found in 1 Corinthians 12–14, especially in chapter 14. Although arguments
from silence are not necessarily decisive, the lack of references to this ritual in
other writings of the New Testament (with the notable exception of three
occurrences in Acts) and the great importance it receives in the Corinthian
case suggest a certain tendency:^4 either a community practices glossolalia and
esteems it highly or it does not practice it at all. Practicing a little glossolalia
now and then is certainly not the way we know this ritual from historical
evidence (Goodman, 2005). Based on the results of the Newberg experiment,
we can identify glossolalia with resonant religious experience and conclude
that the resonant style was important for at least some of the Corinthians.^5
From several passages in both Corinthian epistles it appears that the
congregation also practiced other kinds of rituals that could nurture resonant
religious experience, such as healing, performing miracles, and prophecy
(1 Cor. 12–14). How closely these other rituals can be associated with the
resonant style of religiosity is not easy to determine because we do not yet have
neuroimaging data about such rituals. We can make at least some prelimin-
ary observations about prophecy in Corinth, based on Paul’swarning
that prophets should not speak simultaneously but take turns (1 Cor.
14:29–32, 39–40). Paul’s remarks suggest that people were lacking conscious
control when they were prophesizing, which in terms of neurological
correlates means the deactivation of executive areas in the frontal lobes.
Participation in prophecy as a collective ritual probably involved an
involuntary synchronization of behavior by means of“emotion sharing”or
“emotional contagion”(Decety, 2007, pp. 250–6; cf. Merker, 2000; Konvalinka
et al., 2011; Kawasaki et al., 2013). Future neuroscientific research will hopefully
provide further data about the style of religious experience occurring in these
rituals.
Previous descriptions of the thought-world of the Corinthians employ a
variety of categories and adjectives, such as enthusiasm, Gnosticism, Hellen-
istic Jewish wisdom, Jewish apocalypticism, and spiritualism (cf. Oh-Young,
2010). How one characterizes the theology of the Corinthians largely depends
on how one connects theological ideas to the problem of “factions.”For
example, one can proceed from the idea of a basic socioeconomic division
and attribute some beliefs to the rich and others to the poor. Further, one
can try to arrange the ethical problems raised in the central chapters of 1
Corinthians along this bipartite model. For instance, rich people would em-
phasize wisdom, eat meat from pagan sacrifice, and celebrate the Eucharist
(^4) There is no mention of glossolalia as a routinely practiced ritual in Acts. In all three passages
(Acts 2:4, 10:46, 19:6), speaking in tongues occurs when someone receives the Holy Spirit.
(^5) Using data from her ownfieldwork in various cultural contexts, Felicitas Goodman
(Goodman, 2005, p. 3505) demonstrated the fundamental continuity of glossolalia across
cultures (including different religious traditions). Contemporary experimental data is thus
relevant for understanding glossolalia in ancient Corinth.
152 Cognitive Science and the New Testament