“Translation of the message started from the very beginning of the church. The Pentecost event more than simply demonstrated the movement of the Holy Spirit, and the inauguration of the church. The sign occurred in Jerusalem on a day when the relatively monocultural city would be the most diverse. The sign itself was a gift of spontaneous translation— crossing the linguistic barriers of the crowd. As Patrick Johnstone stated, “What was the Holy Spirit wanting to say? He was showing that ethnicity and language are both God-created and vital to God’s global plan. This Pentecost event was a challenge to the Church: use of local heart languages to communicate the Gospel!”<Patrick Johnstone, “Affinity Blocs and People Clusters: An Approach Toward Strategic Insight and Mission Partnership” Mission Frontiers, 29:2 (Mar-Apr 2007), 8.> At the same time trade or international languages were also valued in the early church. The four Gospels of the life of Jesus were all written in Greek, the most international language of the lands in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire.227 The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, was the Bible of the 1st century church. Even more, the form of Greek used by the early church was more in line with the conversation of the people than that of the scholars.”
“In Acts 2, the gift of tongues (languages) had a target, the diverse language speakers in Jerusalem at Pentecost. However, this sign was done before a larger audience as well. The public listening thought that many of the Christians were speaking incoherently like drunkards. That is why Peter ended up speaking to this secondary audience in a language they were comfortable with (perhaps Aramaic) and explained what was going on. A similar thing comes up in the early church where Paul said that the gift of tongues should not be done without an interpreter. The gift was not simply done for the benefit of the primary target— the one who understood that language— but also for the greater audience. Ignoring one of the two audiences was not acceptable. <There is considerable controversy today as to whether the gift of tongues (glossalalia) was of spontaneous translation or of non-linguistic ecstatic speech, as practiced today by many Christians. Obviously, this goes well beyond this paper, only noting that the text of the narrative, and its setting (particularly in Acts 2), appears to suggest spontaneous untrained translation. In like manner, the gift of interpretation would be spontaneous untrained translation. If this is mistaken, then I am not sure what if anything, spontaneous ecstatic speech would tell us regarding theology and language. Still from Genesis 11 until Revelation 7, it is clear that diversity of language is very much within God’s will.>
Two Quotes from Robert H. Munson. “Muddy Footprints in the Ivory Tower: Missiological Reflections on Language and Localized Theology” Philippine Journal of Religious Studies. Vol 4 #1 (2024)
