Speaking in Tongues

Having narrated the reconstitution of the Twelve, Luke now records the baptism of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-13). This episode is completely understandable as it reads, but there are many nuances that are unlocked when we have a fuller understanding of the significance of Pentecost.

What is Pentecost?

Pentecost (“the fiftieth day”) is the name used by Greek-speaking Jews for the festival known in Hebrew as Shavuot (“Feast of Weeks”). Originally it celebrated the wheat harvest when Jews thanked God for the blessings of the harvest by offering up leavened bread. But because Israel had arrived at Mt. Sinai in the third month after leaving Egypt (Exod 19:1) – that is, after Passover – Weeks picked up a secondary significance as the commemoration of the day God gave the Torah to the nation of Israel assembled at Mt. Sinai.

When the Jewish historian Josephus explains Pentecost in his Antiquities (3.10.6), he writes: “on the fiftieth day, which is Pentecost, but is called by the Hebrews Asartha…” Asartha is the Aramaic word for “solemn assembly” and indicates that in the 1st century CE Jews were celebrating Pentecost as a pilgrimage “Feast of Assembly.” Josephus does not give a reason why Jews would assemble on that date, but it is plausible that they did it in commemoration of the nation of Israel gathered at Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah.

The last piece of extra-biblical information on Pentecost comes from the Qumran Temple Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In this we learn that the Jews of Qumran celebrated three Pentecostal feasts, each fifty days apart: the feast of new grain, the feast of new wine, and the feast of new oil. If Luke knew of these multiple Pentecosts, he could have conflated them thinking that the Feast of Assembly was associated with the harvest of grain and wine. This would explain the crowd’s mockery of the apostles speaking in tongues in v. 13: “They are filled with new wine.”

Pentecost by El Greco (1541-1614)

Remembering Mt. Sinai

The Sinai theophany – manifestation of God – is described in Exod 19:16-19:

On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, as well as a thick cloud on the mountain, and a blast of a trumpet so loud that all the people who were in the camp trembled. Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God. They took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lord had descended upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently. As the blast of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses would speak and God would answer him in thunder.

In elaborating on this event, the Jewish philosopher Philo explained in The Decalogue (n. 46) that the fire of God descending on the mountain communicated with Israel in a language they could understand:

And a voice sounded forth from out of the midst of the fire which had flowed from heaven, a most marvelous and awful voice, the flame being endowed with articulate speech in a language familiar to the hearers, which expressed its words with such clearness and distinctness that the people seemed rather to be seeing than hearing it.

With this background in mind, we can now see how Luke alludes to the Sinai revelation with “the noise from heaven like a strong wind” and “tongues of fire” that came to rest on each of the disciples. The Hebrew word ruah and Greek word pneuma can both mean “wind” or “spirit.” Philo’s flame endowed with articulate speech familiar to the hearers resonates in “they began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them the ability.” And the gathered crowd remarked, “How is it that each of us hears them speaking in our own native language?”

Babel in Reverse

Paul speaks of the gift of tongues and compares it to the gift of prophecy in 1 Cor 14:2, 4-6, 9. He is referring to glossolalia, “ecstatic speech.” It is practiced in contemporary Pentecostal and charismatic services. What Luke is referring to in v. 4 is xenologia, “speaking in foreign tongues,” and is the first miracle recounted in Acts. Either the disciples were speaking various foreign languages – a speech miracle – as in v. 4, or the disciples were speaking their native Aramaic and the recipient understood them in their native language – an auditory miracle – as in v. 6.

Nowhere else in the NT do we have a reference to xenologia. Biblical scholars believe that the original tradition Luke inherited referred to glossolalia: “the disciples were filled with the Spirit and began speaking in tongues.” Luke modified this to “other tongues” to dramatize the apostolic proclamation to Jews from all over the world. In a sense, it is a reversal of the story of the Tower of Babel in which God confused human speech and scattered humanity over the face of the earth.

Map showing the 15 regions from which, according to Luke in Acts, pilgrims traveled to Jerusalem for the Feast of Assembly (also known as Pentecost).

Immediately before the Babel story was the Table of Nations passage which explained how the nations and peoples surrounding Israel descended from Noah’s three sons. There are similarities in the Pentecost episode to that passage when the assembled crowd of Jews list their places of origin. Luke’s list of fifteen different regions moving from east to west seems to have been something he inherited, but modified to suit his purposes. “Cretans and Arabs” seem to be an afterthought, appearing as they do after the parenthetical comment of the visitors from Rome being Jews and converts. Rome, itself, being a city and not a region, doesn’t quite fit. And you would expect Judeans to understand the language of Galileans, so why are they mentioned?

Luke wants to emphasize how the Jews gathered in Israel for Pentecost/Feast of Assembly represent the regathered Twelve Tribes who were scattered across the earth. And, preaching to them for the first time are the reconstituted Twelve. They were empowered by the Holy Spirit descending on them like fire, gifting them with the ability to speak in foreign tongues.

Jesus commissioned the Twelve to be witnesses to him “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, even to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Pentecost is known as the birth day of the Church because that is when it started living out its mission to the world.