Ancient languages, Historical theology, and more.
A fourfold aim of collating, digitizing, translating, and tracing the Christian doctrine of tongues from inception until 1906.
The fourth-century Syrian St. Ephrem and the christian rite of speaking in tongues.
The legend attached to St. Ephrem asserts the Pentecostal rite was the supernatural ability to speak in a foreign language. The Corinthian reference by the real St. Ephrem was a liturgical one relating to everyday language.
A history of the word gift, as in gift of tongues, throughout christian history.
How the perceptions of this word has changed over eighteen centuries and shaped our contemporary understanding.
A journey that delves deeply into Greek grammar, etymology, and the politics behind the translation of Origen’s comments of I Corinthians 14:13–14.
This article covers the great third century Church Father, theologian and writer, Origen, regarding his commentary on the above passage in Greek. The coverage here is technical and produces by a step-by-step process in producing an English version. By doing so, the system reveals problems that plague the translation of ancient Christian texts.
An etymological exploration of the word χάρισμα from select writings of the Church Fathers. Χάρισμα has a much wider semantic range than most realize and assists in a better understanding of St. Paul’s usage. By going through a select set of writers from the third to fourth centuries, Athanasius*, Eusebius, and Gregory of Nazianzus, a … Read more
How Pentecostals built their historical framework for their doctrine of tongues from Higher Criticism literature–a necessary but unlikely relationship.
This merging of two opposed systems, one dependent on the supernatural, and the other focused on the rational and logical with no reference to any divine entity, makes for one of the most major shifts in the history of the christian doctrine of tongues.
As shown throughout the Gift of Tongues Project, tongues as an ecstatic utterance was a new addition to the doctrine of tongues in the 19th century. There is no historical antecedent for ecstatic utterance, glossolalia and their variances before this era. Nor is there a connection with the majority of ecclesiastical writings over 1800 years which had a different trajectory.
Read moreThe Pentecostal Rewrite of the History of Speaking in Tongues
Examining the nature, function, and history of angels in the Dead Sea Scrolls and two intertestamental books to find a connection with St. Paul’s reference of the tongues of men and angels.
Paul and the authors behind the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Testament of Job, and the Book of Enoch are products of a milieu that believed in the divine interplay between angels and the worshipper. So, if one wants to find an answer to Paul’s mysterious reference about angelic tongues, the highest probability exists in these texts.
An analysis of the Testament of Job, its controversial state on speaking in angelic tongues, and its place in the christian doctrine of tongues.
The Testament of Job’s narration of Job’s three daughters speaking in the dialect of angels piques curiosity, especially those who hold an interest in the christian doctrine of tongues. Were they speaking a supernatural language of angels that purportedly the early Christian church of Corinth produced and later the Montanists? Alternatively, were they speaking in highly exalted poetic language as the Delphic prophetesses practiced?
An obvious third question then arises. Did the tongues of angels perpetuate in the early church and beyond? No literature so far in any ecclesiastical text examined in the Gift of Tongues Project has addressed the subject. It is not a part of the ancient traditions in Western or Eastern Christianity.
These first two questions and more are the purpose of this article.
Why Paul never used the word synagogue to describe the movement he inspired and chose ecclesia instead—the Greek word we translate as church.
The short answer is that he couldn’t use the word synagogue for a variety of legal and administrative reasons. Ecclesia was a better fit for their role as a para-synagogue organization within the Jewish umbrella.
There is a second option but not so strong as the first one. Paul thought of ecclesia as defining his concept of Messianic Judaism a restorative movement claiming back to the time of Ezra.
The reasons and impact of Christianity’s separation from its Jewish parent.
Christianity started as a grass-roots Jewish movement that had its origins in the Galilee and Jerusalem regions.
There were three reasons that this offspring of a Jewish parent split: the destruction of Jerusalem, their excommunication by Rabban Gamaliel II, and then the Bar Kochba revolt.
One must keep in mind that the separation was a gradual one. There were amicable relations between the two parties for centuries—so close that it caused competing interests.
A detailed look at praying in tongues from a historic Jewish perspective. The results may surprise many readers.
When one examines praying in tongues from a Jewish liturgical perspective, the understanding of praying in tongues changes dramatically. The most important finding is that praying in tongues was part of a list of liturgical activities noted by Paul occurring in the Corinthian assembly. A list which includes speaking in tongues, hymns, psalms, and the amen construct. These are all found in ancient Jewish traditions.
They all point to the fact that the Corinthian assembly had inherited the liturgical rites of their greater global Jewish community.