Philip E Blosser

In three carefully researched volumes, this ground-breaking study examines the gift of tongues through two thousand years of church history. Starting in the present and working back in time, these volumes consider (1) the modern redefinition of ""tongues"" as a private prayer language; (2) the church's perennial understanding of ""tongues"" as ordinary human languages; and (3) the Corinthian ""tongues,"" which, in light of Jewish liturgical tradition, turn out to have been a Semitic liturgical language requiring bilingual interpreters. This second volume tracks the perception and practice of tongues back through the first eighteen hundred years of church history, demonstrating that ""tongue-speaking"" was always active but puzzlingly different from today's glossolalia. From Pope Benedict XIV's detailed treatise in the 1700s, it works back through long-forgotten scholastic and patristic debates to the earliest Christian writers such as Irenaeus. No other resource on the subject approaches the depth and scope of the present volume.

In three carefully researched volumes, this ground-breaking study examines the gift of tongues through two thousand years of church history. Starting in the present and working back in time, these volumes consider (1) the modern redefinition of "tongues" as a private prayer language; (2) the church's perennial understanding of "tongues" as ordinary human languages; and (3) the Corinthian "tongues," which, in light of Jewish liturgical tradition, turn out to have been a Semitic liturgical language requiring bilingual interpreters. This second volume tracks the perception and practice of tongues back through the first eighteen hundred years of church history, demonstrating that "tongue-speaking" was always active but puzzlingly different from today's glossolalia. From Pope Benedict XIV's detailed treatise in the 1700s, it works back through long-forgotten scholastic and patristic debates to the earliest Christian writers such as Irenaeus. No other resource on the subject approaches the depth and scope of the present volume.

In three carefully researched volumes, this ground-breaking study examines the gift of tongues through 2,000 years of church history. Starting in the present and working back in time, these volumes consider (1) the modern redefinition of tongues as a private prayer language; (2) the church's perennial understanding of tongues as ordinary human languages; and (3) the Corinthian tongues, which, in light of Jewish liturgical tradition, turn out to have been a foreign liturgical language (Hebrew or Aramaic) requiring bilingual interpreters. In the first volume, the authors establish that modern glossolalia, far from being a supernatural gift enjoyed by certain believers since the time of Pentecost and undergoing a resurgence in modern times, has no precedent in church life prior to the nineteenth century. They discuss why German theologians, responding to the Irvingite revival, coined the term glossolalia in the 1830s; why Pentecostals between 1906-8 quietly began redefining tongues to mean a heavenly language unintelligible to human beings but pleasing to God, instead of foreign languages useful for evangelism; why Protestant cessationists believed miraculous tongues had ceased; and why interpolated idioms like unknown tongues in Protestant Bibles were aimed originally at Rome's use of Latin.

In three carefully researched volumes, this ground-breaking study examines the gift of tongues through 2,000 years of church history. Starting in the present and working back in time, these volumes consider (1) the modern redefinition of tongues as a private prayer language; (2) the church's perennial understanding of tongues as ordinary human languages; and (3) the Corinthian tongues, which, in light of Jewish liturgical tradition, turn out to have been a foreign liturgical language (Hebrew or Aramaic) requiring bilingual interpreters. In the first volume, the authors establish that modern glossolalia, far from being a supernatural gift enjoyed by certain believers since the time of Pentecost and undergoing a resurgence in modern times, has no precedent in church life prior to the nineteenth century. They discuss why German theologians, responding to the Irvingite revival, coined the term glossolalia in the 1830s; why Pentecostals between 1906-8 quietly began redefining tongues to mean a heavenly language unintelligible to human beings but pleasing to God, instead of foreign languages useful for evangelism; why Protestant cessationists believed miraculous tongues had ceased; and why interpolated idioms like unknown tongues in Protestant Bibles were aimed originally at Rome's use of Latin.