In September 1893, the Rev. Thomas Alexander Hyde of Boston published his book Christ the Orator. The subtitle of the Rev. Hyde's work is Never Man Spake like This Man. That's a direct quote from a gospel verse in the King James version of the Bible.

A more recent version translates the passage as "No one ever spoke the way this man does." In either form, it's an accurate assessment of Jesus' talents as a speaker.

Jesus and Public Speaking

But was Jesus what we would consider today a public speaker? And if he was, at what level should we consider his public appearances?

The Rev. Hyde informed his readers that Jesus was "the Orator of the Universe." High praise, indeed—the highest! But is it justified? Below are ten reasons of my own why I believe it is. There is nothing divine about any of these speaking attributes; in fact, as speakers and presenters we can benefit from using any or all of them ourselves.

1. Speaker Credibility. A key factor in speaking persuasiveness and impact, credibility is the foundation any speaker's influence must be built upon. Audiences need to know early that they can trust what you say and open themselves to your teaching. Nothing attains this gold standard like modeling the behavior and truths you're talking about. And no one achieved that like Jesus.

2. Originality of Spoken Expression. Great speakers surprise as much as they educate. Sometimes they startle listeners by what they say. Consider the very first line of the Sermon on the Mount:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

How can the poor in spirit achieve heaven? We must ponder the meaning of this phrase to understand it, just as Jesus intended. No motivational speaker's bromides for this orator!

3. Eloquence of Speaker's Rhetoric. Time and again, the beauty of Jesus' teachings illuminates his otherwise serious statements. Just listen: "And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

4. Dramatic Statements. Speaking in public is performance, something Jesus well understood. When he appears after his resurrection, according to Luke, his apostles think they are looking at a ghost. "Why are you troubled?" Jesus asks, "and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. . . . Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones." Great pronouncements from speakers are often dramatic, as this passage certainly is.

5. Use of Metaphors. Do you speak metaphorically, using similes, comparisons, and analogies? The greatest orators use metaphors constantly to deepen meaning, mining the richness of spoken language. Jesus' genius in the use of metaphor was the parable, a Greek word meaning "comparison, illustration, or analogy." (“Parable,” Wikipedia, quoting Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus.)

6. Conciseness of Delivery. Every audience values conciseness (and today’s busy listeners love a speaker who ends early!). Jesus’ conciseness shows in the story of him teaching his elders when he was only twelve. Missing him upon the journey home after visiting Jerusalem for Passover, his parents return to the city where they find him in the Temple. Why have you treated us like this? they ask. “Why were you searching for me?” he responds. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”

7. Public Speaking Incisiveness. Jesus’ public utterances, again and again throughout the gospels, cut to the heart of the matter with penetrating psychology. “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?” “Beware of the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the marketplaces.” And “Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.”

8. Keen Audience Analysis. Few things guarantee a poor speaking performance as much as delivering content without understanding your audience’s needs. Spend all of your time on content—as many speakers do—without determining what listeners need to hear and why, and the speaker-audience interaction will be empty. Jesus not only deeply understood his audiences; he knew things about them they themselves didn’t know. We may or may not achieve that level of understanding, but we should try.

9. Compelling Message. We may think of this as “something to say.” As mundane as that may sound, it is a quality of public speaking that all great speakers embody. Jesus’ speech was worldly and otherworldly, by turns, but it always demonstrated complete authority and fearlessness of expression. When we speak with passion and total commitment, our message becomes compelling and difficult not to listen to.

10. Balance of Speech Construction. In his stories, aphorisms, parables, and searching questions, Jesus understood balance. Thesis-Antithesis was a favorite form (“Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s; and unto God what is God’s”). The Beatitudes is an example par excellence of “anaphora” or repeating words at the beginning of phrases—“Blessed are . . .” (Think of Churchill’s “We shall fight them . . .” or Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream.”) Balance is another way we understand the beauty of our language, and use it to add power and glory to what we say.

Passages quoted are from the King James version of the Bible, and the New International Version.