@7seasrekeyed –
however, why would Paul state he wished that all spoke in languages?
So that they could spread the message of Christianity to others given the demographic make-up of Corinth and the ideal place to spread the message to all corners of the known world (see more below)
Bible does not say how many languages Paul spoke
No, it does not, but given that he was a Jew and where he was born, he certainly would have spoken Greek, Aramaic, and at least had a reading knowledge of Hebrew. Given his dealings with the Romans and his travels, it’s also quite possible he knew at least some Latin. With those three languages; Greek, Latin, and Aramaic (particularly Greek and Latin), he could travel just about anywhere in the Mediterranean Basin without a language issue – he certainly had opportunity to “speak in tongues (read ‘languages’) more than ye all.”
there would be 0 reason in almost every case that the congregants Paul was writing to would have any necessity to speak in several actual languages although 2 seems reasonable
First, and I think foremost, it is critical to understand that Corinth was a multi-cultural, linguistically diverse city on not one, but two ports. As a major seaport city, one would expect to find a constant influx and varied mix of visitors, travelers, transients, freedman and slaves. In addition, it was home to, for lack of a better way of putting it, a major tourist attraction; the Temple of Aphrodite. Though Greek was the language of Corinth, as well as the ‘English of its day; i.e. almost everyone in the Mediterranean Basin was familiar with it to some degree, communication in general between people from different lands and countries must have been difficult at best as it would have had to be conducted in Greek; a language, not everyone traveling through Corinth knew equally well.
A church, any organization really, tends to reflect its environment. Since Corinth was multilingual, one would also expect to see this diversity reflected in its church and other social/religious organizations.
Those passages in Corinthians deal with Paul’s response to an issue at public worship services in that city. Given the demographic make-up of Corinth, communication in general between people from different lands and countries must have been difficult at best. Paul calls for clarity and understanding at a public worship. Again, one can imagine that this must have been somewhat difficult; yes, the Bible is silent as to the demographic make-up of the church in Corinth, but I think it’s very reasonable to assume a multi-lingual make-up.
So, to paraphrase from a previous post, if someone stood up and started praying in say Gaulish, it’s quite possible he’d be the only Gaulish speaker there. Therefore, if one speaks in a language, in this example, Gaulish, he is not speaking to other men (since no one there speaks his language), but only to God, who understands every language. No one else there hears him with any degree of understanding; even though he may be praying by the leading, power and guidance of the Holy Spirit and according to His will (i.e. praying in the Spirit), to everyone listening to him, he’s speaking ‘mysteries’ (an idiomatic way of saying “we have no clue what he’s saying” – in modern English, we’d use the idiom “it’s all Greek to us”).
Real language issues in Corinth, real language responses by Paul on how the church should deal with them.
@CherieR –
I would be skeptical if someone said they learned speaking in tongues by getting tongue tied or in this way you have described. The disciples at Pentecost did not have to learn how to speak in tongues, no training whatsoever, they just did it because the Holy Spirit enabled them to.
Exactly my point. It doesn’t exactly lend to what some hold to be the validity of tongues. I would differ with you a bit on the Pentecost narrative – I don’t think the disciples spoke any language they didn’t already know (has to do with the linguistic makeup of the attendees; particularly those Jews from other places, but that’s a whole other story).
Is there a way to test the gift of tongues to see if it is authentic? I was reading this article about testing the gift of tongues and it involved asking the spirit to confess Jesus is come in the flesh and that Jesus is Lord. Would this be a good way to test the gift of tongues or no?
Considering that modern tongues are non-cognitive non-language utterance, there is nothing to test.
The person learning glossolalia from starting out with a nonsense phrase to ‘get them going’, or “prime the pump” is going to eventually produce the same thing as a person who just started speaking without “learning” how to do so.
Modern tongues-speech is essentially a self-created random free vocalization, the sounds of which are drawn from the phonemic inventory (individual sounds in a given language) of the speaker’s native language but may also include sounds from any other language the speaker has been exposed to. In other words, if you’ve never heard a Welsh ‘ll’ sound or a click sound from some African languages, or even a German ü sound, you’ll never produce these sounds in your “tongue”. There’s a bunch of other features unique to glossolalia as well, but the point is, it doesn’t matter how the actual glossolalia was learnt, so there’s nothing to authenticate – random free vocalization is random free vocalization.
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