Verse 2
Many of the Corinthian believers had been pagans. Various influences had led them away from worship of the true God and into idolatry.
"Corinth was experience-oriented and self-oriented. Mystery religions and other pagan cults were in great abundance, from which cults many of the members at the Corinthian church received their initial religious instruction. After being converted they had failed to free themselves from pagan attitudes and they confused the true work of the Spirit of God with the former pneumatic and ecstatic experiences of the pagan religions, especially the Dionysian mystery or the religion of Apollo." [Note: H. Wayne House, "Tongues and the Mystery Religions of Corinth," Bibliotheca Sacra 140:558 (April-June 1983):147-48.]
Dumb idols are idols that do not speak in contrast with the living God who does speak. Paul previously said that demons are behind the worship of idols (1 Corinthians 10:20). He did not say that the prophecy or glossolalia (speaking in tongues) being spoken in the Corinthian church proceeded from demonic sources. He only reminded his readers that there are "inspired" utterances that come from sources other than the Holy Spirit. Probably some of them had spoken in tongues when they were pagans.
"In classical [Greek] literature, Apollo was particularly renowned as the source of ecstatic utterances, as on the lips of Cassandra of Troy, the priestess of Delphi or the Sibyl of Cumae (whose frenzy as she prophesied under the god’s control is vividly described by Virgil); at a humbler level the fortune-telling slave-girl of Acts 16:16 was dominated by the same kind of ’pythonic’ spirit." [Note: Bruce, 1 and 2 Corinthians, p. 117.]
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