Preamble: I strongly believe in the freedom of religion, and every person has a right to believe whatever they want:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
Zeus is the sky and thunder god who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus with his sister and wife Hera.
There are many gods and goddesses, either of the Æsir or the Vanir, who fought each other for millennia until they achieved an entente. There also exist jötnar, dwarfs, elves, and land-wights. Our world, Midgard, is one of many that exist on the world tree Yggdrasil that also included worlds of the afterlife.
A god whose personal name is "Yahweh" is the creator of the universe some 6000 years ago and demands blood sacrifices of unblemished lambs to ensure that his priests have an unlimited supply of red meat. That god, while being only the only god, has three different distinct personas, Yahweh himself (a god that has gonads for some reason) who has existed forever, the Son of Yahweh whose name is the Salvation of Yahweh (and yet this son has also existed forever and does not seem to have a mother), and the Spirit of Yahweh whose job it is to bestows gifts on true-believers here on Earth. This god played favorites for 4000 years, 2000 of which he only blessed and communicated with one particular tribe in the Levant, and then sent himself to be sacrificed to himself by being hung on a tree--something that he himself said would cause that person to be cursed--so that he could send himself to bestow gifts to those true-believers, and all who believe that Yahweh is indeed god and the Salvation of Yahweh died for you will go to heaven, while 100 people each and every minute die and go to a pit of fire forever to be tormented by an angel that Yahweh created knowing this angel world torment billions of humans forever.
The world is flat.
We did not land on the Moon in 1969.
The COVID vaccines do not work.

However, this right does not allow you to interfere and harm the lives of others. The Christian scriptures explicitly state that

life begins when an infant takes its first breath (the breath of life) and ends when a person exhales the last breath;
causing an abortion is nothing more than a property crime against the father resulting in nothing more than a fine to be paid; and
if a woman is suspected of becoming pregnant by anyone other than her husband, she should be forced to drink a concoction that, if she was indeed unfaithful, would cause an abortion of that fetus.

Never-the-less, those same individuals believe it is their right to prevent women from seeking medical interventions to protect their health and life. Carrying a child to term

can be life-terminating or have health-altering consequences that may affect one's entire life, and
can, when one is not yet ready to start parenthood, have significant negative mental health and other real-world serious consequences on both the parents and the child.

You have a right to believe what you believe, but you do not have the right to adversely affect the lives of others, and you most certainly do not have the right to be protected from criticism. Thus, until the time comes that true-believers stop literally harming others, let us look at the collection of texts that many true-believers believe and claim, without evidence, is the sole infallible source of authority for all humans on this planet.

The gospels mention “speaking in tongues,” and in contemporary practice we encounter striking examples of what is known as glossolalia. This phenomenon is characteristic of Pentecostal churches and their derivatives, the charismatic and neo-charismatic movements. It is estimated that nearly half a billion adherents worldwide—roughly one in sixteen people—are associated with such traditions. In a typical service, one individual will utter strings of syllables resembling language but lacking consistent structure or semantic content. Another participant may then “interpret” this vocal display. Linguistic studies have generally concluded that such speech mirrors the phonological rules of the speaker’s native language without forming a genuine linguistic system. Nevertheless, within these churches such utterances are presented as visible signs of the Spirit of Yahweh bestowing gifts on the faithful.

The theological basis for this practice is often traced to Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 12, where he enumerates spiritual gifts: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, mighty works, prophecy, discernment of spirits, “various kinds of tongues,” and the interpretation of tongues. Paul stresses that these gifts all derive from one Spirit, apportioned as God wills. He then places tongues alongside apostleship, prophecy, teaching, healing, and leadership, but immediately raises rhetorical questions: “Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?” His point is that no single gift is universal.

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom and
to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit,
to another faith by the same Spirit,
to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit,
to another the working of powerful deeds,
to another prophecy,
to another the discernment of spirits,
to another various kinds of tongues,
to another the interpretation of tongues.

All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

Now, Paul then enumerates:

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church

first apostles,
second prophets,
third teachers,
then deeds of power,
then gifts of healing,
forms of assistance,
forms of leadership,
various kinds of tongues.

Next, Paul queries:

Are all apostles?
Are all prophets?
Are all teachers?
Do all work powerful deeds?
Do all possess gifts of healing?
Do all speak in tongues?
Do all interpret?

But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Next, Paul states:

Love is patient;
love is kind;
love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable;
it keeps no record of wrongs;
it does not rejoice in wrongdoing
but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things.

Paul concludes:

Love never ends.

But as for prophecies, they will come to an end;
as for tongues, they will cease;
as for knowledge, it will come to an end.

Why?

For we know only in part, and
we prophesy only in part,

but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.

As can be seen above, Paul continues by emphasizing a “more excellent way.” In 1 Corinthians 13, he insists that without love, even the loftiest spiritual powers, including the tongues of “humans and angels”, are nothing but noise. Love is patient and kind, not arrogant or self-seeking, and it alone endures. Prophecy, tongues, and knowledge will all come to an end, for they are partial; love alone is complete and everlasting.

Thus, while modern Pentecostal traditions elevate glossolalia as a central sign of divine activity, Paul himself treats it as one gift among many, subordinate to the greater and enduring gift of love. His own conclusion suggests that the practice of tongues was always provisional, destined to cease when the fullness of understanding arrived.

A discussion on angelic tongues

One possible justification for the babble in Pentecostal and charismatic churches is Paul’s line: “If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels.” Perhaps, then, we are all mistaken: maybe the endless strings of syllables are not failed attempts at human language but the exalted “tongues…of angels.” But if that is what heaven sounds like, I would be sorely tempted to request a transfer elsewhere. Then again, Lucifer himself was an angel, so perhaps he, too, speaks in this fashion.

Yet this raises a more basic problem: human languages exist because our vocal cords create vibrations shaped by the throat and mouth. The range of sounds we can produce is limited by biology: protein structures, cartilage, air flow. Still, some singers and speakers have stretched those limits to astonishing effect. Nevertheless, the limits are real. But are we to imagine that angels, supposedly immaterial beings, are equipped with the same fragile apparatus of flesh? Do they require air to speak? If so, do they also breathe? And if they breathe, do they metabolize oxygen? If not, what exactly is passing across their vocal cords in order to generate these so-called angelic sounds?

The questions multiply. If heaven has no atmosphere, are angels mute in outer space? Do their vocal cords function as human ones do, or are they furnished with divine voice synthesizers? When Gabriel addressed Mary, was he using angelic anatomy, or was he simply projecting vibrations intelligible to her ears? And what of their wings? Bird wings evolved from forelimbs, yet angels are traditionally depicted with both wings and arms. Are we to believe angels are four-limbed bipeds with a redundant pair of feathered appendages grafted on? If so, what other earthly compromises are hidden beneath their robes?

In short, if glossolalia is defended as “angelic speech,” then we must ask whether angels themselves are bound by air, lungs, proteins, and bone; or whether the whole idea collapses into metaphor, one that hardly justifies the torrents of syllables shouted in Sunday services.

And really, what do two angels talk about when they meet? Humans chat about weather because it shifts constantly, sometimes delightful, sometimes destructive. We discuss events, gossip, politics, or the news, all because they change and affect us. But Michael and Gabriel? After several million years of coffee breaks together, the conversation must get thin.

Gabriel: “How’s the weather?”
Michael: “Same as always: hot as seven suns, no rain, not even a breeze. At least humans down there think they have climate change to complain about.”

“Read any good books lately?”
“Not since the canon closed.”

“See any new plays?”
“Just the same nativity re-enactments. You’d think after two thousand years we could get fresh material.”

“Any hobbies?”
“Well, choir practice. Again. Forever.”

Immortality without novelty is an eternity of small talk. If this is the “angelic tongue,” one begins to suspect it is less a higher form of communication than the eternal repetition of the same lines delivered with slightly different inflection.

Additionally, one must ask: does the language of angels evolve? Human languages change constantly. New technologies require new vocabulary, cultures borrow and blend words, and communities invent slang to distinguish insiders from outsiders. Linguistics, a vast field of study far beyond the grasp of this author, devotes entire subdisciplines to tracking how languages shift over time.

But what of angels? If they were created before the universe and have been conversing for 13.787 billion years, has their speech undergone change? Or did Yahweh simply hand them a perfect language at creation, one so flawless that no alteration was ever necessary? If so, their speech would remain absolutely fixed: unchanging from eternity to eternity. In that case, the “tongues of angels” heard two thousand years ago should sound identical to those proclaimed in Pentecostal meetings today. Given that, it ought to be possible to record and catalogue the sounds, compare them over centuries, and finally deduce a reliable “angelic lexicon.” And yet, after generations of babble, no dictionary of angel-speech has emerged.

Then there is the question of accent. Do different angels pronounce the same divine words with regional inflections? Would Michael sound like a solemn Oxford don while Gabriel speaks with a Neapolitan lilt? Humans can barely keep straight the differences between Russian and Ukrainian pronunciation: разведка as rawz-vyed-ka in Russia versus rose-veed-ka in Ukraine. If even angels have accents, one wonders whether heaven is plagued by the same quarrels over pronunciation that divide mortals on earth.

Yet the babble in Pentecostal and charismatic churches shows none of the constancy one would expect of a divine or “angelic” language. It varies not only across time but also from place to place. Visit two such congregations in different parts of the world and the “tongues” you hear will generally reflect the sounds and rhythms of the local language, not some transcendent heavenly speech.

Phonemes that exist in one linguistic tradition rarely appear in another. The guttural kh and trilled gh common in Arabic glossolalia are absent from North American services, just as the German ch (that throaty, stressed h) seldom makes an appearance outside Europe. Apparently, the Spirit of Yahweh distributes not only gifts but also regional accents, carefully attuned to the mother tongue of each believer. If these really are the tongues of angels, then heaven must be divided into dialect zones.

Science, at its core, is the study of the world around us, and over time it tends to converge. New ideas are tested: some are accepted, others are discarded, and many that were once taken as truth eventually find themselves shelved in the history of science. If Pentecostal glossolalia were truly the “tongues of angels,” one would expect a similar convergence rather than endless divergence. Speakers might begin with different intonations, inflections, or vowel sounds, but over decades of hearing and repeating, they should gravitate toward a stable, recognizable language. At that point, one could record, transcribe, and study this angelic tongue with the same rigor applied to any other linguistic system.

Instead, what we find is fragmentation. The babble in North America differs markedly from that in Asia. Speakers of tonal languages inject tonal qualities into their utterances, while Westerners rarely do so. This raises obvious questions: do angelic languages use tone? If so, why stop at four or five, as in Mandarin or Thai? Why not twenty? With five tones, one hundred consonants, and thirty vowels, a simple system of consonant–vowel–consonant, vowel–consonant, and consonant–vowel syllables could generate some fifteen million distinct monosyllabic words. Perhaps that is the true “tongue of angels”: a perfectly compact, monosyllabic code, so subtle that humans simply cannot discern the differences.

Yet this explanation collapses under scrutiny. The glossolalia recorded today does not match that of fifty years ago, nor does it match across cultures. Are we to believe that angels themselves have changed their language more rapidly than teenagers invent slang? That heaven is a Babel of dialects, with rapid shifts in angelic fashion every few decades? Or that Gabriel now needs a pocket dictionary to keep track of Michael’s latest neologisms? If there is a serious theological response to these questions, it is not one I have encountered—though I would be curious to see the peer-reviewed paper that finally explains how angelic phonology keeps pace with Pentecostal fashion.

Linguists such as Noam Chomsky have proposed the existence of a “universal grammar” embedded in the human mind, shaping how all human languages form. If glossolalia were truly the “tongue of angels,” one would expect it to transcend these constraints: producing sounds beyond the human inventory, perhaps notes outside the range of ordinary vocalization, or phonemes impossible for mortals. Yet every instance fits comfortably within the phonological rules of the speaker’s native language. A North American will never suddenly produce the Arabic gh or the Khoisan click consonants. Angels, it seems, are careful to respect not only denominational boundaries but also the International Phonetic Alphabet. Apparently, Yahweh stretched forth the heavens, but could not quite stretch the phoneme set past what you can learn in a first-year linguistics course.

A language, however, is not merely sounds: it requires grammar. Even the most basic pidgin develops some form of word order, tense marking, or structure to convey meaning. If angelic tongues were genuine, we might expect traces of syntax: recurring word orders, consistent inflections, perhaps even a celestial subjunctive. But linguistic analyses reveal no such patterns. The syllables do not repeat in predictable ways, nor do they align into clauses. Are we to suppose that angels, after billions of years of practice, never progressed beyond the babble of toddlers? If the citizens of heaven communicate like this, then the kingdom of God may sound more like a nursery than a choir.

Then there is the question of meaning. Languages exist to communicate, but glossolalia is strikingly silent on specifics. The same syllables, when “interpreted,” may be translated as “God loves you” one day and “repent now” the next. Rarely does it produce testable statements, such as the number of stars in the Andromeda Galaxy, or even something modest like tomorrow’s lottery numbers. If angels truly converse this way, one wonders how they coordinate anything at all. Michael mutters three syllables, Gabriel squints, and asks: “Was that ‘prepare for battle’ or ‘pass the salt’?”

Historical linguistics allows us to trace languages back to their ancestors by following systematic changes: Latin produced French, Spanish, and Italian; Proto-Indo-European left descendants from Sanskrit to English. If angelic speech were authentic, then two millennia of glossolalia should by now have produced a wealth of material for comparison. One ought to be able to reconstruct a Proto-Angelic language, complete with sound shifts and cognates. Instead, no such family tree exists. There are no angelic cognates, no consistent vocabulary, no comparative method to apply. The entire exercise resists classification: suggesting that either heaven stubbornly defies linguistics, or there is, quite simply, nothing there to classify.

Modern neuroscience has brought the matter under the scanner, and literally. Functional MRI studies show distinct patterns in the brain when humans produce meaningful language compared to when they produce glossolalia. Meaningful language engages regions responsible for grammar and semantics; glossolalia lights up emotional and motor circuits, more akin to humming or tapping your foot in excitement. In other words, “speaking in tongues” looks neurologically less like communication and more like musical improvisation. If this is the language of angels, then heaven must be less a council of divine beings and more a cosmic jazz club.

Finally, we must address translation. Egyptian hieroglyphics remained a mystery until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, which provided parallel texts in Greek and Demotic. Pentecostals have had thousands of hours of recorded glossolalia, yet no “heavenly Rosetta Stone” has ever appeared. No grammar books, no dictionaries, no bilingual speakers. The “interpretations” offered are always vague encouragements (“rejoice,” “repent,” “believe”) never anything verifiable, like “the square root of 23 is 4.79583.” The tongues of angels, it seems, provide endless edification but never a scrap of testable data. For a supposedly divine language, it is remarkably resistant to even the most basic scientific validation.

As a final humorous aside before returning to the scriptures themselves, there is exactly one place where the voice of Yahweh is explicitly describe: in Job 37:2-5:

Listen, listen to the thunder of his voice
and the rumbling that comes from his mouth.
Under the whole heaven he lets it loose,
and his lightning to the corners of the earth.
After it his voice roars;
he thunders with his majestic voice,
and he does not restrain the lightnings[a] when his voice is heard.
God thunders wondrously with his voice;
he does great things that we cannot comprehend.

It is striking that, despite all the alleged “tongues” spoken in Pentecostal and charismatic churches, one never hears anyone attempt to reproduce this voice. There are no roaring thunderstorms, no lightning strikes punctuating syllables, no majestic rumbling that shakes the walls. The “tongues of angels,” it seems, are far less dramatic than the description Yahweh himself receives in Job.

With that noted, we may turn from modern babble to its portrayal in the Christian scriptures. Two accounts stand out: the story of Pentecost in the book of Acts, and Paul’s reflections in his first letter to the Corinthians. The contrast between these two perspectives is illuminating, for they present strikingly different understandings of what “speaking in tongues” entails.

A contrast: the author of Luke and Acts versus Paul

We now turn to two very different portrayals of speaking in tongues within the New Testament. The first appears in the book of Acts, written well over half a century after the execution of Jesus by the same author who composed the gospel of Luke. The second appears in 1 Corinthians, a letter written by Paul only two decades after Jesus’ death, three full decades before the author of Luke, Acts ever set quill to parchment. The distance in time, context, and purpose between these two works produces strikingly different perspectives.

Before comparing their accounts, it is worth considering the aims of each author. The writer of Luke–Acts presents himself as a historian, crafting a narrative of Jesus’ life and the beginnings of the Christian movement. His two-volume work is polished, orderly, and written with an eye toward persuading not only believers but also potential converts and the wider Greco-Roman world. Unsurprisingly, he depicts the earliest followers of Jesus in an idealized light: unified, Spirit-filled, and harmonious. His story of Pentecost is not just a memory but also an apologetic, designed to demonstrate divine legitimacy and universal appeal.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, by contrast, is not a carefully constructed historical account but a pastoral intervention into a messy situation. Written in the early 50s CE, it is among the earliest surviving Christian documents. The Corinthian congregation, by Paul’s own testimony, was fractious and undisciplined: divided by cliques, prone to boasting, and eager for spiritual one-upmanship. In this context, speaking in tongues was not the miraculous proclamation of a universal gospel, as Luke describes it, but rather an unruly outburst threatening to drown the congregation in meaningless noise. Paul’s tone is corrective, even exasperated, as he attempts to rein in the excesses of a community that had gone, as one might put it, “tongue-crazy.”

Speaking in tongues in Acts

In Acts, written by the same author as who wrote Luke, the author go into details about speaking in tongues:

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.

Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?

Parthians,
Medes,
Elamites, and
residents of Mesopotamia,
Judea and
Cappadocia,
Pontus and
Asia,
Phrygia and
Pamphylia,
Egypt and
the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and
visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes,
Cretans and
Arabs—

in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”

But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

Given that Jesus was called a drunkard, it is not unlikely that those followers, too, were potentially inebriated. However, this is the clearest indication of what it means to be speaking in tongues, at least according to the author of Luke and Acts: you are speaking in another human language that you apparently do not know, and yet, you can speak it such that native speakers can understand it. The purpose is also clear: to transmit the message of the gospel. Please review this video, and ask yourself if there is any human on the face of the planet that can understand this rubbish? Indeed, it would be humorous to have two individuals who claim to understand this rubbish to actually come up with the same translation into a human language.

Later in Acts, again, it refers to speaking in tongues, but now whether or not this is another language or babble is less clear:

While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.

Speaking in tongues is referred to one more time: when it is time to demonstrate that disciples of John the Baptist were being converted to disciples of Jesus. Again, one of the difficulties with the early followers of Jesus was that if John the Baptist was indeed the herald of Jesus, why were there still disciples of John the Baptist decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus? Each of the gospels attempts to resolve this by either clearly subordinating John the Baptist to Jesus:

The author of Matthew has John the Baptist refuse to baptize Jesus,
The author of Luke has John the Baptist a reasonably close relative of Jesus, with visitations from angels announcing the births of John the Baptist and Jesus to Zechariah and Mary, respectively.
The author of John has Andrew (and likely Simon, as well as possibly Philip and Nathanael) being a disciple of John, and explicitly becoming a follower of Jues the day after Jesus's baptism.

The author of Luke and Acts, however also includes another story about how Paul was able to convince followers of John to follow Jesus; however, as always, when someone has something prophetic to say like Simeon at the Temple at Jesus's presentation, the authors are able to record verbatim what was said, but what actually convinced the followers of John the Baptist, apart from one rather basic unsubstantiated claim, is left out:

Paul passed through the interior regions and came to Ephesus, where he found some disciples [of John the Baptist].

He said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?”

They replied, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”

Then he said, “Into what, then, were you baptized?”

They answered, “Into John’s baptism.”

Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus.”

On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied, altogether there were about twelve of them.

The emphasis here is that these were disciples of John the Baptist, and although John the Baptist was a close relative of Jesus, and John the Baptist was explicitly told that by Yahweh that he would recognize Jesus as who he was because the Spirit of Yahweh would come down upon him during his baptism, and he then later that day declared that Jesus was the “Chosen One”, that John the Baptist was explicitly told about the Spirit of Yahweh, and that after talking to Andrew, his disciple, Andrew became a disciple of Jesus, instead, but never-the-less, so many other disciples had never heard of the Spirit of Yahweh, but then they become followers of Jesus and immediately they start speaking in tongues, the sign of a gift of the Spirit of Yahweh, and thus an indication that they are indeed true believers in and followers of Jesus. However, as with the second reference in Acts, it does not indicate whether or not this is speaking in a human or an "angelic" language.

Thus, while the book of Acts clearly begins by describes the speaking in tongues as speaking in a human languages that were originally unknown to the speaker, and if this was the only and true history of the early followers of Jesus, then one would have to assume that followers of Jesus miraculously were able to speak second and third languages; just like all the humans who were building the Tower of Babel were speaking the same language one minute, and then the next, they were speaking a completely different language the next. The contrast, however, is that while those at the Tower of Babel had forgotten their original language and were no longer able to communicate with others who were given different languages, in theory, at least, those early Aramaic speaking followers of Jesus, now able to speak in:

the Iranian Parthian language,
the Iranian Median language,
a variant of Aramaic spoken in Elymais,
however, the lingua franca of the residents of Mesopotamia was also Aramaic, so no need for speaking in tongues,
similarly, the langue of Judea was also Aramaic, so again, no need for speaking in tongues,
the Hellenic Koine Greek language,
the Armenian language,
one or more of many other languages spoken in Anatolia,
possibly a Phrygian dialect of Greek,
possibly a Pamphylian dialect of Greek,
the Egyptian Coptic language,
possibly a Therian dialect of Greek spoken in Cyrene,
the Italic Latin language,
possibly a Cretan dialect of Greek, and
the Semitic Arabian language.

The author of Acts does not appear to realize that many of these people would almost certainly have spoken Koine Greek, but it seems that not only were the followers of Jesus able to speak Koine Greek, but they were able to master the various dialects. Why the author mentions a language that was extinct at the time, the Elamite language, is beyond me.

Speaking in tongues by Paul

Paul rescues the Pentecostal's babbling later in 1 Corinthians, but he starts be subordinating speaking in tongues to prophesizing. He begins by emphasizing prophesy, but then proceeds to contrast prophesy and speaking in tongues:

Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts and especially that you may prophesy.

For those who speak in a tongue do not speak to other people but to God, for no one understands them, since they are speaking mysteries in the Spirit.

But those who prophesy speak to other people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.

Those who speak in a tongue build up themselves, but

those who prophesy build up the church.

Here Paul seems to discuss the babble that comes from most who speak in tongues: they are speaking to Yahweh, not to other humans. Thus, this is a language known only to Yahweh. Paul continues to contrast speaking in tongues and prophesy:

Now I would like all of you to speak in tongues but even more to prophesy.

One who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up.

Paul next explains how speaking in tongues is useless (of no benefit) unless it includes some tangible benefit:

Now, brothers and sisters, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how will I benefit you unless I speak to you in some

revelation or
knowledge or
prophecy or
teaching?

Without these benefits, Paul contrasts speaking in tongues with lifeless instruments:

It is the same way with lifeless instruments that produce sound, such as the flute or the harp. If they do not give distinct notes, how will what is being played on the flute or harp be recognized?

And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle?

He continues:

So with yourselves: If in a tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is being said? For you will be speaking into the air.

There are doubtless many different kinds of sounds in the world, and nothing is without sound.

If then I do not know the meaning of a sound, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me.

So with yourselves: since you are striving after spiritual gifts, seek to excel in them for building up the church.

This is like the video: the pastor speaks in a tongue no one can understand: who does this benefit? The pastor might as well speak Polabian. However, Paul offers a solution:

Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray for the power to interpret.

So, if you are speaking in a tongue you don't understand, pray that you can interpret it, or that someone else can interpret it...

Next, Paul explains the difference between praying and praying in a tongue: he indicates that your mind is doing nothing, but then offers a solution:

For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unproductive.

What should I do then?

I will pray with the spirit, but I will pray with the mind also; I will sing praise with the spirit, but I will sing praise with the mind also.

Otherwise, if you say a blessing with the spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say the “Amen” to your thanksgiving, since the outsider does not know what you are saying? For you may give thanks well enough, but the other person is not built up.

Paul is belaboring the point that speaking in tongues by itself does not benefit the congregation.

Now Paul brags about how he can speak in tongues, too, and he sees the value, or the lack thereof, of this practice:

I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you; nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind, in order to instruct others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue.

This is a ratio of one to two thousand. Recall that of the gifts, Paul put speaking in tongues almost at the very bottom, and this only reemphasizes that point: its almost as if he knows that it is make-believe, for if a worshipper was actually speaking in, say, Uzbek or Tongan. I would be greatly impressed if anyone who did not know either of these languages could step up in front of a church and begin speaking in such a language, and it would be preferable if the person speaking Uzbek, but preferably in the dialect spoken in Mazar-i-Sharif.

However, here Paul also essentially states that it isn't actually a gift from the Spirit of Yahweh, but rather, it is a performance or an act, as Paul says “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you.” That is, he is the one who is speaking, and not the Spirit of Yahweh who is speaking through him. Additionally, Paul is explicitly equating his speaking in tongues with that of the congregation: he isn't able to speak in foreign languages, all he can do is what the congregation does: babble. One wishes Paul had bragged about being able to speak Chinese or Aquitanian, a language that most speakers in the eastern Mediterranean would be completely unaware of, and yet, Paul, being able to speak in those tongues, would have known the names of those languages, too. But no, Paul simply is boasting that he can babble better than the best babblers in Corinth.

The next sets up the context of quieting those who are speaking tongues at the worship services:

Brothers and sisters,

do not be children in your thinking;

rather, be infants in evil,

but in thinking be adults.

In the law it is written,

“By people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, yet even then they will not listen to me,” says the Lord.

When trying to admonish those disrupting a worship service, it is aways good to refer to an ancient text. This is a reference to a verse in Isaiah:

Truly, with stammering lip and with another tongue
he will speak to this people, to whom he has said,

“This is rest; give rest to the weary, and this is repose,”

yet they would not hear.

Paul next contrasts speaking in tongues and prophesy, and it seems that speaking in tongues is explicitly meant to be a sign to unbelievers, while prophesies are for believers, again, emphasizing the relative value of the two gifts of the Spirit of Yahweh:

Tongues, then, are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers,

while prophecy is not for unbelievers but for believers.

Paul now raises a completely valid point:

If, therefore, the entire church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your mind?

This parallels the statement made in the book of Acts:

But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

This demonstrates, in a sense, that even Paul thinks that this is all make-believe acting, for if the Spirit of Yahweh was actually entering into the entire congregation, and having them all speak in tongues, would that not be the will of Yahweh? After all, to be able to speak in the tongue of an angel, would that not be a miracle, and would not the world be amazed if the entire congregation was speaking such a language? However, Paul does not acknowledge such a possibility and recognizes speaking in tongues exactly what it is: people in the congregation putting on a performance and seeking attention.

This is awkward, however, for just above, Paul says that "prophecy is not for unbelievers but for believers", but this next statement says if the entire congregation prophesy, reprove the unbeliever and call the unbeliever to account, then that person will possibly become a believer, too:

But if all prophesy, an unbeliever or outsider who enters is reproved by all and called to account by all. After the secrets of the unbeliever’s heart are disclosed, that person will bow down before God and worship, declaring, “God is really among you.”

Next, Paul gives instructions for how to engage in worship:

What should be done then, my brothers and sisters?

When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation.

Let all things be done for building up.

Next, Paul instructs how to integrate speaking at tongues into a worship service:

If anyone speaks in a tongue,

let there be only two or at most three and each in turn, and let one interpret.

Thus, Paul says that the worshipers should speak separately, and thus advising against the entire congregation speaking in tongues simultaneously. This is one of the many issue that Paul was addressing with his congregation in Corinth in this letter.

Paul also offers a solution to prevent those who would want to show off their skills at speaking gibberish, and that is to simply have no one else in the congregation offer to interpret:

But if there is no one to interpret,

let them be silent in church and speak to themselves and to God.

The balance has to do with prophesy, which is not the topic of this essay:

Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said.

If someone sitting receives a revelation,

let the first person be silent.

For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged (and the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets, for God is a God not of disorder but of peace), as in all the churches of the saints.

It seems that the congregation at Corinth was filled with lots of individuals who were primarily interested in filling up the halls with their voice speaking in tongues, and Paul is seeking to quiet these individuals without discrediting the entire practice of speaking in tongues; instead, he relegates speaking in tongues to among the least of the gifts of the Spirit of Yahweh, and then gives strict instructions for how speaking in tongues should be done, and even allows one who is receiving a revelation or prophesy to preempt one who is speaking in a tongue.

In summary, the author of Luke and Acts has a very different take on speaking in tongues, where that author explicitly describes speaking in tongues as speaking other languages, and specifically, languages that the listener knows, not just some random language. That author makes no reference to the babble that is heard today in Pentecostal churches nor does the author refer to angelic languages being spoken by believers: when a believer speaks in a tongue, it is to witness to one who does not speak the same language as the believer. Paul, on the other hand, is dealing with an unruly congregation in Corinth, where it seems that the entire community, or a large part thereof, are all speaking in tongues simultaneously, and Paul observes what everyone else would observe: if the entire church comes together and all speak in tongues, outsiders will say that you are out of your mind? There is no suggestion that anyone in the congregation is speaking in any intelligible human language, and is simply an earlier version of the babbling that is seen today.

The science

This is nicely summarized on the Wikipedia page, but it should be obvious: each speaker generally only uses syllables that appear in the person's own language. If this were some sort of angelic language, one would think that all persons speaking it would be, through the gift of the Spirit of Yahweh, be able to make sounds they've never heard before.

Linguistic research has examined glossolalia (the practice commonly known as “speaking in tongues”) for more than a century. The findings are consistent and clear. When people engage in this practice, they use only the sounds and syllable patterns already present in their own native languages. They do not produce unfamiliar phonemes beyond their linguistic background. Classic fieldwork by William Samarin, and subsequent phonetic studies, demonstrated that the inventories of glossolalia mirror the speaker’s home language and remain bounded by it. In other words, the “tongues of angels” do not transcend human phonetics; they simply recycle what speakers already know.

Equally important, glossolalia shows no evidence of vocabulary or grammar. Samarin, after collecting a large corpus across cultures, concluded that it is “phonologically structured” performance without words, syntax, or semantic mapping: a façade of language rather than language itself. Later reviews have reaffirmed this judgment. If glossolalia were a stable, heavenly tongue, one might expect recurring words or recognizable structure to emerge over time. None has ever been found.

Neurological studies reinforce these conclusions. A widely cited functional imaging study reported that glossolalia involves altered activity in frontal and parietal regions of the brain, consistent with reduced voluntary control and heightened emotional arousal, rather than with the neural networks used for grammar and propositional speech. Popular summaries at the time highlighted the same finding: decreased activity in language-planning areas during glossolalia. In other words, the brain treats it less like structured language and more like excited vocalization.

Anthropological comparisons place glossolalia in a broader human context. Felicitas Goodman documented parallel practices of ecstatic vocalization in a wide range of religious traditions. Contemporary social-scientific research similarly treats glossolalia as ritualized behavior: a means of amplifying emotion, reinforcing group solidarity, and producing the experience of transcendence; not a method of transmitting divine information.

Taken together, the evidence points in one direction. Glossolalia does not introduce new sounds, develop a vocabulary, or follow grammatical rules. The brain patterns associated with it align with emotion and motor control, not language. Comparable behaviors are found in other cultures and religions. If a universal “angelic language” existed, it would have left behind recurring words, recognizable structures, or a shared lexicon across centuries of practice. Instead, what remains is a powerful human experience: emotionally intense, socially binding, but not a language in any scientific sense.

Babble

Is it fair to call speaking in tongues “babble”? The word itself is wonderfully apt. It parallels the Hebrew root b-b-l (בבל) or b-v-l (בָּבֶל), which means confusion. This is, of course, the word used in the familiar story of the Tower of Babel, where Yahweh deliberately scrambled the languages of humanity. It is also the name applied to Babylon, that perennial symbol of corruption, though the original Akkadian Babilim meant “gate of the gods.” Compare this with Bab Elohim (where bab still means “gate” in Arabic, and Elohim is the plural of El) and the irony becomes delicious: what once meant “gate of the gods” is twisted in Hebrew into “confusion.”

Returning to English, the verb to babble is defined as:

talk rapidly and continuously in a foolish, excited, or incomprehensible way.

One might even say the dictionary has already done our work for us. In the context of this discussion, we will politely restrict ourselves to the more charitable sense: “to talk rapidly and continuously in an excited way.” Still, one cannot help noticing how well both definitions apply when listening to a congregation swept away in “tongues.”

Origins

Christianity, of course, is derived from Judaism; yet any notion of “speaking in tongues” is entirely absent from Jewish tradition. Where, then, did it come from? To answer that, it is useful to remember that none of the gospels were written in Aramaic, the language Jesus himself spoke. Every one of them was written in Greek, for the simple reason that the earliest Christian communities arose in Greek cities.

Among those Greek followers of Judean worship there were, broadly, two categories. The first were the fully converted proselytes, who went all the way: including circumcision. The second were the so-called “God-fearers,” who admired the Jewish God and participated in synagogue life but stopped short of the ultimate requirement (for obvious reasons). Along came the followers of Jesus, offering what must have seemed the perfect compromise: all the spirituality and historical depth of Judaism, but without the final surgical hurdle. And to sweeten the deal, one could even eat bacon and shrimp. Little wonder that this new movement began to flourish. Nothing fills pews (or offering plates) like a faith that promises ancient tradition without dietary laws and without sharp objects.

It is in this Greek-speaking world that the gospels were composed, decades after Jesus’ execution. The earliest, Mark, appeared some forty years after the fact. Luke and Acts came later still. The stories told in Acts may well have been crafted to anchor the expanding Greek church back into the authority of the original Judean disciples: either to claim that their ecstatic practices originated in Jerusalem itself, or at least to supply a dramatic miracle story that gave legitimacy to their customs. After all, a religion that begins with a crucified peasant preacher from Galilee needed to demonstrate continuity with the older, weightier tradition of Moses and the prophets.

It was not, then, Aramaic-speaking villagers following an Aramaic-speaking rabbi who first propagated glossolalia. Rather, it was Paul and his Greek-speaking congregations who spread it. Earlier pagan cults were already familiar with ecstatic speech and ritual frenzy, and it would take little for such practices to slip into Christian communities. Perhaps a single early convert introduced the behavior into worship, and from there it spread like wildfire. By the time Paul was writing to Corinth (barely twenty years after Jesus’s death) he was already trying to regulate a congregation that had gone wild with it. And by his own account, Paul did not speak in foreign languages at Pentecost but engaged in the same unstructured babble that continues today.

Apologies

The kind of babble associated with speaking in tongues today was quickly sidelined from the mainstream of Christianity. Most theological apologies explain its absence by arguing that the gift of tongues was a temporary endowment of the Spirit of Yahweh, no longer needed after the earliest days of the church. Indeed, by most accounts, the last time anyone demonstrably spoke a language unknown to the speaker was at Pentecost itself.

Throughout history, Christian thinkers have sought to justify this decline. One example comes from Thomas Aquinas, who addressed the fact that no one in his day could miraculously speak foreign languages. His explanation was simple: “No one speaks in the tongues of all nations, because the Church herself already speaks the languages of all nations.” In other words, the miraculous gift had been rendered unnecessary, conveniently replaced by the global spread of the institutional church.

It is, of course, wonderfully convenient. Back then, everyone spoke in tongues, but now, just when evidence could actually be gathered, recordings made, and analyses performed, the gift has vanished. The one miracle most open to scientific examination has been quietly retired into the realm of “historical events.” One might almost admire the timing: tongues appeared only when no one could double-check them, and disappeared precisely when someone could.

And yet, Paul himself had already written, “as for tongues, they will cease.” Perhaps this is the only accurate prophecy that glossolalia ever fulfilled.