ABSTRACT
The disciples, then, can be pictured worshipping together in a large room within the Temple precincts shortly before the official hour of prayer. Some of those in the Temple on the fringes of the crowds, not understanding any language they heard spoken and seeing only the ecstasy, in its effects not unlike intoxication, accused the disciples of being drunk. Christians, as well as others, have misunderstood the record and thought that tongues were given miraculously so that the first missionaries could preach to all nations in their own languages. There are literally hundreds of cases known to students of medicine and abnormal psychology in which patients in trance, ecstasy or delirium have spoken with astonishing fluency languages of which they were ignorant in their normal state. Acts nowhere suggests that the speakers in tongues understood what they were saying or that they were given a supernatural knowledge of foreign languages.
