Acts 2:13

[chbrooking]

Do you think the reason some accused them of being drunk is because they were just hearing babbling noises?

That is, there is no question that this is a speaking miracle. But there are some indications that a miraculous hearing was happening as well. Was the Spirit (only) interpreting to those who had ears to hear, but the reprobate left out of the interpretation? Or did everyone hear the same message, the accusation of drunkenness stemming from their rejection of the message as a silly one?

 

[Contra_Mundum]

If you happen upon a crowd of people, who look like the natives (and you speak the native language, perhaps exclusively) and they are all talking, and different sounds are coming from all of them. In fact, haven't you've been to synagogue with that guy over there...? it would seem like the whole lot of them were nutters. You don't recognize those sounds as a "language." It isn't as though the different talkers are all using similar sounds or syntax. It was a new "Babel" as far as the outsider went.

But it was, essentially, a Babel-reverse. There were people in Jerusalem from all over, and apparently God had brought many of them to proximity of this event, and they were hearing the speakers in their native tongues! But these people look like native Jews. How is it that so many languages and peoples are represented here by these speakers?

I won't say that there couldn't have been "miraculous hearing" going on, but it seems clear from the text that the languages were true, and the native speakers as strangers in Jerusalem nevertheless heard the gospel proclaimed in their own languages.