N ancy F arriss . Tongues of Fire

Nancy Farriss takes the title of Tongues of Fire: Language and Evangelization in Colonial Mexico from Acts 2:3, which states that “tongues of fire” appeared above the heads of Christ’s apostles when the Holy Spirit empowered them to preach the gospel in diverse languages. The Dominican friars charged with evangelizing the Southern Mexican region of Oaxaca had to learn to speak and write the necessary languages without such a miraculous intervention, yet their achievement, accomplished through immersion, careful study, and collaboration with native speakers, was astonishing nevertheless. Oaxaca is one of the most linguistically diverse regions in the world, and the Otomanguean languages that predominate there, which are both tonal and syntactically complex, are particularly arduous for outsiders to master. Hence the linguistic barrier to evangelization was less easily breached than, for instance, in the large regions where Nahuatl or Yucatec Mayan reigned as the principal language. Friars in all of Spanish America faced also a second problem: how to convey Christian doctrine using words that were grounded in a wholly alien cosmology, moral system, and social order. This proved a difficult and in many ways futile endeavor whatever language served as the vehicle for evangelization. Meticulously researched and engagingly written, Farriss’s book tracks the friars’ methods, successes, and failures as they sought to meet these dual challenges. Within Oaxaca, Farriss’s principal expertise lies in Zapotec language, history, and ethnography, but she gives ample attention as well to Mixtec and other local languages

Apostles · Archaeology · Art · Colonialism · Doctrine · Ethnography · Gospel · Linguistics · Literature · Nahuatl · Sociology · Theology · Anthropology · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Philosophy