The Event of Pentecost (2:1–13)

This passage focuses on the fulfillment of the promise of empowerment to speak God’s message. In the larger context of Luke’s work, Jesus’s followers are empowered for mission toward the beginning of Acts just as Jesus was toward the beginning of Luke’s Gospel. Given Luke’s emphasis on the Gentile mission, this is cross-cultural empowerment (Acts 1:8), proleptically foreshadowed by the Spirit-empowered disciples speaking other languages (2:4) and by the Jewish hearers from many nations (2:5–13). The Spirit leads to proclamation (2:14–40), and the ideal end result of this Spirit-empowered mission is a community living out the ideals of the kingdom (2:41–47).

Here I focus especially on the empowerment of the Spirit, which, like the multicultural mission, was introduced in Acts 1:8 (and Luke 24:47, 49). I will also touch on the multicultural emphasis of this passage briefly at Acts 2:4 and more fully at Acts 2:5–13, and focus more on this chapter’s prophetic dimension at Acts 2:17–18. (For the temporal relationship of this empowerment vis-à-vis conversion, see the discussions at Acts 1:4–5; 2:38–39; and 8:14–17 and some of the discussion of the Spirit in the introduction, , .)

This passage focuses on the fulfillment of the promise of empowerment to speak God’s message. Although 1:8 explicitly associates the empowerment for proclaiming God’s message only with the apostles, this passage demonstrates that the empowerment is provided for all Jesus’s followers (see esp. 2:38–39 and comment there). This empowerment is to speak God’s own message (like prophets of old, 2:17–18) across cultural boundaries (2:4–11) and hence ultimately to form the church across such boundaries (as the struggle to embrace the Gentile mission in the rest of Acts emphasizes and as 2:5–11 foreshadows).

This coming of the Spirit is therefore especially “prophetic” empowerment (explicit in 2:17–18); Scripture often and ancient Judaism even more regularly (though neither exclusively) associate God’s Spirit with prophecy and other mighty works often done via prophets (see the excursus at Acts 2:17). This empowerment also proleptically fulfills end-time promises (wind, 2:2; fire, 2:3; the Spirit; “the last days,” 2:17; cf. 1:6–11). Eschatological and following Jesus’s exaltation, this empowerment attests Jesus as the risen one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit (Luke 3:16) and hence as God’s own vizier, the promised Messiah, Israel’s rightful Lord (Acts 2:36). All those who turn to Christ receive the same gift of the Holy Spirit (2:38–39) and consequently can participate in the life of the ideal community (2:41–47), a community that will carry on the same lifestyle that characterized Jesus and his early followers (sacrificial lifestyles; common meals; signs and wonders; and the word spreading everywhere).

In contrast with some approaches that treat Luke’s interests as merely historically descriptive (or, worse yet, merely novelistically entertaining; see introduction, ), Luke is presumably interested in calling the church of his own day to depend on the same empowerment of the Spirit that he reports. Because he associates the Spirit with signs, witness, and church growth, it seems unlikely that he conceives of the Spirit’s coming as simply a theoretical theological designation with no expectation of experiential effects in the life of the church. Because Luke believes that the outpouring of the Spirit yields an eschatological empowerment (2:17), it is hardly plausible that he would relegate this eschatological experience only to the past. He presumably believes that it is available for those who seek to experience God’s gift, like his characters who sought the outpouring of the Spirit in prayer and faith (1:14; 4:31; cf. 8:15; 9:11–12, 17; 10:4; 13:2–4; Luke 11:13) and/or received this experience through the mediation of those who were known to be strong in it (Acts 8:17; 9:17; 19:6). Why else would he emphasize this point so often?

Luke presents the outpouring of the Spirit as the direct result of the ascension (2:33), the proof that Jesus is the one authorized to pour out God’s Spirit and hence Lord and Christ (2:34–36). Here is the central theological pivot of Luke’s transition between the two volumes: as Jesus has ascended, he has sent the Spirit to his witnesses to carry on the mission (1:8–11). Whereas the initial commission focuses on selected apostolic witnesses (1:2, 8, 24; 10:41; later, cf. 9:15), the Pentecost event theologically democratizes the empowerment and commission for all believers (2:39; cf., e.g., 8:4, though such references are comparatively rare, since they are incidental to Luke’s more biographic focus on key narrative figures). Again, all these elements are factors supporting Luke’s expectation that the experience he reports is paradigmatic for and continues in his day: Jesus remains exalted as Lord and Christ; the mission remains in progress; and the promise of the empowering Spirit is for all believers past and present (2:39).

The pivotal place of Pentecost in Luke’s larger narrative structure is not difficult to discern. Just as Jesus began his public ministry only after being anointed by the Spirit (Luke 4:18; Acts 10:38), so also his followers must be empowered for their designated ministry (Acts 1:8). Jesus was anointed at his baptism while praying (Luke 3:21–22); he announces that he will “baptize” his followers with the Spirit in a manner analogous to water baptism (Luke 3:16; Acts 1:4–5; 11:15–16), an event that again comes in the context of prayer (Acts 1:14). The gift of the Spirit is the promise with which the Gospel closes (Luke 24:47–49) and Acts opens (Acts 1:4–8), and the final element of the Gospel’s conclusion (Luke 24:53) is continued in the final element of the Pentecost narrative proper (Acts 2:46–47). Jesus’s public ministry opens with an Isaiah text explaining his empowerment and mission (Luke 4:18–19); his apostles’ public ministry opens with a text from Joel explaining the church’s empowerment and mission (Acts 2:17–18).

What is their mission introduced in this passage? The explicit Scripture text focuses on prophetic empowerment (2:17–18), that is, empowerment to proclaim the word of the Lord. Throughout Acts, the Spirit’s activity often includes “charismatic” phenomena characteristic of OT prophets (including the gift of prophecy proper; e.g., 11:27; 13:1); it is also attested on multiple occasions by the charismatic phenomenon of praise in languages unknown to the speaker (2:4; 10:46; 19:6). But prophecy, or inspired speech, in the most general sense is proclamation of the “word of the Lord,” which in Acts includes the inspired gospel (e.g., 8:25; 12:24; 13:49). The heart of this calling, as defined in 1:8, is “witness” to all nations; that is, all the forms of inspired speech and activity reflect or evoke the central commission of proclaiming God’s central message of salvation in Christ, the climax of God’s plan in salvation history (or, to put the matter differently, the climax of Luke’s understanding of Israel’s story). Inspired speech in other languages (2:4) offers a particularly apt illustration of the Spirit’s empowerment to cross cultural barriers in articulating this testimony, and the Diaspora Jews from a range of nations (2:5–11) prefigure the fulfillment of the mission to come. Various ideals set forth by Jesus in the Gospel (e.g., Luke 12:33) are fulfilled in the Spirit-inspired community (e.g., Acts 2:44–45).

Christian scholars in a variety of cultures and traditions seek to reapply Luke’s Pentecost interest to the church today. In terms of “reception history,” many have applied Luke’s description as a model in subsequent “revivals” in history, such as calls to apostolic poverty and sharing (some monastic movements such as the Franciscans; other critics of clerical wealth, such as Wycliffe and some of his contemporaries and successors), signs and wonders (twentieth-century Pentecostal and charismatic healing revivals; contemporary healing revivals in a number of nations; Third Wave practices), or other beliefs or practices. Contemporary readers could also emphasize that the Spirit’s empowerment is available to all believers (not just to the apostles or leaders, although Luke’s narrative as a whole does focus on extraordinary activity through particular individuals). They could further point out that the Spirit in Acts is a dramatic end-time gift to speak and live out God’s message and therefore invites Jesus’s followers to model sacrificial caring for one another, worship, and joyful sharing of their experience of Christ with others.

(see comment there) suggests that the disciples must understand the Spirit’s coming as a piece of realized eschatology—that is, that some of the end-time promise is being fulfilled in their time, before Jesus’s return. It remains to be fully consummated; because the king will come twice, the kingdom he has already established among his followers is yet to be fulfilled to the extent that all his enemies are placed beneath his feet (Luke 19:27; 20:43; Acts 2:35). But he already reigns at the Father’s right hand (2:34–35), and the realized element of his eschatology is explicit (Acts 2:17).

In view of this eschatological association, potent signs of the end time in 2:2–4 are not surprising. Some of these signs may well also recall the Sinai theophany (or theophanies in general), but both their accumulation and their interpretation in Peter’s speech (which associates the event with “the last days,” 2:17) also indicate the eschatological character of the event. The “wind” of 2:2 recalls the promised wind of Ezekiel, which would raise the dead and/or reestablish God’s people (Ezek 37:5–10). The “fire” undoubtedly prefigures the fiery end-time judgment on the wicked that John the Baptist prophesied (Luke 3:9, 16–17; cf. 17:29). Luke explains the disciples’ Spirit-inspired worship in languages they do not know (Acts 2:4) as a form of the end-time outpouring of the Spirit of prophecy (2:16–18).

Many scholars have thus recognized in Acts 2 the inbreaking of the new, messianic era for which most Palestinian Jews yearned and prayed. C. F. Sleeper, for example, remarks, “From the structure of Acts 1 and 2, it is clear that Luke understands the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost as the beginning of the age of the Spirit.” Although it is certainly true that Luke also emphasizes continuity with earlier divine activity (including salvific continuity), Acts 2, linked theologically with Jesus’s exaltation that precedes it, constitutes a turning point in the history of salvation.

The two ages appear frequently in apocalyptic literature, especially by the late first century, and also inform the Qumran literature from before the rise of the Jesus movement. Later rabbis often contrasted the present age with the age to come, often with an eschatological inversion that would exalt Israel, an image already clear in some earlier texts. The coming age would follow the resurrection of the dead; “eternal life” was thus technically the life of the coming age (Dan 12:2).

Treating Acts 2 as the opening scene of a new era allows for a parallel with the opening of Luke’s Gospel, which also announced a new stage in salvation history. Witherington points to the parallel structure (for the parallel between Jesus and the church here, see more fully the discussion above on Acts 1:4–5):

Luke 3–4

Acts 2

John promised that the coming one would baptize in the Spirit and fire (3:16)

Jesus does baptize in the Spirit (1:4–5; 2:4, 16–18, 38–39); tongues of fire (2:3)

The Spirit came at Jesus’s baptism (3:21–22)

The Spirit comes; is promised to believers at their baptism (2:38)

Jesus’s mission program from Isa 61 (Luke 4:18–19)

The church’s mission program from Joel 2 (Acts 2:17–21)

It would not be surprising if Luke (like John, who emphasizes Jewish festivals) made some connections between the festival he mentions (Acts 2:1) and the events that occurred there. Luke’s audience may have even expected this; Greek orators often lectured at festivals on the subject of the festival. But the likelihood of any particular allusions to the festival has so far eluded scholarly consensus.

Some scholars have pointed to parallels between Essene traditions about the Jewish festival of Pentecost (Shavuot) and Acts 2:1–13, parallels that, undeveloped and perhaps unnoticed by Luke, could suggest authentic Palestinian tradition. Others have drawn parallels with targumic traditions about Pentecost, which may also be relevant to the (very uncertain) degree to which our current Targumim reflect earlier traditions.

Many have suggested specific parallels to a Sinai theophany. Some of these potential parallels were available without scholars’ recourse to citing late or sectarian documents: storm, fire, and a gift from heaven appear in the biblical Sinai theophany (Exod 19:18–20). Fitzmyer thus suggests the following among verbal allusions to Exod 19–20 here: “together” (Acts 2:1; Exod 19:8), “sounds” (Acts 2:2, 6; Exod 19:16; “from heaven,” Acts 2:2, cf. Exod 20:22), and fire (Acts 2:3; Exod 19:18). Others have found additional elements of Jewish interpretations of Sinai (e.g., Philo Decal. 33–46) in the Pentecost narrative. Thus some compare the gift of the Spirit (or other features of the narrative) with the theophany and gift of Torah at Sinai, though interpreters divide over whether Luke recognized it.

Such comparisons do not depend specifically on links between Sinai and the Jewish festival of Pentecost in Jewish tradition, but a number of scholars have also suggested such links. Certainly, the book of Jubilees in the second century B.C.E. already links Pentecost with covenant renewal (Jub. 6:17). In time, this theme developed more fully into a festival commemorating the giving of the law, surely by the third century C.E. God gave the Torah in the third month (Exod 19:1); with a bit of exegetical ingenuity, Pharisees seem to have adjusted the time to correspond with the Feast of Pentecost. Later Jewish Pentecost liturgy celebrated God’s gift of Torah to Israel. Many scholars believe that Luke had this understanding of the giving of Torah, or at least of covenant renewal, in mind.

Complicating some of these connections (although, again, not necessarily Sinai allusions unrelated to the specific Jewish festival of Pentecost), scholars debate the date of the specifically law-giving connection with Pentecost. Associations with the triennial cycle of readings, in which Exod 19 was read on the festival, may have influenced this interpretation of Pentecost (though it is possible that they instead reflect it). Probably later rabbis developed this specific connection, which was then recognized by fourth-century Christians (including Jerome and Augustine) as well. Barrett points out that Qumran’s annual covenant renewal (1QS I, 8–II, 19) does not specifically mention Pentecost and that the annual renewal in Jub. 6:17 connects Pentecost’s covenant renewal more with Noah than with Moses. Given the connections between Qumran’s calendar and Jubilees, however, it seems likelier than not that Qumran’s covenant renewal period coincides with Pentecost. Yet even by itself, Jubilees is clear enough that some associated the feast with covenant renewal. Granted, that renewal is in Noah’s day; but it is not limited to Noah (Jub. 15:1–2, 11), the setting suggests more (1:1), and Jubilees portrays the patriarchs as keeping Torah in advance (at least much more than Genesis does). Thus the tradition that the law was given at Sinai may well be later than Luke and his tradition; it does, however, provide external attestation for the much earlier (pre-Christian) and probably Essene tradition relating Pentecost to covenant renewal.

Despite the probable antiquity of these traditions for covenant renewal on Pentecost in some circles, most of Second Temple Judaism probably celebrated the festival especially as “but a wheat-harvesting festival.” More important for our purposes, Luke provides few clear indications linking the day of Pentecost with Sinai, fewer than one would expect if Luke recognized and hence wished to make use of such a connection. (The elements that could evoke Sinai in Acts 2:2–4 can evoke other associations—especially eschatological ones—no less easily, even cumulatively; see comments on .) Indeed, Luke even omits obvious potential Pentecost allusions such as “firstfruits” (which Pauline churches could have applied to the three thousand initial converts; cf. Rom 16:5; 1 Cor 16:15). To Luke, the particular festival mentioned may have had no more specific significance to his narrative than the crowds and short interval between it and Passover. Luke’s source or sources may have been among the many who looked for deeper connections with Israel’s past. Thus some scholars reasonably attribute the new Sinai or other covenant renewal associations to the source rather than to Luke himself. This attribution would support our observations concerning Luke’s dependence on some prior material, discussed below.

Luke makes his theology of Pentecost clear enough, but does he depend on historical tradition? Some scholars point to Luke’s literary skill in the narrative and suggest a weaving together of oral traditions with Septuagintal, Pauline, and other sources here. But as noted earlier in this commentary, even the freest retelling of sources can still convey their information, and so Lukan characteristics do not by themselves indicate how much pre-Lukan information is or is not present.

Some scholars have expressed skepticism about the Pentecost event because it is not mentioned elsewhere, but this argument is of very limited value because “Acts is the only Christian historical narrative” that covers this early period. Even for others who knew about an initial experience of the Spirit among the disciples, the proliferation of early Christians’ other experiences of the Spirit (e.g., Acts 4:31) may have also relativized the prominence of Pentecost for some writers. Nevertheless, other early Christian writers do speak of God’s having poured out his Spirit (Rom 5:5; Titus 3:5–6) and presuppose that at some point God began to lavish his Spirit on the church in a way dramatically greater in magnitude than God’s people had experienced before (Rom 7:6; 8:2–4; 14:17; 2 Cor 3:3–18; Gal 3:2–5, 14; 4:6, 29; 5:18, 22–23; Eph 2:18–22; 3:5; 1 Pet 1:11–12; Heb 2:4; 6:4). This dramatic experience of the Spirit must have begun at some point early in the Jesus movement’s existence, however Luke or other writers may have arranged their sources to express it. The possible connections between Pentecost and covenant renewal, never developed in Acts itself, may suggest that Luke draws on a theologically fuller source or sources that he does not develop, and the Pentecost after Jesus’s passion was certainly very early in the movement’s history.

In favor of a historical event behind Acts 2, Dunn provides several points, not all of equal direct weight but which I regard as cumulatively convincing, at least in view of Luke’s approach to Acts’ genre (see our introduction, –):

1. Early Christians were pervasively and unusually charismatic (e.g., Rom 8:2–16, esp. 8:9; Heb 2:4; 1 Pet 1:12; 1 John 3:24), and most such movements start in group ecstasy or enthusiasm.

2. Despite friction, Paul acknowledged Jerusalem as the center (Rom 15:19, 25–27; Gal 2:1–2); as the founding center, it was the likeliest source for the experience that characterized all known forms of early Christianity.

3. Pentecost is a reasonable date:

a. A longer delay might have strained group cohesion too severely.

b. Pentecost was the next major pilgrim festival after the Passion Passover, and Christians adopted it (cf. Acts 20:16; 1 Cor 16:8).

c. Paul associates the Spirit with “firstfruits” (Rom 8:23), which characterized that festival.

4. Dunn finds echoes of an established Pentecost tradition:

a. The Spirit was “poured out” (Acts 2:17–18, 33; 10:45) in Rom 5:5; Titus 3:6.

b. Conversion appears as baptism in the Spirit in 1 Cor 12:13, language also familiar to us from Acts 1:5.

In favor of the Pentecost date, one may add that the church’s close association of the gift of the Spirit with believers’ conversion (e.g., Rom 8:9; Gal 3:3) and apparently Christ’s exaltation (Rom 8:11; 1 Pet 3:18), in addition to the experience’s pervasiveness in early Christianity, suggests a date shortly after Jesus’s resurrection. By themselves, these factors could suggest an experience even earlier than the one Luke mentions; but Luke himself connects the experience theologically with Christ’s exaltation and believers’ conversion (Acts 2:33, 38), so he must have strong reasons for separating the events in his narrative as much as he does.

Likewise, the widespread early Christian experience of prayer in “tongues” (cf. 1 Cor 14:18) started at some point (before the Corinthian church experienced it); Luke’s omitting mention of it on a few occasions (Acts 4:31; 8:17–18; 9:17; 13:52), despite its usefulness to his emphasis (See comment on ), might suggest that he mentions it only where he has a specific tradition that it occurred, including here. (It may have also sometimes occurred even when Luke does not mention it—as some scholars think, in 8:17–18; compare 9:17 with 1 Cor 14:18, and note that despite 1 Cor 14, Luke does not mention it in Corinth.) Some others cite the recurrence of such phenomena in periods of revivalistic intensity in subsequent eras to support their plausibility in Acts. Indeed, reports of such phenomena in revivalistic settings around the world today further reinforce the account’s plausibility. Many conclude that, whatever legendary accretions or literary embellishments the narrative may include, Acts 2 preserves a genuine tradition of ecstatic phenomena in the earliest church.

Not all arguments for prior tradition prove equally compelling. Some who are skeptical of sources elsewhere find too much Aramaic influence in Acts 2 to suppose it Luke’s own composition. Others have suggested doublets with other passages, which in turn could suggest variant sources based on earlier tradition. Some suggest that Luke weaves together various different traditions here, such as echoes of a Sinai event at Pentecost, preaching to pilgrims in Jerusalem, and a tradition about glossolalia. But while Luke’s implicit genre invites us to test historical plausibility at relevant points, where possible, and to observe some specific examples of Aramaisms, Luke has mostly composed Acts 2, like the rest of Acts, in his own style. Because we lack other accounts concerning this earliest period of the church, his theology will be easier to locate here than his sources are. (The one likeliest exception is where fertile connections with Jewish Pentecost traditions exist, which Luke fails to develop or emphasize.) But given the arguments above, it seems likely that he does have sources, perhaps oral informant(s) from during his stay in Judea (cf. 21:8, 15–18; 27:2).

The Fourth Gospel also reports an initial reception of the Spirit toward the church’s inception, but at a different time and under different circumstances. In John 20:22, Jesus breathes on the disciples at his first resurrection appearance among them as a group, telling them to receive the Spirit. This image is modeled after Gen 2:7 and presumably implies the formation of a new creation, perhaps (in Pauline terms) in the new Adam. In contrast to the Fourth Gospel’s presentation, the narrative of Acts separates the giving of the Spirit from Jesus’s resurrection temporally (though not theologically) by several weeks (Acts 1:3–5). Some scholars think that Luke and John view the same event but with differing theological emphases. Does this mean that “Pentecost” actually happened before Pentecost (i.e., Luke has invented the setting)? Or do John and Luke refer to distinct events? Or has John invented the setting to include the event before his narrative closes?

Because I believe that John takes many more symbolic theological liberties with his story than does Luke, my John commentary addresses this question somewhat more fully than does the treatment here, which rehearses some of my discussion and conclusions there. I believe that there may have been historical experiences behind both reports but that Luke is accurate about a subsequent setting for the Spirit’s empowering the church for mission. John also depicts the experience he reports as empowerment for mission (John 20:21–23), but I believe that because John ends his narrative long before Pentecost, he makes the earlier event the narrative fulfillment of his Gospel’s promises about the Spirit (even if John himself may have viewed this event as proleptic). Since Luke connected the resurrection, exaltation, and gift of the Spirit theologically (Acts 2:33), he had no reason to invent the temporal disjunction among these events.

The question whether John intends John 20:19–23 as an equivalent to Luke’s Pentecost presupposes the question whether he uses Luke’s version (or, more likely, a widespread tradition behind Luke’s version) of Pentecost. Although other early Christian writers attest the Spirit empowerment of early Christianity (e.g., Rom 5:5; Titus 3:5), they do not comment on the time at which it occurred. As already noted, early Judaism connected Pentecost with covenant renewal. Some scholars have therefore concluded that Luke connects the outpouring with specific aspects of that festival; but Luke himself does not emphasize the connection much in Acts 2. As noted, I believe that this lack of explicit connection probably suggests that the tradition of the church’s experience on its first Pentecost predates Luke. But does John know, ignore, deny, or replace this tradition?

Some scholars argue that John retains a distinction between Easter and a later Pentecost, perhaps by John 20:22 symbolically pointing forward to the historical Pentecost. Proponents of this position note that Luke and John may employ their language for “receiving the Spirit” in different manners and that both experiences are historically compatible, John’s being either a symbolic or a less substantial impartation.

Although such arguments are historically plausible, they do not settle John’s theological purpose. Some scholars argue too much in contending that because John does not describe the Spirit’s activity beginning in this passage, the disciples have not yet received the Spirit in the sense promised earlier in the Gospel. Whatever truth this contention may represent in terms of pre-Johannine tradition, suggesting that John intends to communicate a lesser impartation than the better-known Pentecost, it ignores the nature of his narrative. This passage is not the appropriate place for John to demonstrate the Spirit’s new activity but to introduce the Spirit’s coming.

Others show that John 20:19–23 fulfills specific promises of the final discourse, especially the promise of the Spirit (14:16–17, 27) and Jesus’s promise that after he went away, he would return to them (14:18–19, 22). Other allusions include the fulfillment of “peace” (14:27; 20:19, 21) and “rejoicing” (16:20–24; 20:20), and the language of rebirth or re-creation in Jesus’s breathing on them also recalls earlier Johannine pneumatological motifs (3:3, 8; 20:22). Empowerment for mission (20:21, 23) fits Jesus’s earlier promises (15:26–27; 16:7–11). The fulfillment of Johannine motifs in John 20 is nearly as clear as that between Luke 24:49 and Acts 2:4. Thus some write that this passage and Acts 2 ultimately represent the same event.

Turner presents the strongest case for distinguishing the two events, to which I here respond. First, he argues that Jesus’s glorification (a prerequisite for the Spirit’s coming, John 7:39) is not complete by 20:22 because the ascension remains future (20:17). I agree that the ascension remains future, but would argue that for the purposes of John’s theological point, Jesus was “lifted up” sufficiently on the cross for the Spirit to be “given” proleptically (and symbolically) already in 19:30. Second, Turner argues that Jesus will not be present when he provides the Spirit, since 16:7 says he will “send” the Spirit to them after his departure. I believe that this argument reads too much into the wording; Jesus “goes” at his death and returns at the resurrection (16:16–22), and so sending the Spirit in his absence would technically place the Spirit’s coming before the resurrection. Third, Turner states that the Paraclete is a substitute or replacement for Jesus’s presence (14:16–17), yet Jesus continues appearing to the disciples after 20:22 (20:26–29; 21:1). Again, I would argue that this weights the meaning of replacement too heavily; after all, the Spirit also replaces Jesus’s presence in Acts (Acts 1:8–11), but this does not preclude a very rare subsequent resurrection appearance (9:3–4). Fourth, for Turner, that the disciples remain behind locked doors in John 20:26 seems too anticlimactic to fulfill the glorious promises of John 14–16. I do believe that Turner here identifies a strand of dissonance in John’s narrative, created by the historical experience of a later Pentecost, before recounting which his narrative must end. That dissonance does not, however, negate the fact that in this short encounter (20:19–23), nearly every promise associated with the Spirit’s coming appears at least proleptically.

Some of Turner’s observations may suggest legitimate complexities or incongruities in John’s language. These in turn may suggest that John is aware of a subsequent Pentecost event and lays emphasis on an earlier event that also provided an encounter with the Spirit. On the level of Johannine theology, however, this event ties together diverse elements of the Johannine promise of the Spirit, fulfilling a function theologically analogous to Pentecost in Acts: the promised Spirit has come, so the church must live in the empowerment thus provided.

Given the connections that I believe existed among early Christian communities (see introduction, , ), I do think it likely that John knew of a story of Pentecost such as appears in Acts, whether through pre-Lukan tradition or tradition stemming from Acts. Even if John and his audience knew the tradition of Pentecost, however, John need not be directly adapting or reacting against the Pentecost tradition in his narrative. John completes his Gospel in either chapter 20 or chapter 21; if he is to narrate any fulfillment of Jesus’s Paraclete promises, which provide continuity between the missions of Jesus and his followers, he must do so here. Further, John’s theology necessitates a close connection between the passion/resurrection and the giving of the Spirit (John 7:39); indeed, he may report a proleptic “giving of the Spirit” at both Jesus’s death (19:30) and his first resurrection appearance to the gathered disciples (20:22). Even if the giving of the Spirit in the tradition behind 20:22 represents merely a symbolic or partial impartation, it must bear in John’s narrative a full theological weight equivalent to the experience Luke narrates at Pentecost.

If its Johannine literary function (in terms of its full theological weight) is in some sense symbolic, however, one need not seek a chronological harmonization with Acts 2. As Gary Burge emphasizes, Luke-Acts itself provides a similar chronological situation: because Luke must end his Gospel where he does, he describes the ascension as if it occurs on Easter (Luke 24:51) even though he will soon inform or remind his readers that it occurred only forty days afterward (Acts 1:3, 9). Likewise, “knowing his Gospel would have no sequel,” the Fourth Evangelist theologically compressed the historical “appearances, ascension, and Pentecost into Easter. Yet for him, this is not simply a matter of literary convenience. . . . John weaves these events into ‘the hour’ with explicit theological intentions.”

To summarize the comparison with John, the Johannine “Pentecost” (John 20:19–23) shares some common features with Luke’s Pentecost, but their primary relationship is their mutual affirmation that Jesus imparted or sent the Spirit shortly after his resurrection. John’s report is far less dramatic and does not occur in the era of Christ’s exaltation, but John completes his account before the promised exaltation (20:17, on the likelier interpretation) and hence presses into this event the narrative fulfillment of Christ’s promises concerning the Spirit. It is possible that historically the disciples experienced a foretaste in 20:22 that was fulfilled more dramatically on a later occasion (Luke, at least, allows for multiple fillings; e.g., Acts 2:4; 4:8, 31). But for those who must choose one account or the other and regard Luke’s as too dramatic: Luke seems more likely to report the events as he has them from his tradition than does John. John takes significant liberties with the way he reports his events, especially in several symbolic adaptations in the passion narrative, whereas Luke follows, where we can test him (especially in his use of Mark), the procedures of a good Hellenistic historian (see introduction, –, esp. –).

Yet Luke reports the Pentecost experience not merely as a matter of historical interest but because for him it set the normative pattern for the church. This is not to say that all the phenomena of Pentecost would be repeated on subsequent occasions (he never reports the wind or fire again) but to contend that, for Luke, the church’s experience was (or should be) pervasively charismatic; as Richard Hays puts it, it was to be not so much an expression of “early catholicism” as of “early pentecostalism.”

The Pentecost experience is repeated (Acts 4:31–35), including beyond Jerusalem for other groups (8:15–17; 10:44–47; 19:6), suggesting that it is paradigmatic. As Luke repeats the Cornelius story and Paul’s conversion each three times, emphasizing key turning points for the Gentile mission, he repeats glossolalia (a sign useful for Luke’s emphasis on cross-cultural speech, 1:8) three times (2:4; 10:46; 19:6). But whereas the other repetitions allude back to a key event, the repetition of this sign from the Pentecost narrative evokes that narrative through a repeated experience. Luke thus treats the Pentecost experience as paradigmatic (as in 2:38–39).

In 2:1 the believers remain united, presumably in prayer, continuing the thought of 1:14. That is, the preparation for Pentecost (1:12–2:1) is complete. The signs confirming the subsequent coming of the Spirit include wind (2:2), fire (2:3), and the miraculous ability to worship God charismatically in languages they have not learned (2:4). While these signs evoke earlier biblical theophanies, they are also eschatological in character (the last so specified in 2:17), confirming that the eschatological Spirit promised by Joel has come. The climactic sign, worship in other tongues (2:4), confirms that they have been empowered to speak God’s message across cultural and linguistic barriers (cf. 1:8). This sign is significant enough to bear repeating in some other narratives about the Spirit’s coming (10:44–46; 19:6).

The unity of Jesus’s followers here continues the thought of 1:14 (from which 1:15–26 digressed and elaborated). It also foreshadows and prepares for the fuller ideals of community realized after the Spirit’s outpouring (2:41–47).

Some scholars think that the disciples united here include only the participants from 1:13–14 (the apostles, women, and Jesus’s brothers) and not the rest of the 120 from 1:15. Jacques Dupont, for example, links “all” in 2:1 with the same term in 1:14 (where it refers to the eleven), but πᾶς is a difficult term to build a case on by itself, occurring more than twenty times in the first two chapters of Acts (and roughly 170 times total in Acts). He argues further that the title “Galileans” (2:7) restricts them to the Twelve; although this language certainly applies to the apostles (1:11; 13:31), it is likely that most or all of the 120 were also Galileans (Luke 23:49, 55; Acts 1:21–22). He further notes that Luke mentions only the other eleven at Peter’s side (Acts 2:14, 37); the Twelve speak because they are the witnesses, and the promise to the witnesses was (he argues) only to the apostles (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4–5, 8). But as argued above on Acts 1:4–5 and 1:8, the promise applies to all believers (2:39); although perhaps only the Twelve would stand to minister on Pentecost, Dupont himself admits that the women and Jesus’s brothers of 1:14 received the Spirit (hence not the Twelve alone).

The “all” of 2:1 must include the Twelve (1:13, 26; cf. 2:14), the women, and Jesus’s brothers (1:14), and presumably some others as well; the total number present some of the time rose at least to as high as 120 (1:15). Many argue that we would also have to suppose more than twelve disciples together in 2:1 who will be filled with the Spirit at 2:4; more than twelve languages are spoken (2:5–11).

The preceding context fills in the meaning of the disciples being “together” as one (2:1). The groups mentioned above were certainly devoting themselves to united prayer (1:14). The wording of 2:1 (ἐίὶ τὸ αὐτό) probably suggests a deliberate allusion to 1:15 and hence that most of that number continued to be present at this time. The expression ἐίὶ τὸ αὐτό occurs six times in Luke-Acts, most frequently in this context (Luke 17:35; Acts 1:15; 2:1, 44, 47; 4:26). The emphasis is not so much on their common location (“in one place,” e.g., GNB; JB; NASB; NEB; NIV; NKJV; NRSV; RSV; RV) as on their concerted activity or unity (e.g., Goodspeed; Moffatt; TWENTIETH CENTURY).

This phrase reinforces the “together” in ὁμοῦ (which derives its sense of “unity” from ὁμός [“one and the same, common, joint,” LSJ], as does ὁμοθυμαδόν in Acts 1:14 and 2:46). Ancient teachers emphasized public unity and concord. (Writers and speakers emphasized the need for unity for the state, for armies, for families, and so forth, and the dangers of disunity; they might also praise those who made peace.) Idealizations of some periods in Israel’s history emphasize their unity and brotherly love (Jub. 46:1; cf. perhaps Ps 133:1–3). Although festivals did not always generate unity, some Jewish traditions emphasized the unity achieved when the people of Israel gathered for their pilgrim festivals (e.g., Sipre Deut. 168.2.4). Their unity forms an inclusio around the selection of Matthias (Acts 1:15–2:1) and hence helps prepare for Pentecost. The subject of their unity was prayer and restoration of their leadership structure to prepare for empowerment and mission.

Where were the disciples meeting? The evidence seems almost evenly divided between the temple and a private home, presumably the one with the upper room. They frequently met in the temple (Luke 24:53; Acts 2:46; 5:12) but also “from house to house” (Acts 2:46). (The “entire house” in 2:2, mentioned here, might sound like neither the temple nor the upper room. People would stand, not sit, while worshiping in the temple; nevertheless, the term for “sitting” in 2:2 could refer to meetings in temple courts as easily as to the upper room.) The likeliest background also fails to settle the issue: not only in Jerusalem but throughout the Greco-Roman world, private associations, including religious associations, could meet “in an area of a public temple, in a rented hall or in a private house,” with “poorer groups” meeting in “corner cafes.”

If we favor preceding context (most important to first-time readers) over following context (available also to later readers), the allusion to the disciples’ unity together (cf. 1:15) may imply the upper room of 1:13 (in which case they may have rushed from there into the temple, still praising God; for a state that might invite such a rapid transition, See comment on ). By contrast, the narrative that follows implies that either they were in or at some point they enter the temple courts. Nowhere else in Jerusalem could they have drawn a crowd sufficient to produce three thousand converts, whereas the Temple Mount could fit about seventy-five thousand people. (A transition from upper room to temple, perhaps abbreviated out of Luke’s narration of an event, is plausible; any home large enough to host huge numbers in an upper room, 1:15, would have to have been in the upper city near the Temple Mount. Yet the street leading to the temple would undoubtedly be thronged with pilgrims, slowing entrance.)

In either case, Luke has omitted a transition that would have explained a location change. (Luke has clearly omitted details between 2:4 and 2:5, which may allow for the disciples to run a short distance and begin attracting crowds in the temple.) If it were unified, the narrative of Acts 2 would make more sense as the narration of a meeting in the temple courts; but why would Luke, given his emphasis on the church’s meeting in the temple, omit stating this explicitly? Luke has reason to emphasize both house meetings and the early Christians’ experience in the temple; perhaps he leaves the matter ambiguous for this very reason, allowing connections with both (cf. 1:13). Then again, perhaps his sources are ambiguous, or, even likelier, given the wealth of other material that must be covered here, he telescopes his material. In any case, the possible shift in location is less germane to his point than that for at least most of this scene they are now in public, presumably in the temple courts. A house with a large enough upper room to hold so many people would have been in the upper city, closer to the temple courts than the lower city was (see comment on ). See further comment on Acts 2:2.

Whatever connections with the gift of the Spirit Luke’s sources may have seen in the festival, Luke mentions Pentecost for two especially clear reasons: he thereby shows that, as Jesus had promised, the disciples did not have long to wait for the gift of the Spirit (1:5), and he explains why so many Diaspora Jews were present to recognize the languages spoken (2:5–12).

Those who wanted to attract attention for their claims or activities most naturally sought it at festivals; this suggests that Luke’s ideal audience might infer that the timing of the Spirit’s coming in this narrative is providential. For example, condemned criminals were often executed at festivals to provide optimum pedagogic and deterrent value to the crowds. The period of the Eleusinian Mysteries constituted the most crowded of Greek festivals yet afforded some recreation (Philost. Vit. Apoll. 4.17). Gentiles flocked to their festivals to enjoy contests, merchandise, and arts and crafts; a festival was a major affair that relieved the monotony of survival, a communal celebration with religious and social sanction.

Pentecost (by this period, the standard title for the Feast of Weeks in Greek texts) was one of the great pilgrimage festivals, and as such, it would have been heavily attended. Although many ancient estimates of festival attendance may be exaggerations (certainly, later rabbinic estimates were), the crowds at some modern festivals do suggest that numbers could be massive. Throughout the Mediterranean world, local festivals in prominent urban centers hosted many pious visitors as well as local citizens. Well-to-do Greeks and Romans also visited sanctuaries as tourists; given the Greek and Latin graffiti on pharaonic monuments in Egypt, it is reasonable to guess that the Jerusalem temple’s grandeur may have even drawn a few Gentile tourists, though pilgrims would constitute the vast majority of visitors. (Pliny the Elder called Jerusalem “by far the most famous city of the East and not of Judaea only.”)

Although Scripture demanded the attendance of all Israelite males at these festivals (Exod 23:17; 34:23; Deut 16:16; see also Philo Spec. Laws 1.69–70), first-century Jews seem to have applied the requirement only within the Holy Land itself (cf. Jos. Ant. 4.203), a concession demanded by practical realities. Nevertheless, many Diaspora Jews did come (Jos. War 5.199), though many who came from distant lands could come only very rarely. Some sources suggest that more Diaspora Jews attended Pentecost than Passover because of the difficulties of traveling earlier in the season (See comment on Acts 27:9; cf. 20:6, 16). Those who did come for Passover and made the long and time-consuming trip only once during their lives may well have often stayed for Pentecost seven weeks later (See comment on ).

The festival appealed to a diverse variety of Jewish groups, though not all understood it in the same way. Various Jewish groups argued for different dates for the festival, but Philo’s agreement with the tradition also attributed to the Pharisees suggests a generally held date for most of Second Temple Judaism. Certainly, Luke, who refers to the Diaspora crowds gathered (Acts 2:9–11), assumes the common dating of Pentecost.

Luke’s expression (συμίληροῦσθαι) for the day “having arrived,” or the waiting period (cf. 1:4–5) “having been completed,” is probably a biblicism suggesting the momentous nature of the occasion, since Luke earlier uses the term in connection with Jesus’s impending ascension (Luke 9:51; elsewhere in the NT, only 8:23). The term suggests the day’s arrival, not its completion (Acts 2:15).

The wind here reflects a common element of biblical storm theophanies, indicating a revelation of the awesome, one true God. It probably evokes especially Ezek 37: God’s promised life-giving breath, or his Spirit.

As suggested above, the “entire house” mentioned here sounds neither like the temple (though it was a “house”) nor the upper room (see comment on ). The term “house” cannot decisively settle the question of the location; the temple or tabernacle is a (specially designated) house in Luke 6:4 and 19:46 (quoting Isa 56) and Acts 7:46–47; but the term also appears in contrast to the temple (Luke 1:23; Acts 2:46; 5:42), and Luke’s emphasis on house meetings makes that sense more likely (Acts 2:46; 5:42; 20:20). One could think that the wind “filled” the “whole household” (18:8), except that Luke gives no indication of that metaphor for the church in the immediate context.

Perhaps Luke deliberately leaves the location ambiguous because he emphasizes both the importance of the temple early in Acts and of the house meetings (cf. 2:46 and 5:42 for both). Especially if the original venue was a house, the ambiguity may allow his probable temple allusion to the wind’s “filling the house” here, as smoke filled God’s “house” in Isa 6:4 (cf. the fire of Acts 2:3; cf. also Ezek 43:5). The cloud of God’s glory filled the tent in Exod 40:34–35 and God’s “house” in 1 Kgs 8:10–11 at their dedications—appropriate to a reappropriation of the temple for God’s kingdom here. But while the noise filled the house in Acts 2:2, those inside it were filled with the Spirit in 2:4, perhaps making them like the temple of old.

As in 4:31, God provided objective, external phenomena to confirm the internal empowerment taking place when he filled the church with the Spirit. Yet Luke is “reserved in his description,” simply speaking of phenomena “like” wind and “like” fire, just as he spoke of the Spirit coming on Jesus as “like” a dove (Luke 3:21–22). Luke does not tone down his accounts (as Josephus did with some biblical accounts) or accommodate skeptics as much as some other Hellenistic historians (see introduction, , ), but he does practice some of the reserve that many considered appropriate to the genre.

If Luke identified the Spirit with wind or fire, he might view the Spirit as a “substance,” as in Hellenistic sources. But Luke’s pneumatology is more Jewish and biblical, and he intends only a comparison; the sound fills the house and is merely compared with a wind (ὥσίερ in Acts 2:2 and especially ὡσεὶ in 2:3). Wind was stereotypically unpredictable or unstable (Catull. Carm. 70.4; John 3:8). Naturalists viewed wind as “air flowing in one direction” (Sen. Y. Nat. Q. 5.1.1 [LCL]) or caused by celestial objects moving opposite the earth’s motion, but most people saw supernatural connections behind it. Luke’s ἄφνω, “suddenly,” was appropriate for storms (cf. Prov 1:27) as well as (more often) other calamities (cf. Acts 16:26).

The theophanic storm images of wind and fire would not be lost on even the most recent pagan converts to the churches: citing a wide range of ancient sources, P. W. van der Horst concludes that “wind and especially fire (often on the head) are frequently regarded as signs of divine presence.” Similarly, a deity might breathe (πνεύσῃ) strength into one or both sides in a battle (Hom. Il. 19.159). Greeks also could associate breezes and scents with a hero’s apparition. Some Greek thinkers also allegorized Poseidon as a πνεῦμα (wind or breath) in the sea; a second-century C.E. Middle Platonist even identifies him with the cosmic soul. Biblical allusions, however, supply the dominant background here.

Luke uses a rare term here for “wind,” one that connects especially with God’s gift of the breath of life in the LXX and in Luke’s other usage of it (Acts 17:25), which alludes to Gen 2:7. The more common term for “wind” and “breath” in Greek (including the LXX, πνεῦμα; and likewise with the Hebrew equivalent) provides obvious associations with God’s “Spirit,” which is the same term (cf. John 3:8; Ezek 37:9–10). Early Israelite writers may have distinguished spirit, breath, and wind more as various nuances of a connected concept, but in Greek the connections function more like paronomasia or related forms of wordplay, though probably not as a deliberate rhetorical device. The very different narrative of the Johannine “Pentecost” also alludes to the biblical picture of a breath or wind imparting God’s Spirit (John 20:22). But by also describing it as sudden and violent, Luke pushes this “breath” into the category of a strong wind (cf. Exod 14:21). Such strong and stormy winds were common in the Judean hill country, including Jerusalem.

Some scholars have argued that John the Baptist’s “Spirit and fire” (Luke 3:16//Matt 3:11) originally alluded to the wind and fire of the threshing floor (Luke 3:17//Matt 3:12), though this interpretation is not likely in the Gospels or even in early Judaism, where “Holy Spirit” has a standard sense. But even though it is unlikely that John or the Gospels that report his saying think only of a wind, a wordplay in the original saying is plausible. Such a wordplay would illustrate the principle emphasized here, namely, the connection naturally drawn between wind and Spirit.

A more specific connection between wind and Spirit, however, is likelier. In accordance with the pervasive biblical allusions in Luke-Acts, it is best to understand Luke’s ideal audience as at least biblically literate Gentile converts and as probably including a substantial core of Jewish Christians and God-fearers with a background in understanding the Scriptures (see introduction, , ). The stormy images of wind and fire (Acts 2:2–3) recall various theophanies in ancient Israel (cf., e.g., Exod 3:2; 2 Sam 5:24; Job 38:1; Pss 29:3–10; 97:2–5; 104:3; Isa 29:6; 30:27–28; 66:15; Ezek 1:4), perhaps including the pillar of cloud and fire (as noted above; Exod 13:21–22; 14:24; Num 14:14; Neh 9:12, 19; Wis 18:3; 2 Esd 1:14), and scholars cite especially the following: Sinai (Exod 19:16, 19; Deut 4:11; cf. Ps 68:16–18; Hab 3:3–15; Jos. Ant. 3.79–81), smoke filling the house in Isa 6:4 (cf. Exod 19:18; 40:34–38; 2 Chr 7:1–3), and possibly 1 Kgs 19:11–12 (though in this case God’s voice to Elijah contrasts with the storm and earthquake and comes as a gentle blowing, 19:12). Fire and wind also appear together at Elijah’s ascension (2 Kgs 2:11), offering Luke a fitting potential allusion since it would recall Jesus’s departure (for the Elijah allusion there, see comment on ), reinforcing the allusion to the passing on of Jesus’s Spirit (like Elijah’s in 2 Kgs 2:9–10).

In view of the disciples’ eschatological expectations in the context (see Acts 1:3–8, esp. 1:6) and the explicitly eschatological interpretation of this event (2:17), the disciples would have experienced this theophany at least partly as an eschatological event (though, with the advantage of retrospect, Luke transmutes their experience into the realized eschatology of the spreading of the gospel; cf. Isa 52:7). Biblical storm theophanies could also prefigure a future revelation of God’s power (Isa 66:15; cf. 2 Thess 1:7–10). At some point (not necessarily before Acts), Jewish tradition connected the divine breath of Gen 2:7 with the eschatological wind of the Spirit in Ezek 37. Jewish people expected an eschatological “wind” of the Spirit to bring the breath of life into the slain of Israel (Ezek 37:14). Ezekiel’s “dry bones” prophecy in this context figured prominently in Jewish end-time thought, especially among eschatologically oriented sects. Many commentators recognize Ezek 37 as a primary background for the image here.

The “noise” (ἦχος) might allude to the Sinai theophany (Exod 19:16–19, especially φωνή with ἤχει in 19:16); it may be noteworthy that outside of Luke’s usage (here and in Luke 4:37; 21:25), the NT uses this Greek word only once, in a description of the revelation at Sinai (Heb 12:19). It might also allude to Ezek 37:7, which directly precedes the wind of 37:9–10; in Ezekiel, the noise refers to the rattling of bones preparing for the resurrection. That the noise came “from heaven” fits the Sinai parallel (Exod 20:22; Deut 4:36) as well as Luke’s general cosmology (cf. Luke 3:22; Acts 1:11; 11:9 and comment at Acts 11:9 about the bat qol). (The phrase “from heaven” was also good Jewish and even pagan language for “from God” but was usually figurative.)

Though less common than simply “flames,” the expression “tongues of fire” is common in Jewish texts, perhaps because fire licks and “devours.” It appears to be idiomatic, applicable in the Qumran scrolls even to flashes of brilliance from the Urim or Thummim when God answers. Still, Luke probably employs this particular fire idiom here to emphasize the connection with Acts 2:4: just as noise filled the house (2:2) but the Spirit the disciples (2:4), so here divine tongues of fire fall on the disciples (2:3) but the Spirit empowers their tongues (2:4). The fire divides among them; the term here for dividing (διαμεριζόμεναι) is particularly Lukan, perhaps conceivably evoking sharing (2:45; cf. Luke 22:17) but probably simply indicating the individuation of the gift (cf. 1 Cor 12:27 and the distinct languages in Acts 2:9–11). Jewish teachers could also envisage fire dividing up to rest on different individuals.

Fire was a common element of theophanies (see Deut 4:24; Heb 12:29; see further above on Acts 2:2), including the Sinai theophany (Exod 19:16, 18; Deut 4:12, 15; Heb 12:18). Less relevant is that later Jewish teachers occasionally imagined fire falling as at Sinai during the most intense study of Torah. In Philo, the Sinai fire itself became an understandable voice that was miraculously heard at the same volume regardless of distance (Philo Decal. 32–35, 46–47; cf. later Tanḥ. 26c); many commentators suggest that Luke drew on these traditions or reflects the same approach to interpretation. Admittedly, although Philo wrote before Luke and later rabbis who support his version must depend on a common tradition of interpretation, we cannot be sure how pervasive the extrabiblical elements were among Diaspora Jews in Luke’s day or among Palestinian Jews in the time of Luke’s source or sources. Yet the approach of Philo and other midrashists is a logical inference from an overliteralistic interpretation of both the Hebrew text and the LXX; since Luke does not normally handle Scripture in this midrashic manner, it is plausible that he depends here on prior tradition.

Fire also applied to judgments, including end-time judgments. Because of its association with the Spirit here (Acts 2:4), Luke’s informed audience would quickly connect the fire with Luke 3:16, which was originally a promise of end-time judgment. Although this fire may function proleptically for purification (Luke 12:49–50), it symbolizes the eschatological judgment that is the converse of baptism in the Spirit (3:16). Jesus’s coming to cast fire on the earth, conjoined with his own baptism of suffering (12:49–50), might suggest the fire baptism of judgment for all who do not accept his vicarious judgment in the cross. (The image of a river of fire, found in Jewish sources, also attested in pagan sources, is probably not as directly relevant.)

Just as the Spirit descended on Jesus in a visible way (Luke 3:21–22), so here a fiery association with the Spirit (alluding to the same context, 3:16) descended on the disciples. One could argue that “appeared” (ὤφθησαν) is visionary language (Acts 16:9; cf. 7:2), but Luke uses it for angelic encounters (Luke 1:11; 22:43; Acts 7:30, 35) and Jesus’s glory, whether at the transfiguration (Luke 9:31) or after his resurrection (Luke 24:34; Acts 9:17; 13:31; 26:16; cf. Acts 1:3). Likewise, when the Spirit descended in form “like” a dove (Luke 3:22), the appearance was symbolic but not for Luke only a personal “vision.”

As noted above, Luke has an important reason to emphasize tongues when addressing the coming of the Spirit. Luke’s particular emphasis regarding the Spirit is empowerment for cross-cultural prophetic witness (Acts 1:8), and nothing could better symbolize empowerment to cross such barriers than the ability to speak, by the Spirit’s inspiration, in languages one has not learned. Luke repeats this sign on two other strategic occasions in Acts (10:46; 19:6). In contrast to the question of miracle cures, which I have been able to relegate to a separate book, I must explore the question of the possible background and meaning of tongues in more detail here (below).

Even more often than tongues, Luke emphasizes the experience of being “filled” with the Spirit, sometimes for the same individual on multiple occasions (cf. 4:8, 31; 9:17; 13:9). This experience fulfills the promise of the Spirit’s coming announced in 1:4–5, 8 and further interpreted in 2:17–18, 38–39 (for further comment, see discussion of those passages).

In 2:2, a noise “filled” the house; now in 2:4, the disciples are “filled” with the Spirit, producing a different kind of sound (2:6). Luke’s language here could be intelligible even to some uninstructed Gentiles. One inspired to speak authoritatively for a deity might be compared with someone “full of the deity” (plena deo, Sen. E. Suas. 3.5–7). Speaking figuratively, a third- or fourth-century C.E. orator could comment that Apollo at Delphi and elsewhere “was filling the prophet with the mantic spirit” (ἐίλήρου τὴν ίροφῆτιν μαντικοῦ [τοῦ] πνεύματος, Men. Rhet. 2.4, 390.23–24). Figuratively, a teacher could “fill” (διαίιμίλὰς) his disciples “as with nectar” (Eunapius Lives 458); Iamblichus’s disciples could approach him as a spring to fill themselves (Lives 460).

Yet Luke shares with his audience a more central common background in Scripture. In Scripture, the phrase “filled with the Spirit” applied to the Spirit’s gifting for skills, whether in sacred craftsmanship (Exod 31:3; 35:31), for leadership (Deut 34:9), or for prophecy (Mic 3:8). In Sirach, the righteous person is filled (ἐμίλησθήσεται) with the Spirit of understanding when God wills, and pours out wise sayings (Sir 39:6). In view of the parallels with the Elijah succession narrative in Acts 1:8–11, it could also be instructive that Elisha is “filled with” Elijah’s spirit in Sir 48:12.

Luke employs the biblical phrase “filled with the Spirit” frequently, especially for an experience enabling prophets and prophetic inspiration (Luke 1:15, 41, 67) and for power for Christian proclamation, both for apostles (Acts 4:8; 9:17; 13:9) and others (4:31; 13:52). Christians could experience multiple fillings (4:8, 31; 9:17; 13:9), though Luke might restrict the term “baptize” only to the initial experience.

This narrative democratizes the widespread prophetic filling of the Spirit in Num 11:16–17, 25 even further, fulfilling Moses’s prayer that all God’s people would be filled with the Spirit (Num 11:29). (Some later Jewish interpreters also connected Num 11:29 with Joel 2:28, indicating that Joel’s outpouring constituted the answer to Moses’s prayer.)

Luke describes most of his work’s major characters at some point as being “filled with” or “full of” the Spirit (e.g., Luke 1:15, 41, 67; 4:1; Acts 4:8; 6:3; 7:55; 9:17; 11:24; 13:9) and hence speaking God’s message or doing signs and wonders. In this way they stand in continuity with the prophets and are rejected for the same reasons (Luke 6:22–23; 11:47–51; Acts 7:51–52). Luke also employs the related phrase “full of the Spirit,” probably to describe those who are already or regularly equipped by the Spirit for their tasks (Luke 4:1; Acts 6:3, 5; 7:55; 11:24).

Although this commentary addresses tongues speaking in more detail (even proportionately) than most, it can survey only some of the questions involved. The secondary literature on tongues (both ancient and modern) is now enormous, extending to far more than a thousand sources.

Luke portrays tongues speaking as Spirit-inspired speech, a fulfillment of the eschatological promise of the prophetic Spirit (Acts 2:17–18). Luke emphasizes tongues because inspired speaking in languages that one has not learned serves as a powerful theological sign and narrative confirmation of empowerment for cross-cultural witness (1:8).

The term for “speaking” (ἀίοφθέγγομαι) in tongues often applied to oracular speech, but it also applied to any other kind of formal utterances. Egyptians allegedly sought prophetic portents in the crying out (the cognate φθέγγομαι) of children (Plut. Isis 14, Mor. 356E), but the same term can refer to wicked speech (Wis 1:8). Its occurrences in Acts beyond 2:4 (Acts 2:14; 26:25; the only other uses in the NT corpus) could connote inspiration (See comment on Acts 26:24–25) but need not do so. Ancients sometimes understood prophecy as a deity speaking through a person’s mouth, though the text here emphasizes human cooperation (noting that they spoke with the Spirit’s inspiration).

That they “began” to speak in tongues may underline the durative (as opposed to punctiliar) nature of their experience (cf. comment on Acts 1:1), but it may be simply a “redundant auxiliary,” following a Semitic or semitized Koine construction. Luke elsewhere often uses “began” with verbs of speech (with λέγω, Luke 3:8; 4:21; 7:24, 49; 11:29; 12:1; 13:26; 20:9; Acts 11:4; cf. also, e.g., Luke 1:64; 5:21; 13:25; 23:2, 30; Acts 24:2).

Scholars have proposed various backgrounds for understanding early Christian glossolalia or Luke’s interpretation of it. Some appeal here to the tradition that the heavenly flame at Sinai accommodated the languages of the audience (Philo Decal. 46) or that the law was promulgated in seventy languages at Sinai (b. Šabb. 88b). If Luke (or his sources) knew such traditions, he would have had every reason to allude to them with his mention of tongues (they suit his theology), but because his narrative is rich with diverse biblical nuances and because we do not know whether this tradition was available to him, we cannot conclude firmly whether this tradition is in view.

Some early Christians seem to have shared the early Jewish ideal, evident at Qumran, of participation in the heavenly worship or liturgy (cf. Col 2:18; Rev 4:8–11; 5:8–14). In one document from Qumran, different angels apparently lead the heavenly worship on successive Sabbaths in different languages. Because these angels are called “princes,” it is possible that they are understood as angels overseeing the nations whose languages they employ (cf. Dan 10:13, 20–21; 12:1). The angels of this document might also be, and are at least linked to, priests of the heavenly sanctuary (cf. Rev 15:6).

The clearest examples of speaking in angelic languages in early Jewish sources are Apocalypse of Zephaniah and, probably earlier and most important, Test. Job 48–51. Thus Job gave his daughters sashes that God had given him (Test. Job 46–47) and by which he had been healed (Test. Job 47). Then all his daughters spoke ecstatically in the language of angels (Test. Job 48–50). Job’s daughters each praised (ηὐλόγησαν) God in their special dialects (διαλέκτῳ, 52:7 [OTP 1:867]/52:3 [Kraft, 84]). Still, one wonders about the nature of these dialects, since the hymns were recorded as if intelligible (51:4). More problematic, in contrast to the Qumran texts above, these sources may be late enough to betray Christian influence (or Jewish Christian authorship). Possibly some Christians believed that they prayed in heavenly, angelic languages (1 Cor 13:1), though the context of Paul’s reference there may suggest merely hyperbole (13:1–3).

If Spirit-inspired use of other languages in early Judaism is uncertain, Spirit-filled praise in one’s own language is not. More important, ancient Israel already affirmed Spirit-filled worship (1 Chr 25:1, 3) and linked it with prophecy (e.g., 1 Sam 10:5; 2 Sam 23:3–4; 2 Kgs 3:15; Pss 12:5; 46:10; 95:9–11). Jewish sages recognized that only the praise inspired by indwelling wisdom was sent from the Lord (Sir 15:9–10). Some Jewish traditions also speak of Spirit-inspired prayers and worship (Sib. Or. 3.489–91; L.A.B. 32:14). (Compare the connection between music and inspiration also in Hellenistic experience, and the occasional prayer to an inspiring deity to effect in the worshiper praise worthy of the deity.) Ancient Israel could also envision praising God among the nations (Pss 18:49; 96:3, 10; 108:3). Corporate prophetic speech also appears (1 Sam 10:5; 19:20–24). These backgrounds, which are widespread but indicate praise inspired in the speaker’s own, rather than another, language, shed light on the early Jesus movement’s use of tongues, although they do not explain it.

Unfortunately for our quest, most ancient parallels seem less compelling than the stronger (and probably often somewhat derivative) modern parallels sometimes proposed. Philostratus claims that Apollonius understands all languages without having studied them, because he learned the (Pythagorean) language of silence (Vit. Apoll. 1.19, 21). This third-century attribution of dramatic linguistic powers to a mystic sage is not, however, duplicated in historical sources for individuals or groups.

Egyptian religious tradition focused on sacred language; since hieroglyphs were considered sacred by the Roman period, understanding such hieroglyphs mattered little, compared with simply reproducing them in any variety of combinations. Greek letters could be combined in the same incomprehensible, magical way, probably drawing from the example of the Egyptian ritual tradition. Thus Lucian tells of a false prophet who uttered senseless syllables in a language “like Hebrew or Phoenician,” making people think he had magical powers (Alex. 13). It is possible, though not proven, that these practices may have influenced the compositions of angelic names in the later Jewish mystic texts. Many scholars think that the early Christian experience of tongues originated in such magical syllables or in unintelligible ecstatic speech, attested in both Egypt and Greece. The extant early Christian understandings of the experience, however (in Luke and Paul), do not reflect this background, and the experience probably (as Luke suggests) initially predates the expansion of Christianity into a Diaspora setting where such a background could make sense. At best, then, this context sheds light on how some Gentile Christians may have understood the experience.

Although many scholars have accepted other scholars’ proposed parallels, careful investigation of the claims limits the concrete values of these parallels. Supposed parallels between tongues (with interpretation, as in Paul) and Delphic incoherency translated by a prophet misunderstand the nature of the Delphic experience; the Pythia spoke ambiguous, obscure oracles, not incoherently (see comment on Acts 16:16). Her supposed glossolalia is “a product of modern scholarly imagination,” an example of an early Christian idea now read back into its environment. Mystery cults offer no parallels to tongues.

As suggested above, once the other evidence has been weighed, the magical papyri may offer the most concrete parallels for unintelligible speech. Yet the strings of nonsense syllables found in magical papyri are mostly from the third century or later; more decisively, they are incantations and invocations, not understood as genuine language, not revelatory, and not inviting “interpretations.” Appeal to gnostic and Montanist “tongues” would be anachronistic, but there are no clear parallels there anyway. Greco-Roman religion thus offers no sufficient explanation for “tongues”—as a phenomenon understood as inspired “languages”—such as we find it in our earliest Christian sources.

Ecstatic speech and behavior, by contrast, were a common element in ancient prophetism and many forms of worship. Prophets and other divinely possessed persons were thought to act in ways normally considered insane. Certainly, the possession trance described for the Pythian priestess fits here (e.g., Lucan C.W. 5.97–101); this also applies to Sibylline prophecy (Virg. Aen. 6.77–102) and to (not usually prophetic) Bacchic frenzy (Eurip. Bacch. 298–99). In many ancient conceptions, inspiration displaced the mind. (See further the excursus on prophecy at Acts 2:17.)

Ecstatic experience appears in Hellenistic Judaism as well. Thus, in some Hellenistic Jewish works, notably in Philo, inspiration displaces mental activity, as in Greek mantic activity. Whether early Christian tongues were “ecstatic” depends on how one defines “ecstatic” and on one’s further conclusions about the nature of ancient Christian tongues (which, like modern tongues, may have varied in form from one church and individual to another). Paul does allow that tongues do not come from the mind (1 Cor 14:14) yet expects (in contrast to pagan possession trance) the individual believer to maintain control of responses (14:32); also distinctively, for Christian (in contrast to pagan Greek) prophecy, he appears to insist on the need for an accompanying rational component (14:2–3). If Christian prophecy differed from many pagan analogues at this point, we cannot generalize about tongues when we lack sufficient clear pagan claims about speech inspired in other languages.

Tongues speaking was thus a highly unusual phenomenon outside Christian circles in the first century. Further, tongues are one of the most distinctive aspects of the Pentecost narrative; whatever light may be shed on them from later Jewish traditions, Luke’s prophetically inspired praise in languages unknown to the speaker does not appear in the OT. (Prophetically inspired praise is common enough, as noted above, but at least in the sources dated securely before Luke’s writing, the inspiration always extends to one’s own language, not, by a linguistic miracle, to languages one has not learned.) Tongues came, then, in a sense, unexpectedly. But in exceptional circumstances, God’s Spirit could move people to speak under inspiration even when they did not desire to do so (1 Sam 19:20), and so, from earlier Israelite history, one could anticipate, in a sense, that some such unexpected experience could occur (also Acts 10:46).

Apart from Luke, we know of tongues in first-century sources only through Paul (1 Cor 12:10, 28, 30; 13:1, 8; 14:2–6, 13–14, 18–23, 26–27, 39), and Luke writes about Paul’s life presumably because he and his audience belong to the Pauline circle of churches (see our introduction, ; cf. , ). Paul mentions the phenomenon only in 1 Corinthians, but Barrett is undoubtedly correct that since Paul himself spoke in tongues much (14:18), “it is difficult . . . to believe that anyone in personal contact with the Pauline mission was unfamiliar with the phenomenon.” Nor does its absence outside Paul and Luke suggest that tongues did not occur outside the Pauline churches; even Paul mentions them only incidentally, because of the Corinthians’ abuse, yet he places them within the sphere of a wider array of gifts, many of which do in fact appear (also, generally, incidentally) elsewhere in early Christianity, such as expectation of supernatural healing (e.g., Jas 5:14–16; cf. Mark 16:17–18) and miracles (e.g., Rev 11:5–6; cf. Jas 5:17–18). If we omit incidental references, we draw the boundaries of acceptable evidence too tightly for investigation, given the small amount of evidence left, mostly in occasional documents.

As Forbes notes, tongues were widespread enough to continue for some time over a wide geographic area. Mark 16:17 was accepted by the time of Irenaeus, and thus probably provides second-century evidence for the phenomenon. Irenaeus (Her. 5.6.1; Euseb. H.E. 5.7.6) claimed that the gift continued in his day; to argue the contrary from its omission in Justin Martyr is to prefer an argument from silence to explicit evidence (especially when we consider how much else Justin omits). Tertullian, before he became a Montanist, also argued that tongues continued among the orthodox (Marc. 5.8); Novatian (De Trinitate 2.9) and Ambrose (The Holy Spirit 2.150) spoke of tongues in the present tense, in the very period when John Chrysostom and Augustine thought that the gift had finally died out. These later traditions also challenge the assumption of some modern scholars that Luke’s church must have no longer known what genuine tongues experiences were.

Paul speaks in various texts about God’s generous benefactions or gifts (χαρίσματα, Rom 12:6; 1 Cor 1:7; 12:4, 9, 28, 30–31; cf. Eph 4:8–11; 1 Tim 4:14; 2 Tim 1:6). A non-Pauline text (unless one defines “Pauline” so broadly as to make nearly all NT evidence Pauline) also uses for such gifts language very similar to Paul’s, whether it is dependent on Paul or both are dependent on a common source (1 Pet 4:10–11).

Paul’s theological emphasis on “tongues” is quite different from Luke’s, but it is likely (against many) that he is interpreting the same phenomenon; it is virtually inconceivable that the two writers would independently coin the same obscure phrase for two entirely different phenomena. Although some Corinthian Christians overemphasized tongues (perhaps in response to Paul’s earlier sharing the value of his own experience, 1 Cor 14:5, 18), Paul presents tongues as one gift of the Spirit among many (12:10, 28, 30; 13:1, 8; 14:1–40). They are a form of praying with one’s spirit as opposed to one’s mind and hence are preferably balanced by interpretation (14:13–16). In contrast to Luke’s generally corporate picture of the experience, Paul emphasizes the private devotional use of tongues (14:4, 18–19) unless they are accompanied with an inspired interpretation (12:10, 30; 14:5, 13, 26–28). Luke associates them with worldwide evangelism, but Paul does not clearly do so, and Luke associates them with prophetic speech more fully than does Paul.

But whereas their emphases differ, they almost certainly are interpreting the same phenomenon. For both writers, those who speak in tongues offer their own prayer, but they are led by God’s Spirit (Acts 2:4, they spoke by the Spirit’s gifting; 1 Cor 12:4–11; 14:2, 14). Likewise, both see the gift as prayer and praise (Acts 2:11; 10:46; 1 Cor 14:2, 14–17). Both also recognize that the gift may accompany or produce ecstatic or at least abnormally joyful speech or behavior during its use (Acts 2:13; 1 Cor 14:23). In both cases, prophecy and tongues are closely connected or paralleled (Acts 2:16–18; 19:6; 1 Cor 14, passim).

Although Paul plays down tongues to counter the Corinthian overemphasis on the gift, his own perspective regarding them is positive: they are, after all, a divine benefaction (χάρισμα) from the Spirit (1 Cor 12:4, 10), and Paul prays in tongues himself (14:18). Though inferior to vernacular prophecy in the public assembly if uninterpreted, they are useful for edifying oneself (14:4), as a form of prayer to God from one’s spirit (14:2, 14, 16–17). Indeed, in one of the rare texts where another NT writer uses the characteristically Lukan phrase “filled with the Spirit,” the result emphasized is especially worship (Eph 5:18–20, including “songs from the Spirit,” 5:19).

Lukan “tongues” (esp. Acts 2:4)

Pauline “tongues” (1 Cor 12–14)

γλῶσσαι

Tongues are inspired by the Spirit (2:4, 17–18)

Tongues are a gift from the Spirit (12:7–11)

†

The speakers do not know the languages (14:13–15)

They are understandable (when some who recognize the languages are present [2:8–11], but apparently not in other cases, when no one is present who knows the languages [10:46; 19:6])

They are understandable (to those with supernatural interpretation [12:10, 30; 14:13])

They are not intelligible to those who do not recognize the languages (2:13; cf. 10:46; 19:6)

They are not normally intelligible (without a supernatural interpretation [14:2, 9–11, 19, 23])

‡

They can be associated with (though distinguishable from) other speech gifts, such as prophecy (19:6), and are related to prophetic speech (2:17–18)

They can be associated with (though distinguishable from) other speech gifts, such as prophecy (12:10; 14:2–6, 22–33, 39–40)||

Tongues speech belongs to a larger sphere of the Spirit’s activity (e.g., visions and dreams, 2:17–18; cf. 2:43)

Tongues speech belongs to a larger sphere of the Spirit’s activity (e.g., healings and miracles, 12:8–10, 28–30)

Tongues, at least on this occasion, function as a sign to unbelievers (2:11–13)

Tongues can function as a sign to unbelievers (14:22)

The gift of tongues speech is God’s choice, not always mediated through human agency (2:4; 10:44–46), though such agency is possible (cf. 19:6)

Tongues speech, like other gifts, is God’s sovereign choice (12:10–11), though individuals can apparently seek for gifts (12:31; 14:1, 39)

^*In Paul, it is often “a tongue” (sing.; 1 Cor 14:2, 4, 9, 13, 14, 19, 26, 27), because he addresses individuals, whereas Luke describes a group. But where Paul addresses a group (and sometimes when he addresses individuals), he also is aware of the plural usage (1 Cor 12:10, 28, 30; 13:1, 8; 14:5, 6, 18, 22, 23, 39).

^†They did not learn them; they are “other” languages; this is unexpected for Galileans (Acts 2:7), and only the foreigners are said to understand the meaning (2:9–11).

^‡Note that Acts 10:46 employs καὶ, but in contrast to 19:6, not τε . . . καί.

^§For their function as praise, see Levang, “Content.” Some would argue that they can also fulfill other functions (see, e.g., Aker, “Tongues”), but whatever one’s conclusions on this point, praise and prayer are the explicit and dominant functions specifically and clearly mentioned by Paul.

||Paul divides the gifts differently than Luke would (1 Cor 12:8–10, 28–30), though probably in an ad hoc way (cf. 14:6, 26; Rom 12:6–8), but the association remains; both are inspired speech.

^#The implication of an affective component comports well with Paul’s prayer “with my spirit” (1 Cor 14:14–15; in that context, prayer “with my mind” apparently refers to interpretation, 14:13, 16–19).

^**Cf. also the analogy in 1 Cor 14:11.

The idea that Luke and Paul depict unrelated phenomena requires too many random coincidences to be deemed plausible. Nevertheless, there are also differences, especially in theological application:

Lukan “tongues” (esp. Acts 2:4)

Pauline “tongues” (1 Cor 12–14)

Hearers would not (normally) understand the tongues (14:2, 16–19, 23)

†

Tongues are abused in the instances presupposed in 1 Corinthians, although Paul affirms this experience as a divine gift (12:10; 14:26), especially valuable for private use (14:2, 4); he practices it privately (14:18), and he warns against forbidding its public use if it is accompanied by interpretation (14:39)

‡

Those who speak in tongues should do so one at a time, allowing for interpretation of each (14:27–28)

Tongues are one among many gifts (among the less useful in public), useful especially for private prayer

Tongues begin in (2:5–11) and attest (10:45–46) the Spirit’s multicultural work

Paul addresses the use of tongues in a more homogeneous setting of Corinthian house churches (cf. 14:23)||

Tongues seem to accompany the inauguration of the Spirit’s activity where they occur, i.e., toward the beginning of believers’ experience with the Spirit (2:4; 10:44–46; 19:6)

Tongues are one among many gifts (among the less useful in public), useful especially for private prayer

Paul speaks of diverse gifts of grace (ideally especially as enablements for service to others) or of the Spirit in the context of a body with many members (Rom 12:4–8; 1 Cor 12:4–30)

^*This difference is not significant because it relates to the different settings: Pentecost included hearers from all regions (Acts 2:9–11), divinely arranged for the first occurrence of tongues speech, whereas the same would not be expected in the average house church.

^†This is a difference of situation.

^‡Cf. this pattern possibly for prophetic speech in 1 Sam 10:5–6, 10; 19:20–24; perhaps 1 Chr 25:1–6.

^§See further Keener, “Tongues,” esp. 180–83. This emphasis constitutes the heart of the theological distinction. Paul nowhere even explicitly addresses a special empowerment to witness to the nations, though he recognizes the importance of the Spirit in his own ministry of Christ to the Gentiles (Rom 15:16–19; cf. Gal 3:14; Isa 42:1).

||The Spirit’s activity more generally does, however, attest the Spirit’s multicultural work (Gal 3:5, 14).

^#Luke nowhere employs χάρισμα (which, outside Pauline literature, appears in the NT only at 1 Pet 4:10; cf. 1 Clem. 38.1; Ign. Pol. 2.2; Smyrn. intro) and always employs “gift” (δωρεά) for the Spirit (Acts 2:38; 8:20; 10:45; 11:17).

It is possible to subsume these differences under two basic categories: setting and theological emphasis. The first differences above relate to the situation; it is possible that multiple speakers in group praise also involve a situation distinct from the normal edifying course of a house church meeting or that Paul’s instructions about sequential use relate specifically to abuses in Corinth.

The dramatic difference, however, is the theological emphasis, that is, the purposes for which Luke and Paul employ their treatment of tongues speech. Paul’s interest in his passage is in the practical function of the gift in personal and especially corporate worship; Luke’s interest is the theological meaning of inspired prayer in other people’s languages, which relates directly to the thrust of his work (Acts 1:8). That one in limited space omits what the other includes is not a contradiction and does not even prove that Luke, though belonging to a Pauline circle of churches, never employed Paul’s language on the matter (although we also cannot be sure that he did so). But Luke’s emphasis does control most of the theological differences: because tongues function as a sign of power to witness to the nations (1:8), they are particularly useful to Luke, who emphasizes them especially as an inaugural activity and in a multicultural setting. Tongues speaking serves a more exalted narrative function for Luke, as symbolic proof of the church’s empowerment to proclaim Christ across cultures.

Some scholars think that for Paul, at least, tongues are merely ecstatic gibberish lacking genuine linguistic content, rather than genuine languages. This is what many writers mean by “glossolalia,” which some also suggest early Christians construed as angelic languages; but this modern usage can easily prejudice the discussion of what Paul and Luke meant by the Greek terms from which the compound is derived. As argued below, this practice may represent one form of modern glossolalia, but it is not clear that this represents what Paul understood by the phenomenon (or how all modern tongues speakers understand or experience some other forms of modern glossolalia).

Although the analogy is incomplete, scholars examining the ancient phenomenon (which is available to us only secondhand) often take into account modern examples. Concrete ancient evidence (such as textual evidence in Paul) must always take precedence, but analogies from anthropological and other field data might prove useful here, as elsewhere, to try to fill lacunae in our knowledge, thereby improving the “educated” element in our educated guesses. The recorded phenomena for comparison are certainly much more complete today than those available for pre-Pentecostal commentators; whatever the relevance of the modern parallels, they would challenge the perplexity of a commentator in 1876, who complained, “The phenomenon here described is mysterious . . . wholly unknown in modern times” (a complaint not completely true, however, even in his own day).

Although fuller treatment of Pentecostal and charismatic Christian analogies appears below, I offer first brief comments on some proposed or potential non-Christian analogies to glossolalia and on Christian examples treated in the same anthropological studies. Given the existence of various forms of inarticulate sounds and glossolalia even in a variety of contemporary religious movements, one would expect some ancient parallels to the phenomenon, though we are surprisingly hard pressed to find explicit evidence for them.

Glossolalia sometimes appears in trance states in various traditional societies today, often in conjunction with change of pitch and even changes in the brain state. On occasion these utterances in trance states also have been said to constitute xenoglossy, often attributed to the activity of a foreign spirit. In Kalabari possession, spirits often speak “a fairly standard ‘water-people’s language’” or a neighboring language (which the speakers claim not to understand), or stutter in Kalabari. In a traditional Zulu treatment, smoke inhalation removes spirit-illness and invites speech “in ‘foreign’ tongues appropriate to the medicine administered,” which Western hearers may regard as simply meaningless sounds.

Some controversial instances of xenoglossy have been cited for mediums in the Western world, including for various ancient languages supposedly unknown to the mediums—claims that have in some cases been disproved and in others remain at least disputed. It has been argued that the famous case of “Rosemary,” popularly attributed to reincarnation, was in fact learned behavior, improving as the coaching in “ancient Egyptian” improved. Obviously, such claims differ markedly from the early Christian experience as understood theologically by Luke.

Modern anthropological studies of (usually) Christian glossolalia across various cultures, languages, and religions have generally noticed patterns of altered states of consciousness with physical and emotive effects, including “hyperarousal dissociation.” (We should, however, be careful about drawing too wide a net: in most charismatic circles that I have observed, the “trance state” cited in some sources simply does not occur during prayer in tongues, although prayer in tongues may exert a calming or emotional influence.) Some have also noticed common patterns of glossolalia in diverse cultural and linguistic settings, though there are also some strictly stereotyped forms within the groups. Although it has not, to my knowledge, been studied as extensively by anthropologists, some Christians working with hard drug users have reported that use of glossolalia also can seriously reduce the pain of drug withdrawal and can greatly increase the probability of long-term recovery.

Some studies of modern tongues have focused on nonlinguistic patterned speech; such free vocalization could be understood, at most, as “coded” language, adding vowels to break the speech “into arbitrary bits.” Some Pentecostal theologians also define tongues as “pneumatic speech” with intelligible (perhaps affective) content but not human languages. Various linguistic studies of glossolalic speech suggest that it functions as “free vocalisation” that, on the one hand, comes short “of the complex suprasegmental sound-patterning associated with natural language,” yet, on the other, proves more phonologically structured than what occurs “in comparable phenomena like baby talk and schizophrenese.” Clusters of sounds resemble the sorts of words and groups of words known in other languages, but they are not coherent enough at a semantic level for full language. This may suggest a nonpropositional communication by the speaker that is heavily dependent on formulaic implicatures.

Scholars sometimes suggest that if something like this phenomenon happened on the day of Pentecost, Luke may have partly or fully redacted “an incomprehensible ecstatic speech” experience into a language miracle. But whatever the actual nature of the phenomenon, it is highly doubtful that Paul understood it as nonlinguistic babbling any more than Luke did. Certainly, Paul believes, as Luke does (Acts 2:4), that the tongues are unknown to the speakers (1 Cor 14:2) and sometimes perhaps to anyone on earth (13:1). The term γλῶσσα means “language,” whether earthly or heavenly (13:1), and Paul compares the problem of untranslated tongues to other forms of untranslated speech (14:11). G. B. Caird warns that the experience’s very distance from that of most modern scholars should caution us to attempt “to enter into a sympathetic and imaginative understanding of it, if we are to have an accurate picture of primitive Christianity.” From Acts and Paul, he argues, “there can be no doubt . . . that glossolalia gave the normal impression of articulate utterance and not of hysterical raving.”

No consensus exists on even the psychological character of modern glossolalia. Modern psychological literature reflects diverse understandings or approaches of different psychological schools. For a few samples among many various views (not all of them mutually exclusive): some envision it as a pathological, “delusional” speech act (more common earlier); some find elements enigmatic; some view psychopathological explanations as too simplistic; some have found it in both pathological and helpful forms; some have compared its unpatterned form to early childhood speech or a release from the unconscious; and some view it as religious emotion. Some treat it as universally a dissociative state; others disagree, suggesting more social explanations. Some help explain tongues as social empowerment (by allowing individuals to transcend their social limitations) or a form of “resistance discourse.”

Unfortunately, most of these studies focus on particular groups and hence do not distinguish among various forms of glossolalic speech in various circles; this factor may account for some of the differences in conclusions. Yet a historical survey of psychological approaches suggests that hermeneutical frameworks figure heavily in many of these interpretations: early studies often treated tongues speaking as pathological; empirical studies in the 1960s, challenging traditional assumptions and biases, proved much more positive; and the most recent research has overturned most of the early research’s negative claims.

Even if we assume a static interpretation of the modern phenomenon of ecstatic tongues (despite the unsettled debate surrounding it), reading it back even into 1 Corinthians faces two obstacles: first, we cannot be certain that the modern phenomenon described in these studies is necessarily the same as Paul’s (or as that of other groups of glossolalists who may not fit this pattern). More clearly problematic, we cannot assume that Paul so understood the phenomenon; many (possibly most) modern Pentecostal Christian glossolalists, in fact, assume (on the basis of their reading of Paul) that they are speaking languages that they do not know. Dunn notes that, rightly or wrongly, “if such claims can be made with such conviction in the twentieth century, it is more readily conceivable that they were made at the time of the first Christian Pentecost.” Luke or Paul could have coined some term to describe an excited expression of language, or nonlinguistic, ecstatic babbling; but “languages” (γλῶσσαι) would hardly be the appropriate one!

The phrase “other tongues” probably connotes foreign speech (as confirmed by the hearers’ “own tongues” in Acts 2:11). Forbes has proposed that even Paul’s language for “tongues” is a shorthand for the clearer and more original “other tongues” found in Acts 2:4. He may be right, though we should note that “other” (ἕτερος) is typically Lukan (forty-eight times in Luke-Acts; eight times in Matthew; never in the original text of Mark, though once in Mark 16:12; once in John; twenty-seven times in Paul). Luke may have borrowed the particular phrase for foreign speech from Isa 28:11 LXX, which Paul had already applied, by analogy, to Christian tongues speaking (1 Cor 14:21); if so, this Isaiah passage may have influenced early Christian usage (or at least usage in the Pauline circle of churches) more widely.

Some scholars grant that Luke claims that the disciples spoke genuine languages or dialects, yet doubt that Luke assumes a miracle of speech unknown to the speakers. Because Hebrew was a holy language for Judeans, some propose that the disciples spoke “other” languages (Acts 2:4) as merely “profane” ones (already known to the speakers). But it is unlikely that the disciples spoke Hebrew on a regular basis. A supporter of the “profane languages” position might respond that many Palestinian Jews who spoke Greek or Aramaic in other settings probably recited traditional prayers and psalms in Hebrew and that prayer is certainly relevant to the nature of speech here (1:14). Granted, but Mark 14:36 and 15:34 suggest that not even the historical Jesus always prayed in Hebrew (though, if Mark reports Jesus’s actual practice, Matthew hebraizes the latter occasion, Matt 27:46). Hebrew would be no more mandatory for prophecy.

Far more problematic, Luke provides no indication that diglossia was in view or that one should expect the disciples to have spoken only Hebrew on this or another occasion. Luke is happy to specify an original Jewish language (Aramaic or, some think, Hebrew) when this is in view (Acts 21:40; 22:2; 26:14). Luke does not think of the disciples as limited to any Semitic language: they quote the LXX; they also clearly knew some Greek, without which communication within the Jerusalem church would have become unintelligible (without tongues) by the time of Acts 6 (see comment on Acts 6:1). Further, one holding this view must discount the explicitly parallel (10:46) passage where Cornelius’s household cannot be expected to have ever spoken much Hebrew (10:1–2). (This is not to mention that the view must discount the relevance of Paul’s evidence, despite his similarly unusual use of the same term γλῶσσα, and Paul’s emphasizing that the languages spoken were unknown to the speakers [1 Cor 14:13, 14, 19, 27–28].)

Most important, this view renders implausible Luke’s mention of each language in Acts 2:8, which Luke goes on to elaborate specifically in 2:9–11; such elaboration makes little sense if Luke meant only the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean (Greek) and Middle East (Aramaic; or Latin, the lingua franca of the West). The use of λαλέω and γλῶσσα in 2:11 explicitly recalls the same terms in 2:4. In the context of Acts, this event was a sign of the reception of the Spirit, which would hardly merit specific mention (esp. in 10:45–47 and 19:6) if the persons inspired spoke merely their own languages as they had before the inspiration. This proposal seems an attempt to circumvent Luke’s cross-cultural use of tongues in his story.

But while Luke seems clear that the disciples spoke in diverse languages representing a wide geographic range, he does not settle our logistical questions of how this phenomenon might have occurred. On the historical level, probably only a minority of Jews in these different nations would have been familiar with most local dialects; most Jews settled in the cities and spoke the lingua franca of their regions, whether Greek, sometimes Latin, or the eastern or western dialects of Aramaic. Indeed, even in Rome more Jews retained Greek than communicated among themselves in Latin. Luke himself, knowledgeable of Diaspora Judaism, must know this.

Nevertheless, Luke is clear that the hearers understood at least enough of what the disciples were saying to recognize that they were praising God (2:11). Recognition and some level of understanding languages with which one has some familiarity (which requires recognition of key words, not perfect comprehension) is far more easily obtained than a speaking knowledge of a language. Luke was aware of Jews (cf. 14:19) in the vicinities of places where local dialects were still spoken (cf. 14:14) and probably expected many to recognize at least some of the local languages from regions where they resided. This would be especially the case for those who did not live in large Jewish enclaves (e.g., Alexandria) and hence did some business with local residents (cf., e.g., 18:3, though in Corinth the languages were Latin and Greek). Further, Luke can employ these representative provenances of Diaspora Jews as a symbol of ethnic universalism even if only some representatives among them recognize other languages (just as he can employ them in this manner even though they are not Gentiles).

Some scholars suggest a hearing miracle rather than the disciples speaking in various languages; even some early interpreters held this view. But some of the suggested background for this position is based on a misinterpretation of ancient texts. More important, this proposal does not match what Luke himself says. Luke reports their speaking “other languages” before mentioning that anyone hears them (2:4), and emphasizes that the Spirit enables them to speak this way; further, the gift recurs later as a supernatural sign with no indication that such hearing took place (10:45–46; 19:6). Moreover, in his work, Luke emphasizes not so much the Spirit producing receptivity in crowds but God working through those who are agents of his Spirit (4:8, 31; 6:3, 10; 10:38; 13:9–11; 21:4, 11). As Max Turner notes, Luke “would not wish to suggest that the apostolic band merely prattled incomprehensibly while God worked the yet greater miracle of interpretation of tongues in the unbelievers.”

Whatever aspect of charismatic tongues anyone else in the early church (such as Paul) emphasized, Luke derives considerable symbolic mileage from them. He emphasizes that the Spirit empowered witnesses, and hence ultimately the church, to cross cultural barriers with their prophetically inspired message. What better symbol of this cross-cultural empowerment for mission could have been available than the phenomenon of tongues, which he understands as inspired speech in languages the speakers had not learned? (Although tongues seem to have functioned as prayer and worship and although Luke does not depict peoples from different cultures praying this way simultaneously, one might guess that it would also serve an equalizing function in the joint worship of believers in Jesus who did not share a common language.)

That Luke emphasizes tongues is no surprise; as Barrett notes, “Speech is in Acts the characteristic mark of the Spirit’s presence, sometimes in glossolalia (2.4; 10.46; 19.6), sometimes in prophecy (2.17, 18; 11.27; 13.1–3; 21.(4), (9), 10, 11), sometimes in proclamation (e.g., 4.31).” As the Spirit’s activity often produced prophetic speech in ancient Israel, so now it produced “prophetic speech,” but “of a peculiar kind.” Luke explicitly uses tongues to identify the activity of the Spirit of prophecy (2:17–18), albeit with a particular emphasis on crossing cultural boundaries. Presumably, the prophetic aspect of the Spirit’s empowerment that he articulates in general includes and could be evidenced by any speech inspired by the Spirit or perhaps by prophet-like miracles as well, provided they testified about Jesus. But in view of his likely thesis statement at 1:8, Luke’s primary concern is not simply prophetic speech in general but especially prophetic speech that extends to other peoples (promoting what scholars typically call the “Gentile mission,” which, however, does not end once the initial Jewish-Gentile barrier has been surmounted in 8:27–39 or 10:23–48). We shall revisit this question further below.

Thus tongues are a sign of prophetic empowerment for the continuing cross-cultural mission. In contrast to this portrayal of the apostles early in Acts, Luke, toward the beginning of his first volume, reports a priest who initially disbelieved the divine message and was struck mute (Luke 1:20). When he was later filled with the Spirit, however, even he prophesied the divine message (1:67). More in parallel with the scene here, Jesus, filled with the Spirit, foreshadows the Gentile mission (4:1, 14, 24–27). Tongues thus offer one kind of prophetic speech (Acts 2:16–18).

Some scholars believe that tongues speaking was rare by Luke’s day. M. D. Goulder pointed out that Acts stresses tongues only at vital points. Contrasting this selectivity with the likelihood that tongues speaking may have occurred each week in Corinthian assemblies in the 50s, Goulder draws from the relative paucity of Luke’s descriptions the conclusion that by Luke’s day the experience was merely a memory of a special phenomenon of earlier times. Against this interpretation of the evidence, we should note that tongues speaking continued (albeit presumably much less than in Corinth in the 50s) in the late second century (see further discussion above, under ).

More critically, in a monograph the length of Acts, which offers no detailed descriptions of what took place during early Christian worship (Acts 2:42, 46 is a general summary, not a detailed description), we should not expect (and do not find) any description of tongues speech during house assemblies, in contrast to Paul’s depiction of Corinth. What we do find are several descriptions of corporate experiences of the Spirit, three of which include tongues speaking. This represents three-quarters of the descriptions pertaining to groups experiencing the outpouring of the Spirit for the first time. This representation suggests that those who interpret these events as signs that tongues were long since past read too much into Luke’s silence on such matters. Their observation of tongues occurring at significant junctures is, however, close to accurate; it would be more accurate, however, to claim that the Spirit (rather than simply tongues) is poured out at significant junctures, since this would include even the Samaritan “Pentecost,” where tongues speaking is not narrated (8:17). Luke reports the junctures most relevant to his account of the church’s cross-cultural expansion; he does not imply that such activity, once demonstrated in a new group of people, thereafter ceased simply because Luke then focuses on its reception among a different group of people!

Many scholars of global religion today estimate the size of the Pentecostal and charismatic bloc of the Christian church at nearly half a billion now (especially strong in the Majority World), by some estimates more than a quarter of global Christianity; most recognize that these movements account for a high proportion of Christianity’s growth globally. In view of these factors, it seems myopic (though not uncommon) to interact with the often comparatively obscure views of various individual scholars yet fail to at least mention questions already raised by some scholars (and an increasing number of commentary users) from the Pentecostal tradition. Their interpretation provides a significant example of recent reception history of the text. Moreover, these circles also provide a particularly useful contemporary analogy for helping us to understand some of the social dynamics involved in revival movements such as earliest Christianity; although such analogies are never fully adequate, they do check modern scholars’ sometimes too ready assumptions about what members of the earliest Jesus movement “could have” thought or experienced.

Views on tongues, in fact, varied in early Pentecostalism. Although tongues as the “initial physical evidence” of Spirit baptism became the dominant view in Pentecostalism, many influential early Pentecostal proponents of tongues (e.g., Agnes Ozman, F. F. Bosworth, Minnie Abrams, and, according to many, even Azusa Street leader William Seymour) apparently denied or came to deny that tongues speaking was a necessary evidence of the seminal experience of the Spirit described in Acts. This perspective was probably even more prevalent outside the United States. Some other early Pentecostal leaders wished to place the focus of the movement elsewhere than on tongues.

Tongues as the “initial evidence” of baptism in the Spirit became the dominant view among classical Pentecostals, however, despite dissent from some of its leading figures. This might be a minority view among global charismatics and certainly is so among charismatics in most traditional denominations. Although speaking in tongues has occurred frequently through Christian history, the idea that tongues function as evidence of Acts’ experience of baptism in the Spirit appears to be more recent. It might occur in one nineteenth-century movement (Edward Irving’s Catholic Apostolic Church in the 1830s) but mostly stems from the early twentieth-century Pentecostal movement.

Recent as the emphasis may be, it is grounded in a genuine observation about the text and Luke’s overall narrative pattern, one that some earlier interpreters may have overlooked precisely because it was so foreign to their own experience. (This despite the fact that some of the earliest Christian interpreters apparently did recognize the pattern.) Both the early classical Pentecostals and their modern scholars who associate tongues with Spirit baptism observed a genuine feature of Luke’s story. Robert Menzies, for example, accurately notes that Luke closely connects tongues with “inspired speech, of which tongues speech is a prominent form, possessing a unique evidential character.”

The observation of this connection is hardly limited to Pentecostals. James D. G. Dunn, who is known for challenging classical Pentecostalism by identifying Spirit baptism with conversion-initiation rather than with a subsequent experience, has noted, “It is undoubtedly true that Luke regarded the glossolalia of Pentecost as an external sign of the Spirit’s outpouring.” Luke used tongues the same way in 10:45–46 and 19:6, and Dunn thinks that, most likely, tongues occurred in 8:17, though it is not mentioned. (I allow the opposite argument in 8:17, at least regarding what information was available to Luke. But in both cases we admittedly argue from silence, lacking sufficient concrete evidence for a more explicit judgment.) Since these passages exhaust the “initial” fillings that are described in Acts (9:17 predicts but does not describe Paul’s), Dunn recognizes that the case “that Luke intended to portray ‘speaking in tongues’ as ‘the initial physical evidence’ of the outpouring of the Spirit” makes far more sense than most scholars have noticed.

Yet Dunn nevertheless demurs from the classical Pentecostal conclusion: Luke’s intention is to demonstrate the Spirit’s presence through tongues, not to “teach” that tongues will always accompany the Spirit (Luke does, after all, omit its mention in 8:17). Most interpreters here agree with Dunn’s conclusion, based on the very limited evidence we have in Acts: Luke regarded tongues as one verbally inspired manifestation of the prophetic Spirit among several, along with praise (2:11; 10:46), prophecy (19:6; cf. 2:17–18), and boldness (4:8, 31). Such expressions underline the prophetic character of the empowerment. Likewise, as noted further below, tongues speech evidences the experience of baptism in the Spirit (i.e., reveals its purpose and function), not the individual recipients of this baptism; it thus need not occur on every occasion to maintain its symbolic function.

Nevertheless, that Luke is able to report as many instances of tongues accompanying Spirit baptism as he does (but does not invent it where he cannot report it) suggests that, historically, the verbal phenomenon sometimes or often accompanied the spiritual experience (cf. Aug. Bapt. 2.16.21; cf. 4.22.30; Tract. Jn. 6.18). (Paul’s evidence leaves little historical doubt that tongues speaking occurred.) More important, it suggests that Luke drew a connection, viewing tongues as a frequent and theologically normal (though not necessarily mandatory) sign of the Spirit’s special empowerment for cross-cultural ministry. That is, Luke emphasizes a prophetic empowerment with a typically cross-cultural focus.

Luke’s theological use of the motif allows us to develop this observation further. We should note that the primary manifestations of the Spirit reported by Luke, especially in key, paradigmatic texts, are vocal (1:8; 2:4, 17–18). Luke does not focus on every aspect of the Spirit’s activity mentioned by other early Christian writers (including his hero Paul; though he does not deny such aspects); he focuses on inspired speech flowing from the prophetic Spirit (2:17–18). At the same time, Luke has a reason for emphasizing a particular form of inspired speech, namely, tongues, where he can (which is why I am more skeptical than Dunn, though not dogmatically so, that Luke found it in, or felt free to infer it for, his source for Acts 8): this particular form of prophetic speech provides the most obvious symbol of people empowered to cross cultural and linguistic barriers with the gospel, which fits Luke’s emphasis (1:8).

Tongues speaking itself is not simply one sign among many, only arbitrarily connected with Spirit baptism. Rather, it is intrinsically connected with Luke’s emphasis on the Spirit’s empowerment to proclaim Christ cross-culturally (1:8). It may not be necessary to evidence the cross-cultural facility of every individual recipient, but in Luke’s narrative it does evidence the character of Spirit baptism itself, explicating for Luke the nature of that empowerment.

Some historians have noted that some nineteenth-century Holiness advocates initially sought the “gift of tongues” because they believed it relevant to missionary endeavor. Following this expectation, many of Pentecostalism’s early exponents understood tongues as a form of missionary xenoglossy, a view attested also among some church fathers. (There are oral and written reports of such xenoglossy occurring in isolated modern cases, although a number of scholars have suggested alternative explanations for many of the purported cases.) Although most early Pentecostals fairly quickly abandoned the “missionary tongues” view after it failed the empirical test, the early Pentecostal teacher Charles Parham insisted on it to the end, criticizing others for abandoning it. Early Pentecostals continued to embrace both power for mission and tongues speaking, but with the latter as a more symbolic sign of the former. Yet whereas most no longer claimed a direct “missionary” function for tongues, we may observe today that the doctrine’s first advocates had at least noticed a genuine connection that most subsequent interpreters (including most Pentecostals) have missed: the connection in Luke’s theology between tongues speech and the empowerment for global mission.

The aspect of Spirit baptism on which Luke focuses is empowerment for cross-cultural mission; although tongues speaking provides a key illustration of this empowerment in Acts when Luke has it available, the focus is prophetic inspiration to communicate Christ’s message cross-culturally. Nor is recognition of this association limited to modern interpreters. As John Chrysostom noted, the Corinthians exalted tongues because it was the first spiritual gift on Pentecost; but it was first “because it was a sign that they were to go everywhere, preaching the gospel.” Similarly, the Venerable Bede believed that Acts 2:3–4 “indicated that the holy church, when it had spread to the ends of the earth, was to speak in the languages of all nations.”

Thus I would argue that Luke does in fact use tongues as evidence of baptism in the Spirit and in one sense would argue this more strongly than most traditional Pentecostals: tongues is not an arbitrary evidence but is highlighted because it is intrinsically related to the point of what Luke means by baptism in the Spirit. In this case, reception history draws our attention to an important feature of Luke’s narrative pattern that we might easily have missed. At the same time, we need not go as far as traditional Pentecostals in believing that Luke expected tongues on every occasion when a person was initially filled with the Spirit, even given Luke’s emphasis. Tongues is a sign that attests the nature of the experience, not necessarily an exclusive, mandatory sign of every individual’s reception of that experience. Yet without insisting that Luke would have doubted the Spirit baptism of believers who had not evidenced it by tongues, one may nevertheless accept a central biblical insight of early Pentecostalism regarding the association of tongues with the Spirit’s cross-cultural empowerment in Luke’s narrative.

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