In the Jewish background, four strands contributed something to the idea of the word. (1) To Jews, a word was far more than a mere sound; it was something which had an independent existence and which actually did things. As Professor John Paterson, in his book The Goodly Fellowship of the Prophets, has put it: ‘The spoken word to the Hebrew was fearfully alive … It was a unit of energy charged with power. It flies like a bullet to its billet.’ For that very reason, the Hebrew