[B-Greek] tongues - languages

George F Somsel gfsomsel at juno.com
Wed May 25 10:00:23 EDT 2005


On Wed, 25 May 2005 06:14:56 -0700 (PDT) Eric Weiss
<papaweiss1 at yahoo.com> writes:
> Translations probably still use "tongues" for a few reasons (just my 
> guesses here):
>  
> 1. "Tradition" (as Tevye the milkman would say), even though I, too, 
> find the phrase "speaking 
> in tongues" as odd as a fiddler on the roof, as "languages" would be 
> more common English.
>  
> 2. Popular idiom. "Speaking in tongues" is the most common 
> expression Charismatics and 
> Pentecostals use to describe this activity, and since they're 
> perhaps the fastest-growing group 
> of Christians in the world, according to several surveys, I suppose 
> Bible translators may 
> choose to use the phraseology that the readers are familiar with and 
> use themselves. Even 
> non-Charismatics refer to glossolalia as "speaking in tongues" 
> rather than "speaking in other 
> languages." Thus, an otherwise antiquated term for "languages" has 
> been kept alive and in use 
> because of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, whose members 
> took this term from 
> the KJV and made it universal and contemporary religious 
> terminology.
>  
> 3. Being an unusual or rarely-used (these days) word for 
> "languages," it perhaps subtly cues 
> the reader/listener to the fact that the text is speaking about 
> something other than normal 
> human speech.
>  
> FYI - When I talk to people about "speaking in tongues," I explain 
> that it means 
> "speaking in other languages." Some of the more recent translations 
> - e.g., Holman Christian 
> Standard Bible, New Living Translation - say "languages" instead of 
> "tongues," but they're not 
> always consistent (compare, e.g., Acts 2:4 and Acts 19:6 and I Cor. 
> 12:10 in the New Living 
> Translation), and other new ones like the NIV and the ESV still say 
> "tongues" (but the NIV 
> Reader's edition says "languages").
> 
> 
> Eric S. Weiss
 __________________________________________________

True, but don't forget that there are certain expressions which are
"frozen" such as "his native tongue."

george
gfsomsel
___________



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