ABSTRACT

It is easy to glide over the first part of 1 Peter 4:11, ‘Whoever speaks, as one who utters oracles of God’, without having our attention tweaked. In fact, this, from the RSV is a good rendition of the Greek words εἴ τις λαλεῖ, ὡς λόγια θεοῦ. But the word λόγια, very exactly ‘oracles’, points to a properly mysterious world. Typically we imagine oracles from their pagan sources, like that of Delphos, where the priestess would make mysterious utterances concerning the future. However, in the Hebrew world the words of the prophets are also called ‘oracles’, by which something very special is understood. Of Moses it is said: ὃς ἐδέξατο λόγια ζῶντα δοῦναι ἡμῖν – ‘he received living oracles so as to give them to us’.2 And of the Jews in general it is said that ἐπιστεύθησαν τὰ λόγια τοῦ θεοῦ – ‘to them were entrusted the oracles of God’.3