Book Briefs: October 13, 1972

Tongues of Men and Angels, by William J. Samarin (Macmillan, 1972, 277 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Ralph W. Fasold, assistant professor of linguistics, Georgetown University, Washington, D. C.

William Samarin is a Christian and a recognized linguist who has applied his professional skills to the study of speaking in tongues, technically called “glossolalia.” One of the most common questions asked of linguists by evangelicals who do not speak in tongues is, “Are tongues real languages?” Samarin’s answer is negative: “… in spite of superficial similarities, glossolalia is fundamentally not language.”

Although about 83 per cent of the glossolalists who responded to Samarin’s questionnaire were convinced that their tongues were real languages (a few did not know or did not particularly care), it is obvious to a linguist that glossolalia sounds like language but is not. A student in an introductory course can easily figure out the meanings of many of the words in a passage of a language he does not know if he is given even a loose translation. And even without a translation a linguist can begin to decipher the pattern of an unfamiliar language. This is impossible with glossolalia.

Some glossolalists themselves are plagued with doubts about the validity of their tongues. One speaker complained of doubts because “I was speaking what seemed like gibberish of my own making” (though she later conquered her doubts). In fact, from a linguistic viewpoint glossolalia is very easy to produce. (The critically acclaimed movie Marjoe, the story of an admittedly fake Pentecostal evangelist, offers an example for all to see.) According to Samarin, “Anyone can produce glossolalia if he is uninhibited and if he discovers what the ‘trick’ is.” It must be added, however, that while it is easy to produce glossolalia linguistically, it is not possible to produce the profound spiritual experience most glossolalists have when they speak in tongues.

Many glossolalists would counter Samarin’s conclusion by citing cases in which a person who was speaking in tongues was understood by a speaker of some language unknown to the glossolalist. Samarin deals with two such accounts, both told to him in personal interviews. In both cases, it seems that the language was “recognized” on the basis of either the general sound of the tongue or a syllable sequence that sounded like a word in the real language. Samarin’s conclusion is that the occurrence of xenoglossolalia (speaking in a language one has never learned) “is negligible or nil.”

Christians who do not believe in speaking in tongues will be pleased by Samarin’s conclusion that tongues are not real languages. Many of them will be less pleased by his assumption that the tongues referred to in First Corinthians were not real languages either, but that what Paul and other early Christians did was practice glossolalia much as present-day charismatics do. (Samarin considers the account in Acts 2 to be an exception and to be genuine xenoglossolalia.) It is not possible really to settle this question one way or the other since there are no transcriptions of tongues recorded in the New Testament, but it seems fairly clear to me (and to two other Christian linguists I know who have made special studies of glossolalia) that Samarin is basically right in both his exegesis of First Corinthians and his study of contemporary glossolalia.

Paul himself gives some indication that he did not assume tongues were real languages when he argues in First Corinthians 14:23 that unbelievers would consider Christians mad if they spoke tongues in public. He does not consider the possibility that an unbeliever might hear the Gospel in his own language or at least recognize in that cosmopolitan port that foreign languages were being spoken.

The jacket of Tongues of Men and Angels advertises the book as “a controversial and sympathetic analysis of Speaking in Tongues.” To those Christians for whom speaking in tongues is an important issue, either because they practice it or because they oppose it, Samarin’s detached, scientific type of treatment will seem far more controversial than sympathetic! Glossolalists will see the book as an attempt to downgrade what they deem a profound and miraculous experience. However, anti-glossolalists will be offended at Samarin’s ability to see spiritual validity in a practice they may feel is foolish at best and diabolical at worst. It seems to me that Samarin has found another case in which the truth about a controversial practice lies neither with the proponents nor with opponents but somewhere between.

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