Acts 2:11 Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.
A dinka dee, a dinka doooo, what a voice!
What a voice, simply means
Ink, a dinka doo, a dinka dee – Jimmy Durante
I recently read the biography of Jimmy Durante. Many are familiar with the comedian, singer and all round showman with the large nose and gravel voice with the Brooklyn accent who would massacre the English language. One thing I gleaned from the biography of Jimmy Durante was that his main purpose in life or his life’s mission was to bring joy to others. You can watch him sing his signature song Inka Dinka Doo on You Tube with Harry James. You will see him extends his arms, throw back his head looking up and in pure joy sing the words Inka Dinka Doo. Or as I would say malal damar Inka Dinka Doo. Nobody knew what Inka Dinka Doo meant, not even Durante and yet everyone heard in their own language what Jimmy Durante was saying, he was speaking of joy. Music is said to be the universal language.
I remember I had a friend who went to Russia back in the seventies during the time that Christians were being persecuted, beaten and thrown into prison for just being a Christian. My friend was riding a bus in Moscow, he did not know the Russian language, he was only on a visitor’s visa and was closely watched by the Secret police. Sitting across from him on the bus was a young Russian who was smiling at him. No one smiled in Russia in those days and my friend instantly knew he was a Christian. He asked the Russian young man in what little Russian he knew if he spoke English. The young Russian man indicated no. My friend then began to sing in English How Great Thou Art a song which had its origins in Russian. As he sang he saw tears begin to flow from the young man’s eyes. This young man did not know English, but he understood the music.
Acts 2 has been the center of debate for many years in modern Christianity, although most Christians seem to have made peace with this matter of speaking in tongues and it is not as divisive as it was so many years ago, still the debate does continue. As I have said many times I am not a theologian nor a pastor. My place is not to offer dogma or doctrine, only to examine the Word of God in the ancient languages. So I am not trying to make a case for or against the matter of speaking in tongues, but to understand what was taking place in Acts 2.
There are three words that I looked at in the Aramaic, language, speak, and wonderful works. The Book of Acts was most likely written in Greek but the key players in this story were Galileans (Acts 2:7) and thus they would have spoken a Northern dialect of Aramaic. There is a list of all those who heard these disciples speak in their own mother tongue or language. The word used in Aramaic for language is lashana which really means a dialect. A dialect is a variety of languages that come from a standard language or a common ancestor. For instance, Latin and English are Indo-European dialects. All these people who heard the disciples speak a dialect of the Semitic language. So everyone heard in their own dialect what the disciples spoke. There is a rather unusual word used here for speak. The common Aramaic words for speaking is similar to the Hebrew words amar, and debar. Amar is you average every day speaking. Dabar is a speaking from the heart. Yet here we have the word malal, which is the word for circumcision, which means a cutting away, a separating. In extra Biblical literature I found malal to be more associated with something musical. Various moods are expressed in music that are not expressed in just regular talk. Music sets off certain vibrations that create feelings of joy or saddness. This is where the idea of cutting away or separating comes from. You may be feeling sad, so you put on some music that is joyful and it separates you from your sadness and fills you with joy. So it is very possible what these people were hearing in their own dialect was the disciples singing praises and joyful songs. They were likely filled with such joy and the fullness of the Spirit that they ran out into the streets and started twirling around, singing.
The third word is what really intrigued me, which is that they were singing or expressing the wonderful works of God. The word for wonderful works in the Aramaic is tedmurta which comes from a Semitic root word DMR. In Hebrew the word is zamar. This is really a joyful singing, a joyful, ecstatic utterance. It is a song of celebration and joy. In other words the disciples were singing the joyful songs of God.
The bottom line is this, I don’t know what took place but what I do know is that whatever was spoken or said, the people hearing this heard joy, unspeakable joy. They could have been singing Inka Dinka Doo but everyone would have understood it as an expression of joy, except the real cynics who said they were just drunk and everyone gets happy when drunk.
Years ago I would attend services where people spoke in tongues and having studied ancient languages would try to determine if they were really speaking a language or just babbling nonsense. But then listening to Jimmy Durante speak in tongues with his Inka Dinka Doo, I realized even if the words are nonsense, they are still words and those words mean joy. It doesn’t matter what language you speak, when you hear Jimmy Durante malal zamar Inka Dinka Doo, you recognize those words to mean pure joy and if you accept them you too become joyful.
Recent Comments