Speaking in Tongues: What Changes Without Acts?

The Traditional View

If you grew up in church — especially a Pentecostal or charismatic one — you know how the story of tongues goes. It starts with a dramatic scene in Jerusalem:

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. — Acts 2:4 (ASV)

About 120 disciples in an upper room. Tongues of fire. Speaking in languages they'd never learned. Devout Jews from across the Roman world — Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Egyptians, Romans — hearing Galilean fishermen praising God in their native languages.

It happens again with Cornelius (Acts 10:44-46) and again in Ephesus (Acts 19:6). Three events. Jews, Gentiles, then a transitional group. Each time, tongues is the visible sign that the Holy Spirit has arrived. This is what Pentecostal theology calls "the initial physical evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit."

And in the longer ending of Mark, Jesus himself promises it: "they shall speak with new tongues" (Mark 16:17).

Were All "Tongues" the Same?

Before examining what changes in the UPDV, there's a question most readers never encounter: were the tongues at Pentecost the same phenomenon Paul discusses in 1 Corinthians?

A dominant stream of scholarship argues they were not.

At Pentecost, the tongues were recognizable foreign languages — the crowd heard Galileans speaking in their native tongues. The Cambridge Greek Testament concludes that Luke's description is "very plain" — the disciples spoke recognizable foreign languages.¹ Calvin argues that "the disciples spake indeed with strange tongues; otherwise the miracle had not been wrought in them, but in the hearers."²

At Corinth, Paul describes something different. "He who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men, but to God; for no man understands" (1 Cor 14:2). Unintelligible without interpretation — the opposite of Pentecost. Leon Morris notes directly that "this gift differs from that in Acts 2, where everyone understood."³

The scholarly terms: xenolalia (speaking known foreign languages, as at Pentecost) versus glossolalia (unintelligible speech requiring interpretation, as at Corinth). Not all scholars accept this distinction — some argue Acts and 1 Corinthians describe the same gift in different contexts. But if the distinction holds, it matters enormously for what happens when Acts is removed.

What the UPDV Changes

The Updated Bible Version excludes Acts entirely and ends Mark at verse 8.

Acts is excluded because the UPDV translators conclude that while Acts is generally based on historical people and events, many of its details appear to be created. Their case rests on writing style discrepancies between Luke and Acts (e.g., dramatically different frequencies of common Greek words like τε and ἀνήρ), contradictions with Paul's own account of events (compare Galatians 1:11-2:10 with the corresponding Acts narrative), significant unsubstantiated material not found in Paul's letters even when expected, and similarities between portions of Acts and Greco-Roman literary conventions.¹⁴

Mark's longer ending (verses 9-20) is excluded because the earliest Greek manuscripts — Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus — end Mark at 16:8. The ICC commentary identifies 19 words and 2 phrases in verses 9-20 found nowhere else in Mark.⁴ The UBS Handbook concludes: "The conclusion is irresistible: the Longer Ending is not by Mark."⁵

Here is where Mark ends in the UPDV:

And they went out, and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them. And they said nothing to anyone; for they were afraid. — Mark 16:8 (UPDV)

What Survives

Paul's entire discussion of tongues in 1 Corinthians 12-14 — the longest and most detailed teaching on tongues anywhere in the Bible — is fully intact. Every verse. Nothing missing.

Here's the picture a UPDV reader gets:

• Tongues is a genuine gift of the Spirit, listed among many (1 Cor 12:7-11)
• It's listed last — the UBS Handbook confirms this ordering "probably suggests an order of importance"⁶
• Not everyone has it — "Do all speak with tongues?" expects "no" (1 Cor 12:30)
• Prophecy is consistently ranked higher (1 Cor 14:1-5)
• Two or three speakers maximum, take turns, must have an interpreter, or stay silent (1 Cor 14:27-28)
• It's a sign for unbelievers, not believers (1 Cor 14:22)
• But don't forbid it (1 Cor 14:39)

But the picture is not only restrictive. Paul's personal relationship with the gift is strikingly positive. "I thank God, I speak with tongues more than all of you" (1 Cor 14:18). He wishes all believers had the gift (1 Cor 14:5). He describes private tongues as genuine communion with God — "he who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men, but to God; for no man understands; but in the spirit he speaks mysteries" (1 Cor 14:2). Morris calls this "a good gift" and notes that Paul "consistently refuses to speak disparagingly" of it.⁷ Self-edification through tongues is presented as real and valuable — "he who speaks in a tongue edifies himself" (1 Cor 14:4) — not as a criticism.

What Paul restricts is public worship. "In the church I would rather speak five words with my understanding, that I might instruct others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue" (1 Cor 14:19). The two-or-three rule, the requirement for interpretation, the command to stay silent without an interpreter — all of these apply to the assembled church. When Paul says "let him speak to himself, and to God" (1 Cor 14:28), the Pulpit Commentary reads this as "in his private devotions (as St. Paul himself seems to have done); not in the public assembly."⁸

This is not a man trying to stamp out tongues. This is a man who practices the gift extensively in private, thanks God for it, and wishes all believers shared it — but who insists that in public worship, intelligibility and edification take priority.

Paul also anchors the phenomenon of tongues in the Old Testament. In 1 Corinthians 14:21, he quotes Isaiah 28:11-12: "By men of strange tongues and by the lips of strangers I will speak to this people." With Acts and Mark 16 gone, this becomes the only prophetic or historical anchor for tongues in the entire UPDV — a passage from Isaiah, quoted by Paul, establishing that God's use of unintelligible speech has roots in Israel's own prophetic tradition.

Paul also mentions "the tongues of men and of angels" in 1 Corinthians 13:1 — a verse some Charismatic scholars read as evidence for a heavenly prayer language. Most commentators, however, read this as rhetorical hyperbole — part of a series of escalating hypotheticals ("if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains") meant to illustrate the supremacy of love, not to establish a doctrine of angelic speech.⁹

One other surviving text deserves brief mention. In Romans 8:26, Paul writes that "the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which can't be uttered." Some scholars connect these groanings to the phenomenon of tongues — or at least to non-rational Spirit-led prayer — giving Charismatic theology a possible anchor for private prayer language outside 1 Corinthians.¹⁰ Others reject the connection, arguing that the groanings in Romans 8 are the Spirit's own intercession, not audible human speech.¹¹

How the Understanding Shifts

The doctrine of tongues isn't removed in the UPDV. But the shape of the understanding changes.

The only narrative record of intelligible tongues disappears. If the scholarly distinction holds — Pentecost as known languages, Corinth as unintelligible utterance — then removing Acts removes the only biblical account of tongues as recognizable human speech. What survives is exclusively Paul's description of the form that "no man understands." This doesn't mean Paul's text rules out intelligible tongues — he mentions "tongues of men" alongside "tongues of angels" (1 Cor 13:1) — but there is no surviving narrative showing it happened, and the textual support for it from Paul alone is not strong.

The origin story and the pattern disappear. No Pentecost. No tongues of fire. No scene of 120 people speaking languages they'd never learned. No repetition at Cornelius and Ephesus that Pentecostal theology relies upon to establish tongues as the normative sign of the Spirit's arrival.

Jesus's promise disappears. Mark 16:17 is the only place Jesus directly connects belief with tongues-speaking. Without the longer ending, there is no command or promise from Jesus linking tongues to the believer's experience.

Paul's teaching — both affirming and regulating — becomes the entire picture. Without the Acts backdrop, a reader encounters tongues for the first time in 1 Corinthians 12, where Paul is addressing a church that's overemphasizing it in public worship. But that same reader also finds Paul thanking God for his own extensive practice of the gift, wishing all believers shared it, and affirming its value for private communion with God. The UBS Handbook frames the section as Paul addressing "the Corinthians' tendency to put too high a value on the more exotic gifts of the Spirit, especially speaking with tongues"¹² — but the Handbook also notes that Paul "would like all believers to speak in tongues."¹³

Pentecostal theology — which teaches tongues as the initial evidence of Spirit baptism, available to all — depends heavily on Acts 2, 10, 19, and Mark 16:17. Without these, the framework shifts from "tongues is the evidence that the Spirit has arrived" to "tongues is one of several gifts the Spirit distributes as he wills — and not the most important one."

This doesn't make Pentecostal theology impossible from the UPDV text. But the question is whether a reader encountering these texts fresh would arrive at the same understanding that two thousand years of tradition has built on Acts and the epistles together.

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This is part of a series examining how the UPDV's textual decisions affect the understanding of specific doctrines.

Data source: Thompson Chain Reference topic analysis cross-referenced against UPDV excluded passages. Of 7 Thompson Chain references for "Tongues," 4 (57%) are in excluded passages.

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Notes

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