The Jewish Roots Of The Christian Sermon

The sermon has its unique roots in Jewish tradition and was carried on and explored in the Christian tradition, as this entry demonstrates. The Beginnings of Preaching The First Sermon. It can be said that the sermon and spoken word is at the very source and origin of the Jewish experience. Even God began his intervention in the universe with the spoken word. When God said: "Let there be light," it can be said that we have the first sermon with instant results. To be sure, historians of the Jewish sermon, qua sermon, situate the earliest sermon in the Tannaitic period, with at least one complete sermon, as such, so recorded. It is a sermon by Rabbi Eleazar ben Azaraiah, found in Hagigah 3a in the Babylonian Talmud. Abraham as Preacher. However, it is possible to suggest that Abraham, the first Jew, began his career with the spoken word. To be sure, the inference comes from an exegetical interpretation of the text, in a way that some scholars would never accept. It is my feeling …