My Beef With English Bible Translations

 I wrote this a while back, but I believe it is pertinent here to what I am trying to say:
 "What a lot of people don't realize about Bible translation, and specifically the translation into English is how much linguistic "noise" there actually is between the source and the target languages. Let's just take the New Testament for a moment. The New Testament was originally written in the colloquial Greek of the first century Eastern Mediterranean. The dialogue and teachings of Jesus that it records however were likely originally spoken in Aramaic (Classical Syriac, not the Biblical Aramaic of Daniel and Ezra), at least most of the time, and as such there are a number of Aramaicisms in the text which were translated directly by four different authors into the more widely spoken Greek.
      In the fifth century, the Greek text was translated into colloquial (or "vulgar") Latin. Think about the amount of linguistic change which occurred just between the first and fifth centuries when Jerome translated the texts. That's about 4-500 years worth of change. To put that into perspective, that's the difference between Anglo-Saxon (think the original Beowulf poem) and Elizabethan English (think Shakespeare and the KJV). The latter is still mutually intelligible with Modern English, the former is not and must be learned as a foreign language. So when Jerome translated it into the Latin of the fifth century, he translated first century Greek with a fifth century Greek understanding of the words and syntax, and both changed over that period of time.
     The Latin text, the Vulgate, was the de facto standard text of the New Testament for the Western Church and Western Scholarship for about a thousand years, and long past the time when Latin was the colloquial language of anyone. By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it had morphed into what we now know as the Romance languages and their respective dialects (much as Anglo-Saxon morphed into Elizabethan). Latin as such only remained spoken as, essentially, an artificial language used for education and ecclesiastical liturgy. It was no one's birth language. While it was artificially maintained, the meanings of the Latin words continued to shift and change over that thousand year period. The artificial Latin spoken in Martin Luther's day would have been barely intelligible if at all to Jerome in the fifth century.
     When John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and the other early translators and Reformers first read the New Testament, they read it in this artificially maintained Latin, not their own native tongues, and not in the Original Greek. The Greek texts themselves had been maintained by the Byzantine Empire and the Eastern Orthodox Church, but were largely unknown in the Western Roman Catholic Church until after 1451 CE when the Byzantine capital of Constantinople fell to the Turks and a large number of Greek scholars and clergy fled with their manuscripts west to Rome, and other European capitals. Those who came spoke Greek, but a Greek which, like the other languages, had morphed over the fifteen hundred year time span since the original texts were written, and was mutually unintelligible with the Greek of the New Testament. Furthermore, there was no one unified text of the Greek New Testament until Erasmus compiled his Textus Receptus from Eastern Orthodox Lectionaries and other manuscripts. Ironically, he only did this so he could place it side by side with the Latin to prove the superiority of the Latin text over the original Greek!
     This is the linguistic context of Luther's German translation from the original languages, as well as Tyndale's English, and Calvin's French translations. They all may have been excellent scholars, but in many if not most cases their translations relied heavily on the meaning of the Latin text as they understood it in the sixteenth century even if they were trying to translate it from the Greek because they simply did not have the tools at their disposal to achieve enough of a fluency in first century colloquial Greek laced with Aramaicisms in half the text.
     Modern translations of the New Testament often still rely heavily on the work of these men. Virtually all modern translations into English rely on Tyndale's understanding of what the text was saying, even if they don't copy his words directly, they often paraphrase them. Probably a good 75% of the King James Version of the New Testament is plagiarized directly from Tyndale, and most follow suit to a greater or lesser degree because few translators want to deviate from what has already been done, even if modern translation tools tell a different story. Put simply, the New Testament which is read today in English has 2,000 years worth of linguistic, cultural, and theological noise which makes it difficult to understand what the original authors were trying to say to their own target audiences who knew the language, culture, and worldview because they shared it."

     Modern English Bible translators tend to bias their translations to what previous translators have already done. "No need to reinvent the wheel" so to speak. More than this though, they also tend to bias their translations along their own theological systems of thought. For some, like with the ESV, it is overt. For others, like with the NRSV, it is subconscious. No matter who you are as a translator, you will always render a passage as what you think it's saying. Your translation will always depend on your personal understanding of what the author was trying to say. Attempting to translate something word for word doesn't actually help the situation because there are no words between Koine Greek and English that have a direct 1:1 translation. There is always semantic drift between them which is why one word in Greek can often be seen being translated five different ways in English (and one word in English having three or four Greek counterparts) even though the word itself encompasses one concept in 1st century near eastern thought.
     Most Modern translations are dynamic equivalence translations to one degree or another, attempting to render what was meant rather than the actual form in which the words in the text appear. There are a few that attempt to adhere to a modified formal equivalence such as the NKJV, NASB, NAB, and the ESV, but most of the others are either dynamic equivalence such as the NIV or straight up paraphrases such as the Living Bible, the Message, and the NLT. These are the ones I can think of off the top of my head, though I know there have been more published in the last 20 or thirty years. 
     Again, the translation is only as good as the understanding of the translator of what the author was trying to say. If the translator is steeped in a particular theological worldview then their translation will ultimately reflect that worldview. They will see what the text says through the lens of their theology. They will see it through the lens of their own modern worldview most of the time. Are they doing their best? Yes, of course they are, but when you're locked into a certain theological or denominational framework of understanding certain passages, it's going to color everything you produce.
     All of the above is why I don't use English translations on a regular basis anymore. I don't generally care who's doing the translating because the problems are still the same. 
     I've been translating and re-translating the Greek text of the New Testament for going on thirty years. I've translated through every book of the New Testament at least twice. Most of them I've done at least four or five times. Some, like Romans, I've lost count of how many times I've translated through it completely fresh. 
     Why do I do this? 
     Because every time I put it away and start again fresh I see something I didn't see before. Every time I go back and check the lexical definitions of words I know I've checked a hundred times before, I'm looking to understand what exactly the semantic meaning really is here. My autistic brain wants to just plug in one of the lexical definitions that's already there, but it also knows that most of those lexical definitions are using English that's at least a hundred years old to describe idioms from a language and culture that's 2,000 years old. And so, I get hung up on a word or a sentence. 
     What is Paul actually saying? (Paul's letters are where this usually happens the most.) 
     I put it away. Read more about the history, language, culture, and philosophy of the first century Roman Near East. I read modern translations of other works from the same language and period, and then go back again and look at it again with those eyes. 
     I put it away again and focus on Modern Greek to see if it has anything to teach me about how certain word usage and constructions might have survived, and then I again go back and run through it again, looking at it with the eyes which that has given me. 
     And every time I do this, I strip away just a little bit more of the two thousand years of language, culture, and theological changes which have been imposed on the text and I come closer to being in the room with the author as he's writing. I come closer to having that conversation with him on his terms, not my 21st century, English speaking American terms. And I come closer to understanding what he was saying to those readers who already knew what he was talking about, because he was only reminding them of things he's already said to them while he was there. 
     I must come to this author without a Protestant theological background, without a Catholic or Orthodox background, without the background of someone from my century, and I must listen to him as he writes as though I was someone from his own time and place, someone who understands the people, the places, the idioms, the humor, the sarcasm. I go, and I come back as though I'm traveling through time; learning more each time I do until I get it. 
      I must approach it without bias, without judgment, without a preconceived opinion and just let Paul, or Matthew, or John speak as they are, no more and no less, and not put words in their mouths they didn't mean or say. In doing all this over the more than three decades since I started learning Biblical Greek, I peel back the noise generated by twenty centuries of change, both unintended and deliberate, layer by layer. 
     This is why I don't just do one translation and then go back and edit and revise it. I always go back and work from the Greek fresh. Every time. I go back and look up words I already know the meaning of just so I can find a new way to say it in English to see if that is more appropriate for a modern usage. I play with it a bit. Should this be word for word and grammar for grammar, or should it be rendered idiomatically or paraphrased? My ASD brain spends a half hour on a single sentence sometimes obsessively trying to make it make sense with the actual word meanings and grammar rather than giving it the standard theologically biased translation. And sometimes I go back and find that I was wrong, and I look at it again and wonder how I could have rendered it that way before. Sometimes it makes perfect sense at the time but looks like gibberish in English when I go back and look at it again. 
     But I go back. I sit in that room with the author as he's writing, and I do the hard work of trying to understand what he's actually saying without the noise. And sometimes, just sometimes, I get it. He speaks clearly as though it's my own native tongue. And that makes all of the above worth every single time.

My Response to Dr. Nina Livesey's Accusation that the Apostle Paul Never Existed and His Letters and the Books of Acts and Luke are Forgeries

 I started learning Koine Greek when I was fifteen. I am now fifty-one. I've spent the better part of the last thirty six years pouring over, translating and retranslating the books of the New Testament in the original Greek, so much so that I have trouble when I open an English translation because frequently I know the translation isn't quite right. Most of that study and translation has been focused on Paul's letters. 

     I've read through and translated all of them so many times I've lost count. I've also studied Paul's timeline, travel, and just about everything available about him and about the time period within the near eastern Roman Empire and the surrounding culture and history. Maybe I don't have a doctorate, but I do think I have at least something to add here based on all of this. 

     First, the ancient Roman Empire around the Mediterranean was far more connected than she's giving them credit for. These communities of disciples knew of each other better than she suggests. There was a kind of network if you will after the diaspora from Jerusalem, though Ephesus was kind of the central hub for a long time, and many of these communities if not most of them were originally started by Paul wandering into town. Many, many churches in Greece and Asia Minor can and still do trace their lineages back to Paul's work. That might not be proof of his existence, but it's a start. It's not inconceivable that they made copies of these letters from him not long after they received them. These churches were founded at the same time the canonical Gospels were still being written. These letters might have been all they had besides oral tradition. It's also not inconceivable that someone went through and collected copies of these letters by the end of the first century. Second, Clement of Rome, the author of 1 Clement, was actually the Episkopos or "Bishop" of Rome at the time the letter was written. To suggest that he did not exist without actual proof that he did not exist isn't scholarship. And this brings me to my overall thought regarding this particular professor's theory. 

     She's basing her theory on a number of assumptions about what those communities would or would not do, or what they could or could not do, or what they knew or did not know. She has no proof of whether the community in say Galatia couldn't have known of the Apostles in or from Jerusalem. She has no proof that they wouldn't have used terms like Episkopos, Presbuteros, or Diakonos to describe a community's leadership, and all of which were well in use by the end of the first century as evidenced by the letters of the Apostolic Fathers. This world at the time was far more connected than she appears to assume. It only took two weeks to get from Rome to Caesarea in Judea during the spring. Her claims are built on her own assumptions about that world two thousand years ago which, quite frankly, just don't stand up to real scrutiny. 

     Finally, there are the letters themselves. As I said, I've spent more than three decades reading, translating, and rereading them in Greek. Compare them with the Gnostic writings. Compare them with other spiritual texts. They're too personal. They read more like Seneca's letters or Marcus Aurelius' personal reflections than they do any of the others. Paul's intent was to teach, yes, but that teaching was directed and personal. He addresses people by name. He knows people who will receive or see the letters. He knows their personal circumstances. And it's also clear that all of the letters were written by the same man just from an analysis of the language and writing style used. You might as well question whether Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius or any of the first or second century authors and writers that we know of existed because we have almost less evidence of their existence than we do of Paul's. No, this particular professor, as sincere as she may be, became too enamored with her own study of Marcion and took an easily refuted idea and ran with it. The real problem is that there are too many people who don't actually understand why she's wrong and so believe what she's selling without question.
     One other thought to add to my previous comment. Marcion or someone else attempting to forge the letters of Paul or forge the books of Luke and Acts is like me attempting to forge the letters of Abraham Lincoln or write a false biography of a secret son of his without the benefit of the internet. Marcion was a hundred years removed from Paul's time and the time recorded in the Books of Luke and Acts. Under those circumstances, there is no way a pseudo-author could have gotten every detail correct from that time period. 

     In the book of Acts, Luke names real Roman governors that were serving at that time such as Gallio (Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, brother of Seneca) and Sergius Paulus, a proconsul whom we know oversaw Cyprus during that time from inscriptions which were found. Furthermore, the description of the scales falling from Paul's eyes is a perfect description of what is called photokeratitis. It's a condition that today is usually found among welders who don't get their welding masks in place fast enough. The bright flash burns their eyes like a sunburn, are temporarily blinded and it takes two to three days for them to heal. When they do, there's a build up over the cornea that falls off like scales. People who get this often have eye problems for the rest of their life, which many Biblical scholars suspect Paul had. Acts records that he was exposed to a bright light before falling on the road to Damascus. Furthermore, everything about what Paul experienced on the road to Damascus and the after effects screams a perfect, textbook description of a Near Death Experience, the likes of which have only been studied and documented within the last fifty years or so. There are more things like this. How would the pseudo-author have known about any of this a hundred years after the fact? How would he have known about the effects of photokeratitis, a condition which couldn't have been common in the first century? He would have had to travel extensively and make the same painstaking notes a novelist would today in order to pull this off, and even then there would have been mistakes made. 

     Finally, the same Church leadership which rejected Marcion's teachings and his butchering of Luke wouldn't then have turned around and just thrown their entire support for the fictional writings of an Apostle they'd never heard of. Out of all the writings in the New Testament, Paul's letters were never contested in the ancient church as being authentic. Ironically, Peter's were. The letter to the Hebrews was. But Paul's were never contested as being authentic. There is too much internal evidence that they were written by who they say they were written by and when they say they were written.

     Dr. Livesey has no real evidence that Paul never existed except her own speculations and assumptions. The internal evidence of the records of Paul's life are more than enough to put these accusations and speculations to rest. Whatever you believe about Paul, whatever beef you made have with what you think he said or taught, the man existed and did exactly what these records say he did. 

Paul Had A Near Death Experience On The Road To Damascus

     The Apostle Paul had a Near Death Experience on the road to Damascus. He didn’t just fall down, and it wasn’t just a waking vision. This is the only known experience which can account for his sudden and dramatic transformation, and which can account for how he describes things in his letters. But what about those men who were with him who heard a voice, but saw no one? This can also be accounted for by a similar phenomenon called a “shared death experience.”
     Near Death Experiences, or NDEs, occur when a person is clinically dead for a certain length of time, either the brain has died or the heart has stopped or both, and has then resuscitated back to life. These experiences are marked by specific events that, while tailored to the individual, show a remarkable degree of consistency across all cultures, religions, languages, and societies. These experiences generally include one or more of the following: a displacement from one’s body, being removed to a place where time is not experienced, meeting relatives or friends who are deceased whether or not the person knows about either them or their death, meeting a “Being of Light” or religious figures like Jesus Christ, a life review where a person experiences their lives from the point of view of those they’ve interacted with positively or negatively,  an experience of union with God or Source, and being either told they’re returning to their body or being given the choice to stay or return. An NDE can take place over mere minutes, hours, or even, in Dr. Eben Alexander's case, a week of being brain dead from a bacteria that had reduced his cerebral cortex to pulp. By 2013, Dr. Bruce Greyson, M.D. states in his article for the medical journal “Missouri Medicine” that “around nine million people in the United States alone have reported this kind of experience.” P.M.H. Atwater writes, “There's no denying that experiencers become quite intuitive afterward. Psychic displays can be commonplace, such as: out-of-body episodes, manifestation of "beings" met in near-death state, "remembering" the future, finishing another's sentence, "hearing" plants and animals "speak." This behavior is not only worrisome to relatives and friends, it can become frightening to them. A person's religious beliefs do not alter or prevent this amplification of faculties and stimuli. Yet, experiencers willing to learn how to control and refine these abilities, consider them beneficial.” She also writes, “Life paradoxes begin to take on a sense of purpose and meaning, as forgiveness tends to replace former needs to criticize and condemn. Hard driving achievers and materialists can transform into easy-going philosophers; but, by the same token, those more relaxed or uncommitted before can become energetic "movers and shakers," determined to make a difference in the world. Personality reversals seem to depend more on what's "needed" to round out the individual's inner growth than on any uniform outcome. Although initially bewildered, families can be so impressed by what they witness that they, too, change-making the experience a "shared event."
     People who have Near Death Experiences typically will remember their experience with perfect or near perfect clarity. They will describe it as being “more real than real.” According to Dr. Greyson, “A recent review of research into the characteristic changes following NDEs found the most commonly reported to be loss of fear of death; strengthened belief in life after death; feeling specially favored by God; a new sense of purpose or mission; heightened self-esteem; increased compassion and love for others; lessened concern for material gain, recognition, or status; greater desire to serve others; increased ability to express feelings; greater appreciation of, and zest for, life; increased focus on the present; deeper religious faith or heightened spirituality; search for knowledge; and greater appreciation for nature. These aftereffects have been corroborated by interviews with near-death experiencers’ significant others and by long-term longitudinal studies."
     A shared death experience is when someone literally starts seeing or experiencing all or part of what a dying person is experiencing. They can happen to people in the same room and they can also happen remotely to people in a different room or even in another country. Like near death experiences, there are some doctors who study and document this phenomenon, and there are many doctors, nurses, and "death doulas"who have experienced it themselves. One doctor and nurse who weren't related to the dying patient at all literally saw a spectral image of the dying man's already passed wife hovering over him waiting to receive him as recounted in the book "Not Yet" by Dr. Jeff O'Driscoll, M.D.
     There are literally thousands of NDE testimonies available to read on the website for the International Association of Near Death studies, as well as many, many recorded videos of people relating their experiences in interviews and podcasts on YouTube. Two however stand out at the moment for this purpose and these are Howard Storm’s and Betty Guadagno’s (also known as “Buddha Betty”), both of whose testimonies I highly recommend finding and watching. Howard Storm was a former, extremely atheist art professor who experienced a near-death event in June 1985 after suffering a catastrophic duodenal perforation while traveling with students in Paris, France. He describes himself as being an arrogant, selfish man prior to his NDE. His near death experience led him to not only turn away from atheism, but to become a pastor in the United Church of Christ. Betty Guadagno’s near-death experience occurred in March 2019 following a severe drug overdose, completely transforming her life from a multi-decade battle with homelessness, trauma, and severe addiction into a journey of recovery and spiritual teaching.
      The more information I read and consume about NDEs and their after effects, the more I recognize a pattern that feels very, very familiar, and should to anyone who's studied Paul the Apostle. Paul’s pattern of behavior, extreme change in beliefs and practices away from Pharisaic Judaism, previously uncharacteristic yet extreme Christo-centric spirituality and mysticism as documented explicitly in Philippians 3, demonstrations of supernatural abilities, extreme increase in compassion and love, loss of attachment to material things, and near total loss of the fear of death fits the pattern of NDE after effects perfectly. Add to this his statement in his letter to the Galatians that he wasn't taught his gospel by human beings but by Jesus Christ Himself. Numerous near death experiencers report speaking with Christ, asking questions, and getting clear answers during their encounter in a completely timeless setting. While only minutes might pass for the rest of us, these encounters feel like years, centuries, or even millennia have passed as well as no time at all. Everything about Paul's narrative in the book of Acts, and what he writes about his own experiences fits the pattern of an NDE perfectly. 
      According to Acts chapter 9, Paul was on his way with a group of other men to hunt down followers of the Way and drag them in chains back to Jerusalem, "breathing murderous threats against them." Suddenly, he's engulfed in a bright intense light and falls to the ground. He and those with him were on their feet and Paul suddenly drops to the ground. In the middle of this light, he then sees Jesus who asks him why he's hunting Him down. During the conversation, the men who are with him hear the voice of Jesus but see no one. Jesus then, literally in the Greek, tells him to "resurrect," and head for Damascus. Jesus uses two words in the Greek which are usually translated in this account something akin to "get up," but these two words are usually translated as "resurrect" and "awaken." Everything about this short account screams Near Death Experience by Paul, and shared death experiences on the part of those men with him.
     Why then, if Paul was dead and then resuscitated does the account in Acts not say this directly? Luke would have only learned of it from Paul. I can only speculate, but it could be that neither Paul himself nor the men with him knew he was dead during the time he was on the ground because of how fast it happened within time. When someone experiences an NDE they always report it occuring in a “timeless” state. They can’t tell if minutes, hours, years or even centuries are passing, or if no time is passing at all. They can watch their entire lives play out one event at a time, and yet when they return, only minutes have passed if that. If Paul had more of a conversation with Jesus, why doesn’t Acts record it? Honestly, because that wasn’t Luke’s purpose and Paul would later consider the things he heard and saw there things he wasn’t to speak of, at least not directly.
     What Paul records having done after the event in his letter to the Galatians also evokes many NDE testimonies. He states that, after it happened and presumably after he regained his sight in Damascus (the condition itself being a good description of a severe flash burn to the eyes called "photokeratitis"), he didn’t talk to anyone about what he heard and saw from Jesus, but spent several years in the deserts in Arabia trying to sort it all out. Many people who have NDEs don’t tell anyone about what they experienced for long periods of time as they try to sort it out and understand what they experienced, but once they do, frequently they speak with a boldness and a confidence about it regardless of anyone’s criticism or rejection. They don’t just “believe” about what happens after death, they “know” what happens and no one can tell them otherwise. This too follows Paul’s pattern.
     Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus, like many people who have near death experiences, was a sharp dividing point in his life. It was the point when the Pharisee “Saul of Tarsus” died and was resurrected Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ.
     But if Paul did actually have a near death experience on the road to Damascus, why doesn’t his teaching reflect what most near death experiencers return with? First, Paul was a Roman Jewish man of the first century who was going to interpret everything through that lense. Near death experiences are always tailored to the individual, and Paul was no different. He was going to interpret anything he saw and learned through the lense of first century Judaism and Roman culture. Second, as I have written about many times, what Paul actually said in the original language and how it is translated and interpreted at times are two very different things. Much of Paul’s writings are today interpreted through the lense of theologies which were developed hundreds of years after he wrote his letters, and which frequently take his words well out of the contexts in which he wrote them. The basis of what Paul wrote about Christian practice and belief centered around the equality of everyone, union with God, the supreme importance of love, and functioning from a consciousness which has it’s Source in God rather than one’s own body. All of these things can be found spoken of in different ways within modern NDE testimonies.
     Paul the Apostle had a near death experience on the road to Damascus, and like virtually all other near death experiences which are documented, he was never the same man again.

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence

 One of the things I keep encountering is atheists demanding absolute proof of Biblical events or people, and the bar they set is so high, you couldn't even prove you yourself exist. Another thing I encounter is a "scholar" stating with absolute certainty something like "Jesus wouldn't have been buried in a rich man's tomb, he would have been thrown into a ditch with the other criminals," yet without offering any tangible proof that Jesus in fact was not entombed. In fact, most of the criticisms I see either on YouTube or social media or even in articles written by "scholars" about the veracity of what the Biblical texts say offer absolutely no proof whatsoever, only the vague speculations and opinions of those scholars.
     So I say this, prove to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus of Nazareth didn't exist. Prove to me that He didn't rise from the dead. Prove to me that the bones entombed on Vatican Hill in Rome aren't those of Peter and Paul. Prove to me that the N.T. writings weren't eyewitnesses beyond any doubt. 
     I'm getting so very sick of speculative skepticism being treated like Gospel without any real evidence to back it up, yet demanding irrefutable evidence for things like Biblical accounts when circumstantial and anecdotal evidence has existed since they were first written down. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the only evidence which exists is generally on the side of these things actually happening in some way, even if only anecdotal or circumstantial. Beyond all doubt? Maybe not, but it's more evidence in favor than against.
     I've spent a lot of time tracking down whether certain things in the Biblical text are even possible. Not necessarily probable mind you, but possible. Can I say that it happened exactly that way with ironclad proof? No, I can't. But no one else can really offer proof that it didn't. At least I have plausible explanations with some evidence of the possibility. I've spent years pouring over the N.T. texts in the original languages and learning to "hear" the voices behind them. It's been enough to convince me of the authenticity of them as mid first century. Just deciding that they weren't written when tradition says they were because it's inconvenient to your narrative isn't scholarship.
     Saying that Jesus of Nazareth didn't exist is an extraordinary claim. Saying that Paul the Apostle didn't exist and didn't write the N.T. letters is an extraordinary claim. Saying that Jesus of Nazareth didn't die on a Roman cross or didn't rise from the dead is an extraordinary claim which contradicts the circumstantial and anecdotal evidence (and in the case of a very rigorously re-examined in the 21st century Shroud of Turin, about as hard an evidence as you're going to get for anyone's resurrection from that period of time). All of these extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof that they didn't happen. The burden of proof is on the prosecution, not the defense, in any court of law, at least in the U.S. And the prosecution of these people and events simply have no evidence to make their cases with.

Looking at "Praying in Tongues" as a Linguist

 I was thinking today about "praying in tongues" or "speaking in tongues" while I was on my way home from taking the trash to the dump. (Wednesdays are trash run days here in Ohio County, Kentucky if you don't want to pay for trash service. ) I've been to a number of tongues churches in my life, though it has never been a home for me in any way, and I've known a number of folks who use the practice in their worship. Rather than thinking about it as a theologian, today I was thinking about it in terms of my other major interest, languages and linguistics, and I realized something.
      Something is very off linguistically with the majority of "tongues" speakers and prayers. What do I mean by this? Every language has its own set of both vowel and consonant sounds that tend to be unique to that language. Even among related languages like the Romance languages, the phonemics of the languages differ from one another in some way. The same is true among the Germanic languages. While Dutch and German may sound similar to the English speaking ear, their sound schemes are actually quite different. The difference is far more pronounced the farther away from English that you get. Many languages have consonants or vowels which simply do not occur in English and take quite a bit of practice for the English speaker's tongue to master. The "hard 'h'" sound which occurs in Semitic languages, comes to mind, but also the glottal stop with which many tribal Papua New Guinea languages are rife. Gimi and Bisorio both have multiple types. And then there are the plosive consonants which occur in various tribal languages, as well as clicks, and the tongue twisting plosive clicks of Xhosa. Where vowels are concerned, Irish Gaelic comes to mind as their vowels only slightly resemble the vowels sounds English speakers know lending themselves to the Irish accent. The human mouth is capable of making far more sounds than we realize and nearly all of them are used in the 7-8000 recognized languages around the world, not including dialects.
     In addition to the phonemics, languages have grammar which dictates how they are used, and that grammar can vary wildly between them. But unless someone is deliberately repeating something, the sentence structure will rarely repeat the same cluster of phonemes twice. Even particles and discrete units indicating grammatical function are rarely repeated one right after another.
     Why do I bring all of this up? Because every time I have heard someone "speaking in tongues" or "praying in tongues" the phonemics they use are almost always, 99% of the time, native to English or the native language of the speaker in some way or another. The "sh" sound makes a frequent appearance, as does the "l" sound. There's a lot of the "a" as in "father" usually. "b", "j", "f", and a few others are used over and over again. There are many repetitions of the same strings of sounds. In short, nothing of what I have ever heard from a tongues speaker has ever sounded like real spoken language. The one exception I can think of is one lady I knew who, when she prayed in tongues, it bore a remarkable resemblance to the phonemic structure of the somewhat deciphered Linear A, that is, ancient Minoan, that I went over once upon a time.
     "But they're speaking heavenly languages or the languages of angels!" Someone might protest. Again, this doesn't track. Why would non-corporeal spirits, who do not have mouths, tongues, or vocal chords need human pronouncible language to communicate with one another? And if they were to use language to communicate with a human being, every single record of this has them speaking a language that human being already knows. And even then, wouldn't such languages still follow the patterns of language itself?
     Finally, speaking as someone who knows the Scriptures, the only recorded instance in the Bible itself describes the "tongues" being spoken as known, intelligible languages that were unknown to the person speaking them, and they were being spoken to people who could understand and interpret them.
     I understand that many people find comfort and a spirituality in praying this way. I am not saying it is wrong. But from a linguist's standpoint, and from a Scriptural standpoint, most of the time, it is still nonsensical gibberish all things considered. As Paul wrote, it's better to speak five words that make sense than ten thousand in a "tongue" no one understands, even the speaker.

Only Through the Logos Can You Come to the God

 It is the Logos of the God who said, "I am the path, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father if not through Me." This statement makes all the more sense when you understand what the Logos was in 1st century thought. The Logos was the "firstborn of the God" through which the God created everything. More to the point, every human being was created with a piece or "shred" of the Logos. Long before Paul wrote about the members of the Body of Christ with Christ as their Head, it was understood in 1st century Roman thought that all human beings shared a part of the Logos. No one could approach or come to the Father apart from the Logos, Itself or Himself firstborn from the very same substance as the God, of which they were already a part. It wasn't and isn't possible because it is that Logos which connects every human being to the God and Father. 
     It is not unreasonable to say that what the ancient world called Logos we now call "consciousness." It was that first and seminal source of Consciousness that incarnated as a human being over two thousand years ago. It is not unreasonable to read John 1:1 as "At the start was Consciousness. And Consciousness was right next to the God, and the Consciousness was [qualitatively] God." Our consciousness is born of His Consciousness and is a part of His Consciousness like the parts of a body with His Consciousness as the Head. 
     We cannot come to or approach the God and Father through anything having to do with our "flesh" or our physical bodies or brains. As Jesus told Nicodemus, "If someone wasn't born from above, he isn't capable of seeing the kingdom of the God. ... That which is born of Spirit is Spirit, and that which is born of flesh is flesh." As Jesus also told the woman at the well, "The God is Spirit, and those who prostrate themselves before Him need to prostrate themselves by means of the Spirit and by means of the Truth." To prostrate oneself is to worship, yes, but it is also an act of submission to a greater or higher person. One not only gets on their knees, but also presses their face to the floor baring their neck to that person in an extremely vulnerable position. Just doing so with one's body and flesh helps nothing. Those wishing to submit to the God must do so with the Spirit and with the Truth. As Paul also wrote, "we are debtors not to the flesh for living in line with the flesh, because if you live in line with the flesh you intend to die; but if you make the practices of the body die by means of the Spirit, you will live. Because as many as are guided by the Divine Spirit, these are divine sons."
     When Jesus said these words, He wasn't talking about needing to follow a certain religion to go to heaven. At the time, Christianity or any of its denominations didn't exist. He was talking about submitting to and cooperating with that piece of God which each one of us holds and being guided, not by our flesh and its fears and desires, but by that Source from which we all came who is also Love. No one comes to the Eternal God except through His Eternal Logos. It just isn't possible because there is no other mechanism than the Logos which we all share. 

Thoughts On Attempting to Legitimize Yahweh as a Part of the Ancient Canaanite Pantheon

 I was watched a video on the supposed origins of Yahweh as an ancient near eastern Canaanite god, and I'm pretty sure it ended up confirming the Biblical narrative without meaning to. The principle question being asked was essentially "How did an unknown tribal god just appear out of nowhere and depose and merge with El as the high god of the Canaanites eventually becoming the primary deity for almost everyone on Earth?" 
     In the process of answering that question, several pieces of archaeological evidence from Israel's and Judah's kingdom period are produced while discussing Yahweh's place in the Canaanite pantheon. It is said that Israel's real religion was one where Yahweh sat atop a pantheon with Asherah his wife, Ba'al his son, and several other Canaanite gods.
     What struck me about all of this is that it all ironically confirms the Biblical narrative that the name Yahweh was unknown prior to the Exodus (Ex. 3). The exodus occurred between roughly 1500 and 1400 BCE. The earliest known text to mention Yahweh ("YWH of the Shasu"), an Egyptian one, dates to the 14th century BCE and the reign of Amenhotep III. In the Book of Exodus, the Israelites make a "golden calf" and proclaim that this was the god who delivered them from Egypt. The symbol of the Canaanite high god, El, was a bull. The word used in Exodus for "calf" specifically means a "young bull" or "bull calf". It's made clear by His reaction in the text that Yahweh does not self-identify with El. 
     In the book of Judges, as well as in the books of the Kings and Chronicles, it states in no uncertain terms that the Israelites did not obey the Torah which was given to them. They began worshiping the gods of the people of the land and intermarrying with them. This is probably the origin of the Hebrew language as we know it by 1000 BCE because it was an offshoot of Canaanite. There are several points in those books where the worship of Yahweh was nearly subsumed in both Israel and Judah by the worship of the Canaanite pantheon and an Asherah pole was set up in the first temple.
    What the author of the video and others like it call the real Israelite religion (and except for a few periods during the reigns of a few Judahite kings, it was probably the most practiced), the Biblical texts called disobedience and apostasy and recorded intensely. Whatever else might be legitimately questioned in the Biblical narrative, clearly the running after other gods constantly talked about and complained about checks out in the time periods under discussion. Straight Yahweh monotheism didn't actually appear to be the majorityt practice ironically until after the return from Babylonian exile, just as the Biblical texts record.