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.

For many years as a babe in Christ I believed that as well. But remember, the miracle didn't take place with those that didn't know Christ, it took place with those that did. Neither did Christ tell His disciples that people will "hear" new tongues, but that they would speak it. So, for someone to say shandala shanadala, (Blackdog, you had me laughing all night behind that one, lol) and get a different interpretation goes back to an earlier point I made.

Also, here is an excerpt from http://oaks.nvg.org/tongues.html:

Glossolalia (speaking in tongues, from Greek 'tongue' etc.) was exhibited at the ancient oracle of Delphi, where a priestess of the god Apollon spoke in unintelligible utterances, supposedly through the spirit of Apollo in her. Plato (428/27 - 348/47 AD) refers to several families who practiced ecstatic speech, praying and utterings while supposedly possessed.

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.