This is how that very same Bible passage used to read:

“Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl posessed with a spirit of ventrilioquism met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling.”

Valentine Vox says the older Bible’s quote is actually closer to the original translation. The original Greek and Aramaeic texts uses the Latin words ventre and loquie which are today the root words for our modern English word ‘ventriloquist’. Literally speaking they mean 'stomach-talker', since the early Romans believed that all sound for speech came up from the belly and was only controlled by the larynx and neck muscles. The Romans were wrong of course, but it didn’t stop anyone with training or natural talent in ventriloquism from ‘throwing their voice’.

The truth is ventriloquism, like ‘magic’, was once percieved as an occult and mystical art; and one that was used by Paegan holy men and others to influence a superstitious populace. (In speaking to the dead, the word 'ventriloquism' used in that time was interchangable with 'necromancy'.) The art of it was definitely taught to the ancient Egyptian priests during the heyday of the Temple of Karnak to make unearthly voices come from idols or trees and such. Imagine, in a world long, long ago, and a thousand years before the technology of radio and TV, that a young woman such as the one who hounded Paul, suddenly dropped to the ground, thrashed around, growled, and then let loose with voices unlike her own - and without moving her face to make the words.

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