or electric sparks from a sultry atmosphere, and the glossolalia into a praying of each in his own
vernacular, instead of the sacred old Hebrew, or assumes that some of the disciples knew several
foreign dialects before and used them on the occasion. So Paulus, Thiess, Schulthess, Kuinöl,
Schrader, Fritzsche, substantially also Renan, who dwells on the violence of Oriental thunderstorms,
but explains the glossolalia differently according to analogous phenomena of later times. This view
makes the wonder of the spectators and hearers at such an ordinary occurrence a miracle. It robs
them of common sense, or charges dishonesty on the narrator. It is entirely inapplicable to the
glossolalia in Corinth, which must certainly be admitted as an historical phenomenon of frequent
occurrence in the apostolic church. It is contradicted by the comparative ὥσπερ andὡσείof the
narrative, which distinguishes the sound from ordinary wind and the tongues of flame from ordinary
fire; just as the words, "like a dove," to which all the Gospels compare the appearance of the Holy
Spirit at Christ’s baptism, indicate that no real dove is intended.
(2) The modern rationalistic or mythical theory resolves the miracle into a subjective vision
which was mistaken by the early Christians for an objective external fact. The glossolalia of Pentecost
(not that in Corinth, which is acknowledged as historical) symbolizes the true idea of the
universalness of the gospel and the Messianic unification of languages and nationalities (εἶς λαὸς
Κυρίου καὶ γλῶσσα μία as the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs expresses it). It is an imitation
of the rabbinical fiction (found already in Philo) that the Sinaitic legislation was proclaimed through
the bath-kol, the echo of the voice of God, to all nations in the seventy languages of the world. So
Zeller (Contents and Origin of the Acts, I. 203–205), who thinks that the whole pentecostal fact, if
it occurred at all. "must have been distorted beyond recognition in our record." But his chief argument
is: "the impossibility and incredibility of miracles," which he declares (p. 175, note) to be "an
axiom" of the historian; thus acknowledging the negative presupposition or philosophical prejudice
which underlies his historical criticism. We hold, on the contrary, that the historian must accept
the facts as he finds them, and if he cannot explain them satisfactorily from natural causes or
subjective illusions, he must trace them to supernatural forces. Now the Christian church, which
is certainly a most palpable and undeniable fact, must have originated in a certain place, at a certain
time, and in a certain manner, and we can imagine no more appropriate and satisfactory account
of its origin than that given by Luke. Baur and Zeller think it impossible that three thousand persons
should have been converted in one day and in one place. They forget that the majority of the hearers
were no skeptics, but believers in a supernatural revelation, and needed only to be convinced that
Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah. Ewald says against Zeller, without naming him (VI.
119) "Nothing can be more perverse than to deny the historical truth of the event related in Acts
2." We hold with Rothe (Vorlesungen über Kirchengeschichte I. 33) that the Pentecostal event was
a real miracle ("ein eigentliches Wunder"), which the Holy Spirit wrought on the disciples and
which endowed them with the power to perform miracles (according to the promise, Mark 16:17,
18). Without these miraculous powers Christianity could not have taken hold on the world as it
then stood. The Christian church itself, with its daily experiences of regeneration and conversion
at home and in heathen lands, is the best living and omnipresent proof of its supernatural origin.
III. Time and Place, of Pentecost. Did it occur on a Lord’s Day (the eighth after Easter), or
on a Jewish Sabbath? In a private house, or in the temple? We decide for the Lord’s Day, and for
a private house. But opinions are much divided, and the arguments almost equally balanced.
(1) The choice of the day in the week depends partly on the interpretation of "the morrow
after the (Passover) Sabbath" from which the fiftieth day was to be counted, according to theA.D. 1-100.