Bible Study Leftover
Yesterday we talked about the Cycle B readings for the 6th Sunday of Easter, Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48, Psalm 98:1, 2-3, 3-4, 1 John 4:7-10, and John 15:9-17. In the Acts passage, Peter and some disciples visit the home of Cornelius a Centurian, and as Peter preaches they witness the Gentiles there receive the Holy spirit, “for they could hear them speaking in tongues and glorifying God.”
We didn’t talk about speaking in tongues, but I wonder if that (glossolalia) was something that was familiar to the people of the time, or was it something that only came into currency with the establishment of Christianity. I wonder if they were actually uttering in languages not known to them, or were they rather making emotional and exhuberent sounds that manifested how deeply they were moved. If speaking in tongues was not something familiar to the people of the time, the occurance would tie into the occurance at Pentecost more significantly as something directed by the Holy Spirit, but if it was common at the time for people feeling some kind of religious exhilaration to express it in such a way, it would seem to be less unimpeachably attributable to a distinctly Christian origin.
