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The Interpretation of Tongues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Ernest Best
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Extract

We do not possess a large amount of information about the worship of Christians in the early days of the church and most of what we do comes from First Corinthians. In it Paul answers various questions raised by the Corinthians, among them one about spiritual gifts. We ought probably to envisage a small group meeting in a house (cf. 1 Cor. 16.19; there would have been a number of such ‘house-churches’ in Corinth). In these meetings the Christians present made various contributions to the worship according to their abilities, or, more correctly, their spiritual gifts, charismata.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , February 1975 , pp. 45 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1975

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References

page 46 note 1 cf. Best, , ‘Prophets and Preachers’, S.J.T. 12 (1959), 129ff.Google Scholar

page 48 note 1 See Calvin on Mark 16.17, which of course he took to be canonical. Calvin's statement is somewhat qualified. Later Reformers were more absolute in their expressions.

page 48 note 2 cf. Unger, M. F., New Testament Teaching on Tongues (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1972), pp. 23f.Google Scholar

page 48 note 3 Unger, op. cit., pp. 1ff.

page 49 note 1 e.g., cf. Grant, R. M., The Interpretation of the Bible (London, 1965), pp. 102ff.Google Scholar

page 53 note 1 cf. Dodds', E. R. essay, ‘Supernormal Phenomena in Classical Antiquity’, in his The Ancient Concept of Progress and Other Essays (Oxford, 1973), pp. 202fGoogle Scholar and the literature quoted there. See also Theological Dictionary of the New Testament ed. Kittel, G., trans. Bromiley, G. W.. (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1964), vol. I, pp. 722ff.Google Scholar

page 53 note 2 cf. Lewis, I. M., Ecstatic Religion (London, 1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 54 note 1 One of the faults of a certain type of biblical scholarship is its failure to recognise this and therefore its easy paralleling of texts from different NT writings. This is another aspect of the situational view of Scripture; a writer's language is a part of his situation.

page 57 note 1 Penguin edition, pp. 613f.

page 57 note 2 See Samarin, W. J., Tongues of Men and of Angels (New York, N.Y., 1972).Google Scholar

page 58 note 1 Since the first draft of this paper was compiled the writer has met a well-known NT scholar who has taught himself the technique of speaking in tongues. He can speak in several ‘languages’; he regards this as a purely natural phenomenon and can exercise the technique at will.