Shabbat (mostly)

[cellio]

We sometimes have baby namings at Shabbat services

Comments

Speaking in Tongues

[patsmor]

Someone said that the Christian denomination whose members sometimes "speak in tongues" are basing that on this. Apparently (and I welcome correction here!), the idea is that when God talks to you it transcends language, and you say things that sound like coherent text to you but gibberish to everyone else. I'd heard of speaking in tongues before, of course, but didn't know it was tied to the idea of prophecy. (I wasn't sure what it was.) I always thought the point of prophecy was to convey God's words to everyone else (the prophet is just a vehicle), which would require doing so in a language your listeners understand. If this description of speaking in tongues is correct, that seems to be something that's about the speaker personally (and God), not about a message to the community.

When I belonged to a Baptist Church where the members spoke in tongues, briefly, when I was a teenager, it worked exactly as described above. According to our minister, sometimes the one who was touched by the Holy Ghost and spoke in tongues was speaking

Re: Speaking in Tongues

[patsmor]

That is, when I briefly belonged to a congregation. Sometimes the speaking went on for up to half an hour.

Re: Speaking in Tongues

[cellio]

That does sound...awkward. Thanks for the reply. I've never seen anything like that; my relatives are mostly Catholic with some Greek Orthodox in one branch, and those are mostly the services I've attended. There are, or were, some Presbyterians too, but I never had much contact with their services. Exposure to anything else mainly comes through friends' weddings, and so far that set of experiences hasn't included Baptist. (I assume that a wedding would be different than a regular Sunday service, though -- it's impolite to steal attention from the bride and groom, right?)

Re: Speaking in Tongues

[patsmor]

Depends on the preacher, m'dear. The "homily" that some pentecostal and evangelic ministers give at weddings can go on for a very long time, but most of the time it's short, reminds us all that adultery is bad and that we are there to support the new family, and then things get along with.

I think my exploration through denominations (and finally settling on Thelema) have a great deal to do with my need for ritual and my need for Gnosticism and self-affirmation; I was happy with the tiny Episcopalian church (about 30 people) because the rituals were so intimate. However, eventually (post first marriage and 7 years of non-church attendance), I went looking for something with both ritual and being touched immediately by the godhead. Speaking in tongues wasn't it.

[kayre]

I always thought the point of prophecy was to convey God's words to everyone else (the prophet is just a vehicle), which would require doing so in a language your listeners understand. If this description of speaking in tongues is correct, that seems to be something that's about the speaker personally (and God), not about a message to the community. In the writings by Paul, when he talks about speaking in tongues, he does understand it as prophecy-- but also insists that if there's no one present with the gift of interpreting, those gifted with tongues should not speak. Funny how that part gets ignored today! (1 Corinthians 14, if you want to follow up

[cellio]

In the writings by Paul, when he talks about speaking in tongues, he does understand it as prophecy-- but also insists that if there's no one present with the gift of interpreting, those gifted with tongues should not speak.

Ah, so it's a two-part message -- speaker and interpreter both required. Interesting. Thanks!

[cellio]

I'm not sure if the place actually changed owners this time. The place mats asid "Zen Garden" on them, while the napkins, menu, and sign said "Hunan Kitchen", and they retained a non-trivial number of dishes from ZG's menu. I'm guessing they decided they need to add meat to survive, and that they thought a name change would get people to notice a menu change.

But that location is definitely a revolving door for restaurants -- Hunan Garden is the fourth I've seen in that spot, three of which sprang up since we bought our house here five years ago. (At least I think Zeb's replaced Sweet Basil after we got here; I'm not certain of that.)

Dani and I were speculating about this last night. It would be easy to blame it on high rents on that street -- it's customary for businesses to get deep discounts for the first year or two -- except that other restaurants on the street seem to have longer staying power -- even bad ones like How Lee a couple doors up. My working hypothesis is that the building is cursed. :-)

[goljerp]

The text tells us that in addition to the seventy, there were two men -- Eldad and Medad -- who also got in on this, though they didn't join the others at the tent of meeting. Joshua hears about this and gets upset, apparently because they're encroaching on Moshe's territory or something.

The drash that I've heard about this is that Eldad and Medad were supposed to be part of the 70 elders, but that both were extremely modest. So when Eldad heard his name called out, he thought they meant Medad, and vice-versa.

[cellio]

Interesting. So were there 70, 68 who gathered and two who did not, or 72?

[goljerp]

Good question. I always thought of it as the former. Rashi, however, thinks otherwise: he says that there were 70 people, six from each tribe. But 12 * 6 = 72, so you really need 6 people from 10 tribes, and 5 people from 2 tribes. But what tribe is going to agree to have less elders? So Moses, according to Rashi, took 72 ballots, and wrote "Elder" on 70 of them, and "Blank" on two. He chose 6 from each tribe, and had each one draw ballots. Rashi seems to think (or perhaps I'm misinterpreting what he says) that Eldad and Medad were the two "leftover" ones. Or, wait, does he? I'm not sure.

Re: Glossolalia

[siderea]

What?! You haven't read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson?! Get thee to amazon.com and remedy this post haste. How can you not love a high-speed SF cyberpunk book about hackers, Pentacostalism, and ancient Babylon.

Ï

Re: Glossolalia

[cellio]

Thanks for the recommendation. I'm a slow reader who has problems with the smaller of the common fonts used in paperbacks; there are lots of good books I haven't read until I get recommendations. And actually, I think the remedy is closer than Amazon; I think we have that one upstairs in the SF library. Easy enough to check.