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Posts: 12
May 22 12 10:37 AM
Elizabeth Niederer wrote:My current pastor (I'm now in a Methodist church) pointed out a very different possible interpretation of the story of Pentecost: The miracle was not in the speaking, it was in the HEARING. The people present had to HEAR in their own languages. That doesn't have to mean--if you are assuming it was a truly supernatural occurrence--that the people were speaking the languages they heard.
The Roman Virgil (70-19 BC) describes the ecstatic tongues of the Sybilline priestess on the Island of Delos as the result of her being unified with the god Apollo. Mystery religions of the Greco-Roman world record the same phenomenon in the Mithra cult of the Persians; the Osiris cult originating in ancient Egypt, and the lesser known Dionysian, Eulusinian, and Orphic cults cradled in Macedonia, Thrace and Greece. Lucian of Samosata (AD 120-98) in De Dea Syria describes an example of glossolalia shown by a roaming believer of the Syrian goddess June.
Ancient Israelites did it also. Glossolalia has also been observed in shamanism and the Voodoo religion of Haiti. Cannibals in Borneo have been known to speak in tongues too. And when spoken by schizophrenics, glossolalia is considered gibberish.
Blackdog was right about the Oracle of Delphi. I'm now looking for books on this and the Roman Virgil.
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