What Did You Say? (2)
For one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God; for no one understands, but in his spirit he speaks mysteries. 1 Corinthians 14:2 NASB
Mysteries – Paul writes these words to the Corinthians. He never speaks of this subject in other letters. What was it about the Corinthian audience that motivated Paul to address the issue of this ecstatic experience? Perhaps we have a clue in the association of glossolalia with the Greek idea of mystḗrion.
Gentiles who lived in Corinth in the first century would have been quite familiar with Greek mystery religions. They were all around them. Temples to Greek and Roman gods, oracles and secret cults populated the religious arena of Corinth. Making sounds that were unintelligible to listeners was only a part of the ecstatic experience of these cults. The attraction to the mystery religions was the promise of salvation through connection with the god or gods. Bornkamm explains:
The mysteries promise initiates salvation (sōtēría) by the dispensing of cosmic life. The deities are chthonic deities, the mysteries are connected with the seasons, and in general the gods undergo sufferings that are enacted in cultic dramas expressing joy and sorrow, birth and death, ending and new beginning. The priests and initiates enter into the drama and effect union with the gods by various sacramental actions, e.g., meals, fertility rites, baptisms, investitures, and symbolical journeys. What is denoted is a change which, by way of participation with the deity, insures them of future salvation. The mysteries are rituals of death and life that prepare the devotees for the life to come. Examples from Eleusis, the Dionysus rite, and the Attis and Isis mysteries all support this.[1]
Paul’s converts to Messianic Judaism came from the population that was saturated with these cults. They knew what ecstatic experience was, and they knew its promise of salvation.[2] Dionysus and Isis were familiar. Now these people discovered a new religious path—the Way, the Kingdom of the Messiah. Do you suppose they simply abandoned every religious idea they had when they walked into the Jewish assembly in Corinth? We cannot overlook the audience’s Hellenistic background. For example, consider the word “prophet.” Heschel’s insight demonstrates how even this word had overtones and implications that pushed the audience toward non-biblical assumptions:
“The word ‘prophet,’ used to translate the Hebrew nabi, is a Greek word, prophetes. In the classical period it denoted a person who disclosed or spoke forth to others the thought of a god; a person who spoke for a god, an interpreter, as Tiresias was of Zeus, Orpheus of Bacchus, Apollo of Zeus, the Pythia of Apollo. In later times it was applied especially to those who expounded the unintelligible oracles of the Pythia of Delphi or the rustling of the leaves of Dodona. In a metaphorical sense it was used of poets as interpreters of gods or Muses.
The etymology of prophetes is uncertain. It is not clear whether the prefix ‘pro’ means ‘out of’ or ‘fore.’ Since prophecies constantly dealt with future events, the notion developed of prophecy being essentially prediction. From the vocabulary of Greek religion the word was adapted by the Hellenistic Jews and the Septuagint to render the Hebrew nabi (pl. nebiim). The Greek word was adopted in Latin as propheta chiefly in postclassical times under Christian influences, and from ecclesiastical Latin it passed into modern European languages. In actual usage, the idea conveyed by the word ‘prophet’ never quite corresponded with its historical prototype.”[3]
We should carefully note how much of the Greek background of this word showed up in the Christian idea of prophet and prophecy. In fact, the notion that a prophet predicted future events was never a biblical idea. It comes directly from Greek pagan mystery religions. Perhaps this is why Jacob Neusner wrote, “The purpose of Hebrew prophecy is to never come true.”
Where does this leave us? You’ll have to decide about the religious value of speaking in tongues, but it leaves me with these thoughts: Paul is dealing with an audience who expected to find similar religious experiences in their new home in the Messianic assembly that they had previously experienced in their past pagan ecstatic encounters with manics and prophets. They brought all these ideas with them to the Corinthian community. Paul has to redirect their expectations, in the same way that Moses redirected the Egyptian assumptions of the children of Israel. He doesn’t squash them. He manages them, knowing that over time these pagan ideas will be replaced by the teaching of Moses and Yeshua. “Speaking in tongues” is a unique Corinthian issue because the Corinthians expected religious syncretism, precisely what Rome did with the panoply of gods in its far-flung Empire. Paul dances down the middle with a long-term transformation in mind. As we can see from all the other issues he had to confront in Corinth, this audience needed a lot of careful instruction. What the early Church did with Paul’s psychological counseling notes converted the pagan ecstatic practice into a doctrine.
But what else is new? That’s what the Church usually did with Hebrew ideas.
Topical Index: speaking in tongues, mystery, prophet, nabi, prophetes, 1 Corinthians 14:2
[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (p. 615). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
[2] As early as 400 B. C. E. Greeks were familiar with the connection between prophecy and madness. Heschel remarks, “Socrates maintained that the Greek word for prophecy (mantike) and the word for madness (manike) were really the same, ‘and the letter t is only a modern and tasteless insertion.’” Abraham Heschel, The Prophets, Vol. 2, p. 172.
[3] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets: Two Volumes in One (Hendrickson Publishers, 1962), Vol. 2, p. 187.
