“The Early Church and Today,” by Everett Ferguson, Part 2 (Further on the Synagogue)

Reading our modern church culture back into the First Century synagogue

You see, we can’t help but read our own culture back into the First Century synagogue, assuming that they had services at a set time with an order of worship and even congregational singing. After all, many modern Jewish synagogues have services that are similar to Christian services.

But there is no evidence of any such thing during apostolic times. We know the synagogue was a place of Torah study, but not that they conducted a “worship service” that involved anything like our modern concept of “acts  of worship.”

Rather, the synagogue was a community center, where the scriptures were taught, where Jews gathered to pray, and where the scriptures were read.

After all, no one could afford his own scrolls of the Tanakh  (Hebrew scriptures), and so to read the scriptures at all, one must visit the synagogue — not just for a scheduled assembly but as anyone might visit a library.

And we know that the Jews considered the synagogue a house of prayer, doubtlessly due to the presence of the scrolls of the Holy Scriptures. But we don’t know whether, in the First Century, the synagogue had any sort of regularly scheduled time for the local Jews to assemble to worship — or whether they even thought of the synagogue as a place of “worship.”

After all, the Jews routinely used “worship” to refer to what was done at the Temple. Worship took place at the Temple — until it was destroyed by the Romans — and this destruction doubtlessly forced a re-imagining of the purposes to be served by synagogues.

Evidence from Philo of Alexandria

Ferguson then argues from Philo —

Philo himself gives another indication that singing was part of the synagogue service. In his account of the persecution of the Jews in Alexandria under Flaccus, the prefect of Egypt, Philo relates that at the Feast of Tabernacles the Jews learned of the arrest of Flaccus. In their homes “with hands outstretched to heaven [the Jews] sang hymns and led paeans to God.” Then, “all night long they continued to sing hymns and songs, and at dawn pouring out through the gates, they made their way to the parts of the beach near at hand, since their places of prayer [synagogues] had been taken from them” (Flaccus 121– 122). It is rightly observed that this was an exceptional circumstance and not a service nor in a synagogue. The very fact that it was an exceptional circumstance argues that the Jews were accustomed to singing religious songs. They had learned these hymns to God somewhere, and they would have gathered in their synagogues on this occasion if they had been able to do so.

(Kindle Locations 4732-4736) (bracketed material added by Ferguson).

Here, I think, Ferguson might make a valid point, but the text isn’t as clear as he might wish. A closer reading reveals that it’s unclear whether they went to the beach to sing (they’d already been singing all night) or to pray, since the text seems to say that the beaches were chosen as a substitute for their places of prayer. It may well be that the Jews sought a place by the river to pray their morning prayers.

In the absence of a synagogue, the Jews often chose to gather to pray near a river, as we see in Acts 16:13, regarding the conversion of Lydia, and in this passage from John McClintock, James Strong, Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, Volume 8. Harper, 1883. pp. 664-665 —

That there really were such places of devotion among the Jews is unquestionable. They were mostly outside those towns in which there were no synagogues, because the laws or their administrators would not admit any. This was, perhaps, particularly the case in Roman cities and colonies (and Philippi, where this circumstance occurred, was a colony); for Juvenal (Sat. iii, 296) speaks of proseuchæ [places of prayer], not synagogues, at Rome. They appear to have been usually situated near a river or the seashore, for the convenience of ablution (Josephus, Ant. xiv, 10, 23).

Ferguson may be right, but it’s certainly not clear, and very credible scholars disagree. In fact, I think the fairest reading of the text is that the Jews, having sung to God all night in the streets, when to the beach at dawn because they were seeking a place of prayer in the absence of their synagogue.

The relevance of First Century synagogue practice

Now, we’ll follow Ferguson’s logic on this as we consider his additional arguments, but let’s boil this down a bit. If the argument is that the fact that the First Century synagogue sang a cappella demonstrates that the early church sang a cappella and therefore we must sing a cappella, there are several serious gaps in the logic.

First, at most, we have a single, ambiguous account in Philo of Alexandria to tell us that the Jews sang in their synagogues at the time  of the apostles. And we don’t know that the practice was universal or even widespread among the synagogues. Did the synagogues of Judea sing? We  have no idea. There’s just not enough evidence here to build Christian doctrine.

Second, where is the evidence that the early church based on their practices on the synagogue? There is, in fact, quite a lot of reason to doubt that claim. For example, there is nothing remotely like the eucharist or the agapē (or “love feast”) in the synagogue, and yet these were key elements of the early Christian assembly. There’s no evidence of a sermon in the synagogues. Or taking of a weekly collection as an act of worship.

I mean, as you can see from the videos in the last post, the reading of the Torah, through cantillation, is fascinating and shows great respect for the word of God, but it’s far, far removed from a Church of Christ assembly. Other than the stacked portable chairs in the back corner of the room, no one would find anything in common between the two.

Indeed, imagine the scene if 5 men in a Church of Christ showed up in the middle of an assembly and began to cantillate the Old Testament scriptures to the assembly in Hebrew, with the obvious enthusiasm of the men in the video. They’d surely be declared to be behaving contrary to decency and order. No one would perceive them as engaging in the “act of worship” that we call “congregational singing.” In fact, they’d be engaged in scripture reading — the “act of worship” that we’re commanded to do and yet which did not make the official list of five acts of worship.

(1Ti 4:13 ESV)  ¹³ Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

Home life

Ferguson next argues that singing was a part of Jewish home life but not with instruments.

Noting that early Christian assemblies resembled Jewish private gatherings by meeting in houses, including a meal with their worship, and holding vigils at night, J. A. Smith has observed these further similarities between the church and Jewish private religious assemblies: they were informal but not disorderly, there were no musical instruments, and there was no exclusion of women.

(Kindle Locations 4742-4745). He does grant an exception for weddings and funerals —

Musical instruments did continue to have a place in the family observances of weddings and funerals. There was singing for joy at weddings (Sotah 9.11; 3 Macc. 4: 6– 8) and songs of lamentation at funerals (Mo’ed Qatan 3.8ff.). The Mishnah refers to “pipers for a bride or for a corpse.” Again there is New Testament confirmation: pipe players at a funeral in Matthew 9: 23 and pipe playing at a (wedding) dance in 11: 17.

(Kindle Locations 4753-4757).

What is the assertion here? That because First Century Jews only used instruments at weddings and funerals, it’s wrong for the Christian church to use instruments in its worship. Really hard to see the logic.

And let’s look a bit more closely at what the scriptures say, as our worship practices really should be based more on the scriptures than the speculations of historians on very thin evidence.

Well, we immediately recall that Miriam led the Israelite women in celebrating their escape from Egypt with tambourines. (It was not a wedding or a funeral.)

Prophets played instruments in worship to God, not as part of a formal worship service —

(1Sa 10:5 ESV)  ⁵ After that you shall come to Gibeath-elohim, where there is a garrison of the Philistines. And there, as soon as you come to the city, you will meet a group of prophets coming down from the high place with harp, tambourine, flute, and lyre before them, prophesying.

When David and Saul returned from war victorious, we read —

(1Sa 18:6 ESV)  ⁶ As they were coming home, when David returned from striking down the Philistine, the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with tambourines, with songs of joy, and with musical instruments.

When David brought the ark to Jerusalem, we read —

(1Ch 15:16 ESV)  ¹⁶ David also commanded the chiefs of the Levites to appoint their brothers as the singers who should play loudly on musical instruments, on harps and lyres and cymbals, to raise sounds of joy.

The absence of instrumental music is, in fact, indicative of God’s displeasure —

(Isa 24:6-8 ESV)  ⁶ Therefore a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt; therefore the inhabitants of the earth are scorched, and few men are left.  ⁷ The wine mourns, the vine languishes, all the merry-hearted sigh.  ⁸ The mirth of the tambourines is stilled, the noise of the jubilant has ceased, the mirth of the lyre is stilled.

In fact, Jeremiah says that the coming of the Kingdom will be celebrated with instrumental music —

(Jer 31:2-4 ESV)  ² Thus says the LORD: “The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness; when Israel sought for rest,  ³ the LORD appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.  ⁴ Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel! Again you shall adorn yourself with tambourines and shall go forth in the dance of the merrymakers.”

Quite obviously, the Old Testament evidence is that God’s people celebrated joyous events, even the coming of the Kingdom, with instrumental music. Indeed, the absence of instrumental music is taken as a sign of God’s disapproval, of sadness and lamentation.

If the First Century Jews had given up the use of instruments to celebrate happy events (not just weddings), we’d be very surprised, but even if so, it wasn’t by the command of God and thus has nothing at all to do with how Christians should worship.