You’ve got to hand it to Jude; we may not know much about him, but he could certainly could knock out a good doxology when he needed to. Sure, being inspired by the Holy Spirit has got to help, but of all the New Testament doxologies the one that Jude concludes his mini-letter with is probably my favourite.
For the next few editions of the end word we’re going to be looking at New Testament endings, beginning with Jude’s sign-off piece.
You only have to look at the word “doxol-ogy” to know that its roots are in an ancient, now dead language, and in fact it has its ori-gins in two such – ecclesiastical Greek and medieval Latin – and has a meaning that’s something along the lines of “words that glo-rify” or “a saying that gives glory”. They’re expressions of praise that give glory to God which often function as encouragements to groups of believers at the back end of New Testament epistles, and many of them have found their way into our (formal or infor-mal) liturgies for public worship.
What’s in a word?
I love words. Not only are some of them inherently beautiful, but I’m fascinated by the way we create sounds …