Antiquitopia

"So did Creusa cry; her wailing filled my father's house. But even then there comes a sudden omen--wonderful to tell: between the hands, before the faces of his grieving parents, over Iulus' head there leaps a lithe flametip that seems to shed a radiance; the tongue of fire flickers, harmless, a plays about his soft hair, grazes his temples. Shuddering in our alarm, we rush to shake the flames out of his hair and quench the holy fire with water. But Anchises raised his glad eyes to the stars and lifted heavenward his voice and hands: 'O Jupiter, all-able one, if you are moved by any prayers, look on us. I only ask you this: if by our goodness we merit it, then, Father, grant to us your help and let your sign confirm these omens.'" (Virgil, Aeneid 2.920-937; trans. Mandelbaum; cf. Fitzgerald translation in which the line numbering is 2.888-901) When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven li...

Sitting one Sunday in a Pentecostal service, I listened as someone began to “speak in tongues.” Such occurrences have a strange effect on me. I grew up in this church, and have noticed a sharp decline in the past decade or so of people speaking in tongues (and a slight recent resurgence), and so, at least psychologically, there is a strange feeling of comfort, of reminiscences of my childhood when such utterances occasionally occur. I care much less for the so-called “interpretation” afterwards, the attempt to make this excitable speech intelligible. It always seems like a betrayal of that speech, which, as excitable, should remain unknowable. At the same time, I am a scholar of religion. I cannot but think about that this is a phenomenon that occurs in multiple contexts throughout the world, whether a Shaman on the Eurasian Steppes (you can also see it in the movie Kundun , about the life of the current Dalai Lama), the Pythia in ancient Delphi, or a Pentecostal service in twent...