| Tongues in History
Throughout recorded history there have
been many occasions where religious people have spoken in unknown tongues—glossolalia.
Most of the known accounts predating the Pentecostal experience are of
non-Christian origin. Therefore most Christians would hardly take the
position that every occurrence of glossolalia must be an expression of the
will of God. Yet there are glossolalists who subscribe to this view. As a
rule, the charismatics allude to Pentecost as the supreme example of
supernatural tongues; however, the recorded cases of glossolalia go back
as far as 1100 B.C. At that time a young Amen worshiper made ancient
headlines and attracted historical notoriety when he suddenly became
possessed by a god and began to emit sounds in a strange ecstatic
"tongue." In the "Report of Wenamon," a text giving
the oldest account of glossolalia known to man (originating in Byblos, a
temple city in historical Lebanon), we find the scanty details:
"Now, when he sacrificed to his
gods, the gods seized one of his noble youths, making him frenzied, so
that he said, 'Bring the god hither! Bring the messenger of Amen who hath
him. Send him and let him go.'"—George A. Barton, Archaeology
and the Bible (Philadelphia: American Sunday School Union, 1916), page
353.
Seven hundred years later, the Greek
philosopher Plato also made mention of the "gift" in his time.
In his Phaedrus, he demonstrated that he was well acquainted with the
phenomenon, for he referred to several families who, according to him,
practiced ecstatic speech, praying, and utterings while possessed.
Continuing further, he pointed out that these practices even brought
physical healing to those who engaged in them. Plato, together with most
of his contemporaries, asserted that these occurrences were caused by
divine inspiration. To support this view, he suggested (in Timaeus)
that God takes possession of the mind while man sleeps or is possessed,
and that during this state, God inspires him with utterances and/or
visions which he can neither understand nor interpret.
Virgil, too, during the last century
before Christ, described in Aeneid the activities of the Sybilline
priestess on the Island of Delos. He attributed her ecstatic tongues to
the result of her being unified with the god Apollo, a state that
enveloped her while she meditated in a haunted cave amidst the eerie
sounds of the wind playing strange music through the narrow crevices in
the rocks.
In speaking of the Pythoness of Delphi,
Chrysostom, a church father, wrote: "This same Pythoness then is
said, being a female, to sit at times upon the tripod of Appolo astride,
and thus the evil spirit ascending from beneath and entering the lower
part of her body, fills the woman with madness, and she with disheveled
hair begins to play the bacchanal and to foam at the mouth, and thus being
in a frenzy to utter the words of her madness."—Chrysostom,
"Homilies on First Corinthians." (Italics supplied.)
Many of the mystery religions of the
Graeco-Roman world undoubtedly included the same phenomenon. Among those
most often listed are the Osiris cult originating in the land of the
Pharaohs; the Mithra cult of the Persians, and the lesser known
Eulusinian, Dionysian, and Orphic cults cradled in Thrace, Macedonia, and
Greece. The basis for this opinion is that their entire system of belief
and rituals centered around spirit possessions. Another indication comes
from Lucian of Samosata (A.D. 120-198) who in De Dea Syria
describes an example of glossolalia as exhibited by an itinerant believer
of June, the Syrian goddess, stationed at Hierapolis in Syria.*
(Interestingly, the term glossolalia, so widely used today, comes from the
Greek vernacular which was in existence long before the day of Pentecost.)
Moffatt's New Testament Commentary
says of these manifestations: "Oracles of the great 'lord' at the
Shrine of Delphi, as Heraclitus put it, were revelations of the god's will
through ecstasy, not through sensible words. So were the Sybil's
unintelligible cries. A priest or priestess, seized by sudden trances of
the spirit, uttered mystic sayings, which were held to be all the more
divine as they were least rational or articulate. [Italics supplied.]
Philo in Alexandria had taken over the Greek notion, arguing that such
ecstasy, when the mind or unconscious reason was superseded, was the
highest reach of the human soul in its quest for God."—Commentary
on 1 Cor. 14, p. 214.
It was into this suffocating world of
heathen superstitions, pagan rituals—besides Jewish indifference—that
Christ was born.
For a short while the world seemed to be
on the road to spiritual restoration, but then it happened. The Jewish
hierarchy decided on a series of countermoves. Aided by one of His own
disciples and using the Roman power as executioners, they quickly moved in
and bloodily erased their only Way to salvation, killing the King of the
universe on the one world He loved most.
Confusion reigned, and His disciples
spent anxious hours. Encouraged by His resurrection, they were greatly
strengthened by Christ's promise to send them the Holy Spirit.
*Ira J. Martin III,
"Glossolalie in the Apostolic Church," (Berea, Ky: Berea College
Press, 1960, page 80); cited by Robert G. Gromacki, "The Modern
Tongue Movement" (Philadelphia, Pa.: Presbyterian and Reformed
Publishing Company), 1967, page 8. (return
to text)
But ye shall receive power …
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