Adventures of the Early Church . . .

SYNAGOGUE: CRADLE OF THE ECCLESIA

As our Lord grew up as a boy in Nazareth his life was closely tied to the synagogue, which was then the most important institution in Judaism. The temple was only in Jerusalem, and a poor Jew did well if he visited the holy city a few times in his entire life. If Jesus was in the temple but once, he was in the synagogue every day. His growing years were centered in his home, where he also worked in his father’s shop, and in the synagogue, which was his school as well as “church.”

The synagogue was also the local court, with its elders sitting as judges. They meted out various punishments, including scourging, as is indicated in Mt. 10:17. The elders would sometimes sentence a penitent to do humiliating things. One wonders if Jesus ever watched as a penitent laid down across the door of the synagogue so that the people could step on him as they entered. We might suspect that even as a boy Jesus would step over such a one!

But the synagogue must have provided security for a Jewish child like Jesus. As the sun began to set each Friday, Jesus would hear and surely sometimes watched, as the Chazzan, the servant of the synagogue, climbed to the roof of the synagogue to blow the ram’s horn, signaling the coming of the sabbath. Life immediately changed in every devout Jewish home, for the sabbath was rigorously observed. This would include several hours of study and worship at the nearby synagogue, and there would be one in every community that had as many as ten heads of families.

As a very young man Jesus must have often served as a reader in the services, for seven males would usually read, each a few lines from the law and the prophets. Reading was a significant part of the service, and so in time the Christian church had an office of “Reader,” being influenced as it was by the synagogue. One early church father, Tertullian, complained that men move too quickly from reader to deacon, while another, Justin Martyr, in describing an early Christian service tells how “the memoirs of the apostles and the writing of the prophets are read.” Rev. 1:3, “Blessed is he that reads,” is reflective of the old synagogue practice since it refers to public reading.

The modern church and Churches of Christ in particular have been remiss in not making more of a meaningful reading of Scripture. One of my most impressive educational experiences was a course in reading while at Princeton Seminary, taught by a gifted teacher of actors who came in from New York once a week for this special course. The first thing he did was to assure the seminarians, most of whom were Presbyterians, that they did not know how to read the Bible publicly. I never forgot his tremendous lessons, most of which he taught us while we attempted to read in his presence. We spent all our time learning to read the Sermon on the Mount. It was amazing! He was not dramatic as you might think, far from it, but interpretive. “You can’t read it right until you know what it is saying,” he would tell us.

The synagogue was something like that. The president, or ruler, of the synagogue would allow only those to read publicly who had learned to do so effectively in the daily school. I’m guessing that young Jesus was an excellent, interpretive reader, and when he afterwards did so in various synagogues, once his call came, it was nothing new to him, as in Lk. 4:16, “He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read. “

It is a curious fact that in the New Testament there is more said about reading to the church than there is about preaching to the church. There is considerable of the former and none of the latter! If we had readers with the skill of old Dr. Wheeler of Princeton, people would hasten to the assembly just to hear the Scriptures come alive. Again, this must be part of what attracted the God-fearers to the synagogues, Gentiles who were interested to Judaism because of its moral teachings. They were part of “the door” that God opened to the Gentiles for the envoys of Christ, as in Acts 16:13: “Men of Israel, and you who fear God, listen.” So the apostles reached Gentiles in the Jewish synagogues!

The service must have become familiar to a boy like Jesus, and certain prayers and Scriptures must have become a part of him, for the passages would not only be read but explained. The prayer he at last prayed on the cross may have been a child’s prayer as he left home for the synagogue school, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” And this prayer from the Bible was prayed at every evening service: “The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation … The lord will reign forever and ever.” Each service began with the saying of the shema: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God!” It went on to say that God is to be loved with all one’s heart. In his teaching Jesus would refer to “the greatest commandment of all” that he always heard in the synagogue as a boy and young man.

There were as many as eighteen prayers used in the service, and the readings we have already mentioned were translated from the Hebrew of the Jewish Scriptures into Aramaic and—even Greek, as need required, by the targumist or translator. Then there was an address or talk by one of the male members. The women were seated separately and sometimes behind a screen and took no leading part. A visiting lay minister might be asked to say a word, and so he might both read and speak. Oddly enough to us, he would stand to read and then sit down to speak! Lk. 4:20 tells how Jesus did just that: he read from the roll of Scripture, closed it, returned it to the attendant, and then sat down. The record says, “and the eyes of all in the synagogue were upon him.” He had not yet given the interpretation that got him into trouble, so we may conclude that the audience was transfixed not only by their curiosity about this hometown boy but by the way he read the Scriptures! Once seated but still on the platform before them, Jesus expounded on what He had read, applying the prophecy to himself!

There was no professional minister in the synagogue. This gave an itinerant rabbi like Jesus and the apostles a chance to say something. Notice Acts 13:15: “After the reading of the Law and the Prophets the synagogue officials sent to them, saying, ‘Brethren, if you have any word of exhortation for the people, say it’.” This made the synagogue a mission field for the apostles.

There was also give-and-take discussions in the synagogue, and if the boy Jesus involved himself with trained rabbis in the temple, we can believe that he was in the middle of the arguments in his hometown synagogue. There was also singing or chanting of hymns and psalms without instrumentation of course! But we can’t be sure. They at least used an instrument to call the people to worship.

We may also surmise that Jesus was especially interested in the alms that were collected, for they were for the poor and destitute. The ruler would designate people to distribute such alms. Can’t you see Jesus volunteering for such work? There he is knocking at a poor family’s door with loaves of bread and a leg of lamb.

As a boy and then a young man (Jesus must have attended synagogue for some 25 years!) he would have been aware of the sparse furnishings: a reading desk, a closet for the scrolls, and the chief seats for the “somewhats.” There is evidence that he eyed those special seats through the years, noting the attitude of those who presumed to use them, as in Mt. 23:6: “And they love the place of honor at banquets, and the chief seats in the synagogues.” If anyone could rightfully demand a place of honor, it was Jesus, but he chose to do things like wash feet instead.

And surely he was impressed by the Amens at the close of the ser vice, with everyone joining in, including himself of course. But he may have wondered about the rule that only a rabbi, if one was present, could offer a benediction. I’m guessing that Jesus believed that old Joe, who worked as a smith across from his woodshop, could bless the people as well as any rabbi. But that is the way it was, no rabbi, no blessing. The synagogue was lay run and lay ministered, however, with priests and rabbis treated as visitors. This made the synagogue a teaching institution, a fellowship in the Scriptures, while the temple was for ritual and sacrifices and of course controlled by the priesthood.

These features were all present in the earliest Christian churches. They too were teaching, reading, and discussion fellowships, and there was no priesthood in control. They were all laymen, even the apostles. They dialogued, as in Acts 20:7, where the original Greek implies that it was as in a synagogue, Paul spoke and they discussed. Even the detail of a hearty Amen! was in the ecclesia, as in 1 Cor. 14:16: “How can they say ‘Amen’ if they don’t know what you are saying?”

Is not the church today more like the temple than the synagogue in these respects? We have little openness and everything is cut and dried, including a priest in the “pulpit” who preempts any brother who has “a word of exhortation,” however able he might be or however significant a visitor. If Jesus Christ visited most any of our churches today, he would have no opportunity to say a word, for we are a church of spectators more than participants. We gather for a performance, not to perform. We come to be ministered to, not to minister. In fact, Jesus would probably be met in the vestibule and asked to leave.

And we don’t allow any Amens or Hallelujahs or Maranathas in our church. Maybe the Pentecostals but not us. And discussions along with a presentation? How can folk talk about a sermon when they have slept through it! Sermons? That is one thing absent from either the ancient synagogue or the primitive ecclesia, a sermon by a professional minister.

We can believe that Jesus was especially mindful of the poor lepers who were allowed to enter the synagogue, though only to sit in an isolated chamber. One of the most moving scenes in the New Testament is in Mt. 8:2: “And Jesus stretched forth his hand and touched the leper.” It was unthinkable to associate with a despised leper, and to touch one was to be ceremonially unclean.

Elders were the heart of the synagogue’s organization, but they apparently did not make all the decisions, for they were joined in their ministry of “fatherly oversight” by ten or twelve of the aged saints of the community. The elders presided over the services, directed the work of the president-ruler and of the Chazzan, who cared for the scrolls of Scripture and kept the premises. The elders of the synagogue were like the elders of ancient Israel, who strengthened the weak, healed the sick, bound up the crippled, and recovered those who strayed, as indicated in Ez. 34:4. This too made its way into the church, whose elders did not rule with force and harshness but like loving shepherds.

If the modern church has lost the simple goodness of the synagogue and ecclesia it may be due in part to architecture. While there was but one temple in Jerusalem there were, according to Josephus, hundreds of synagogues. They were small enough to function as family units, and they could really have “Body life” in their services. In our cavernous real estate holdings we have two strikes against us if we have any intention of cultivating an intimate family fellowship.

Alfred Edersheim, that great Christian scholar who was himself a Jew, wrote: “The synagogue became the cradle of the church. Without it the church universal, humanly speaking, would have been impossible.” The cradle of the church! This is an amazing development in the history of salvation, for the synagogue seemed to have arisen more by circumstance than by intention. It was while the Jews were captives in Babylon, away from their temple ritual, that the synagogue arose, by which the heart of their faith was preserved. They brought the synagogue back home with them and it has been around ever since, even after the temple was rebuilt.

Since there was no scriptural basis for the synagogue we have an “authority” problem here. There is no evidence that God ever authorized the synagogue. No prophet foretold its coming. There is nothing about the synagogue in the Old Testament. It emerged out of the contingencies of history. We can believe it was by God’s providence, but does this not allow for other such “innovations” as changing cultural conditions may require? If God made the synagogue the stepping-stone from the temple to the ecclesia (church) without prescribing it with a “thus saith the Lord,” we may need to be less dogmatic with such questions as “Where is that in the Bible?” It is surely not God’s intention that everything good and useful for his kingdom on earth is anticipated in the Bible. The Bible simply is not that kind of book. The emergence of the synagogue, that great Jewish institution that became the cradle of the Church of Christ, shows that there can be the ongoing of God’s purposes without “book, chapter, and verse” for everything.

If the synagogue was both the cradle of the church and the door for its first evangelistic thrust, then an understanding of and an appreciation for the synagogue becomes a “must” in our efforts to identify the nature of primitive Christianity. — the Editor