Preaching (from Latin praedicatio, “proclamation”) denotes public proclamation in the setting of Christian worship. It can be divided into two genres: (1) the homily (Greek homilía; Latin tractatus, “speech,” “exposition”), that is, the interpretation of previously read Bible texts (“lections”) – a practice adopted by Christianity from Judaism – and (2) the sermon (Latin sermo, “speech”), which develops a topic systematically and is based on the church y…