In 2019, seminarians at my institution reported being pressured to attend charismatic meetings to learn to ‘speak in tongues’ and receive ‘Spirit baptism’. The rector formed a commission, and the pressuring momentarily ceased. Having no background in the subject, curiosity led me to devote an entire sabbatical to it in 2020.
This research led me to Charles Sullivan, a Canadian linguist with a fluent reading knowledge of Latin and Greek, as well as Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac, which he studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. With a 30-year background of involvement in the Pentecostal movement, Sullivan initially sought support for the Pentecostal practice of glossolalia as a ‘personal prayer language’ by combing through electronic databases of patristic sources in the original languages, such as Migne’s Patrologia Graeca and Patrologia Latina, and Syriac sources. To his dismay, however, he found no such support.
