As a lay person who has studied the bible casually for years, I have come to know by heart many things Jesus said. Most Christians do. However my interest in language study of children and then in language study of adults, has led to a fascination with the power of words.
As a teacher I of course taught students about figures of speech. I invited them to make presentations and get used to public speaking and to that end studied the skills of great speakers.
These seemed like separate pursuits. I got to admire the course by Professor John Hale about skills of outstanding speakers like Demosthenes, Gandhi, Mark Anthony, Abraham Lincoln. I realized there are indeed secrets to being memorable. Some of the advice is to practice delivery, to be yourself, to add humor, to make an argument in 3 points, to build a logical case, to share a vision, to add an element of surprise. Many wise speakers say to keep it simple, to speak in ordinary language and over history most great speakers do that.
When I studied advertising devices and memorable jingles I noticed the same speech devices. In movies and books we all remember certain lines. Simple, but for some reason clever.
Churchill’s “We will fight them on the beaches” or his “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat’ stayed in the minds of a nation.
John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country” surprised listeners by its turn and then its insight
Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream” inspired songs and marches and action.
Abe Lincoln’s goal of ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’ was easy to memorize and became a key goal of democracy.
Movies had their classic lines ‘we’re not in Kansas any more” in the Wizard of Oz or “Beam me up Scotty” from Star Trek became sayings of an entire culture.
Einstein’s “Genuis is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration’ has kept scientists encouraged scientists for the next century. “
The art of it does not need study to be memorable. But when studied, one sees the means. Shakespeare used simile, metaphor. When we say “dead as a doornail” or ‘ a heart of gold” we speak his lines. He used rhetorical questions. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” He compared people to animals, objects to people . “dead as a doornail” ‘ on a wild -goose chase”. He surprised with adjectives. “love is blind” He uses contrasts, parallels, grammar surprises. “To be or not to be?” Doubt thou the stars are fire. Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar. But never doubt I love”
He used repetition, built to a climax, used understatement. “Some are born great, Some achieve greatness. Some have greatness thrust upon them”
And Jesus, did all that, and more.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Elementary my dear Watson” amuses and is parodied even if sometimes misquoted. A culture is partly what it retains of succinct messages.
I was intrigued on an entirely separate theme, by the work of great stand up comedians. They too hold an audience, use words to lead people to surprising insights and sometimes profound ironies, with humor. The work of Woody Allen, George Burns, George Carlin, Steve Martin, Bob Newhart, Jonathan Winters, Robin Williams continues with Nate Bargatze, Gabriel Iglesias, Jim Gaffigan. They play with words, with metaphor, rhythm, even sound effects and certainly with irony.
Most people in an audience process what they hear by its logic, word play and surprise turns. We are active listeners, quick to mock and often quick to laugh in delight.
Jesus was like that, only actually before them and he was even better at it. He had a skill that I was suddenly noticing as if my eyes had been shut and were now shot open.
I decided to look at his speech style, just to see patterns for this was one of the most brilliant and remembered speakers of history. How did he attract such huge crowds, mesmerize and amuse and engage listeners?
What I discovered kind of floored me. There it was. If you take the quotes and put them into categories of actual speech devices we can label, there is absolute brilliance in what he was doing.
I wanted to look at these patterns. Some were not surprising to me- the metaphors, the parallel grammar . But some knocked me out. I had not realized what was there.
What I see is an amazing speaker trying very hard to reach us where we are, using many strategies to help us understand, even humor, and certainly using vivid images we could relate to.
The gospels were not written down for decades after Jesus died. Yet people had recalled years later not only his actions but even his exact words. They were that memorable. I wanted to study why.
This is what I found.
(The quotes are mostly from the King James Version but some are shorter from other versions. They are clipped down to the speech device in question so are not given in full context. Readers likely will know context but if not, can easily look it up. This study is about the speech style itself.)
— Beverley Smith, Canada
Speech Style of Jesus 