Acts 2:5-13

The Effect on Outsiders. The visitation has taken place in a house, but the noise is heard, not the speaking with tongues, all over the town; a crowd collects, made up of pious and thoughtful men, Jews of various lands, now dwelling at Jerusalem. Guided to the spot they stayed there in wonder, because each of them heard these Galileans, men of rude dialect, speaking the language of the country to which he belonged. The following catalogue of countries or of peoples goes round the map from the east to Judæ a, then to Rome by Asia Minor and by Egypt and North Africa, then come Jews again, but as the counterpart of proselytes, not as a nation; at the end Cretes and Arabians. Not counting the Jews, nor the Cretes and Arabians, who might be put in afterwards for completeness, there are twelve kinds of foreigners; and they all hear the Christians speaking in their own language. If the linguist inquires how many languages were necessary that each of these might hear his own, the reply is that Greek was understood by the educated all over the Empire; if the people in question were all Jews (Acts 2:5) Greek was enough for them all. The gift of tongues as set before us in 1 Corinthians 1:4 * has nothing to do with different languages, and the speech of Peter which follows says nothing of this. The narrative is accordingly symbolical; it conveys the idea that the Gospel, now preached for the first time, was destined for all nations, and that the Spirit was able to make all nations hear and understand it. Another opinion expressed in the crowd of wondering hearers, was that the phenomenon was due to intoxication. Paul (1 Corinthians 14:27 f.) tells us that the person who exercised the gift of tongues was generally unintelligible and unedifying, and therefore should have an interpreter. The above verdict might naturally occur to unsympathetic hearers, and the early Christians might often hear it, in connexion with these ecstatic utterances (p. 648).