Bible Linguistics – 8. The Bible is a treasure house of linguistics

Bible Linguistics – 8. The Bible is a treasure house of linguistics

The Bible talks a lot about language. Although the Bible is not a linguistics book, it is explained by devoting a lot of space to language and language-related stories. The origin and derivation of language, the relationship between God and language, and even tongues as a foreign language, are in many ways directly and indirectly related to God's human redemptive work. The 400 years of the Middle Ages of the New Testament and the Old Testament were periods when God prepared Jesus Christ, and through the rise and fall of the 5th Empire, we can realize the providence of God who made Greek as a world language. Mark 7:31–35 says that when Jesus healed a deaf and stutterer at Lake Galilee, “Jesus put his fingers in the sick ears, spit his hands on his tongue, and said to him,'Evada'. His tongue was released and the words became clear.” The Greek word for “closed” here is “demos,” meaning “bondage, noose.” When Jesus released bondage, his mouth was opened. This suggests that our language, including foreign languages, can eventually be opened by God.

Dialect as a foreign language is, of course, the gift of God. The apostle Paul himself was an intellectual who studied at the highest level of the Pharisees of his day, and, as he himself said, was a man with "a gift of good foreign language." However, in the apostolic era, there were a lot of foreign tongues. There are 4 instances in Acts alone. The apostle Paul also positively describes such dialects on the premise that there are tongues in foreign languages ​​in 1 Corinthians. The foreign language ability has the foreign language ability at the intellectual level acquired through one's own efforts, and the foreign language ability at the spiritual level obtained by the Holy Spirit. In the case of Paul, there is strong evidence presumed to be fluent in dozens of languages ​​with intellectual acquisition and spiritual language skills.

In 1 Corinthians 12, the Holy Spirit gives nine gifts (wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment, tongues, translation) for the common good. The four uses of 1 Corinthians 12 “tongues”, namely 12:10(x2), 28, 30, are all used in plural, making it apparent that they are “tongues as gifts” as in Acts. . By analogy with this, it should be considered that the foreign tongues used in plural in 1 Corinthians were more than just “the ability to speak a foreign language well”, but rather the ability to “learn not at all” as a gift of the Holy Spirit. However, given that Paul in 14:18 says, "Thanks to God for speaking more tongues than anyone else," Paul's brilliant foreign language ability was largely due to his excellent level of knowledge. It may have been learned through learning, but it suggests that some foreign languages ​​were given as gifts and would have been used in his extensive missionary work. In addition to this, there are many other stories about language in the Bible. In the Biblical Linguistics Series, we'll talk about these in turn. I encourage you to dive into the abyss of linguistics through the Bible.

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