<p>14:2<i> For he that speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God. For no one understands, but in the Spirit he speaks mysteries-</i> I take this to be a description of how things were at Corinth, rather than a description of what true speaking in tongues was like. It is a criticism of the situation at Corinth rather than a general statement. <i>The Songs Of The Sabbath Sacrifice </i>was a document used in the Qumran community, claiming that the Angelic choirs of praise to God were reflected in the praises of the Qumran community. They saw themselves as praising God with the &quot;tongues of Angels&quot;. A similar idea can be found in the <i>Testament Of Job</i>, which also uses the term &quot;tongues of Angels&quot; to describe how the praises of Job's daughters matched those of the Angels in Heaven. These two apocryphal writings include many phrases which are used by Paul in his argument against how the Corinthians were abusing the idea of 'speaking in tongues': &quot;understand all mysteries (1 Cor. 13:2)... in a spirit speaks mysteries (1 Cor. 14:2)... speaking unto God (1 Cor. 14:2)... sing with the Spirit (1 Cor. 14:15)... bless with the spirit (1 Cor. 14:16)... hath a psalm (1 Cor. 14:26)&quot;. It would seem therefore that the Gentile Corinthians were influenced by apostate Jewish false teachers, who were encouraging them to use ecstatic utterance with the claim that they were speaking with &quot;tongues of Angels&quot;.&nbsp; And Paul's response is to guide them back to the purpose of the gift of tongues- which was to preach in foreign languages. My point in this context is that even in the Gentile church at Corinth, there was significant influence from Jewish false teachers. So it's no surprise to find that in the area of the nature and person of the Lord Jesus, which was the crucial issue in the new religion of Christianity, there would also be such influence by Jewish thinking. I have noted elsewhere, especially on the letter to Titus, that immoral Gentile Christians found Judaism and legalism attractive- keeping a few Jewish laws was felt to justify their living without any moral compass in other parts of their lives.</p>