both right - kind of.....There seems to be a mix up depending on what version you use; Mark’s version is Aramaic and Matthew’s version seems to want to combine languages – Mark, being the older version from which Matthew was based upon, seems to have it more accurately as his phrase is all in Aramaic, whilst Matthew is mixing languages; ‘eli’ is Hebrew, but the rest is Aramaic. As you may know, Hebrew and Aramaic are not all that different from each other so there is some definite overlap in words. If it were Hebrew, ‘azabtānī would have been used instead of šəvaqtáni. A great example of the “telephone” game with respect to how Matthew’s Gospel renders the phrase!
