Dubbing his work "a prehistory, rather than a history, of preaching," Stewart-Sykes (Vicar of Sturminster Marshall, Kingston Lacy, and Shapwick; Church of England) looks at the homily as the origin of liturgical preaching. He argues that prophecy was the earliest form of Christian communication and that this took place within households. The procedure applied to prophecy was slowly, over the course of the first and second centuries, applied to scripture and much of its form was borrowed from Jewish synagogues and non-Christian schools. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)