In case this hasn't come up yet...
Sunday is not a replacement for the Sabbath.
The day of worship was not changed to Sunday.
Jewish believers and their gentile counterparts needed a common day that they could gather, the first day of the week, the day that Christ rose from the dead was chosen a day when both could meet.
Jewish believers were not allowed to worship or confess faith in Jesus in the synagogues. And gentiles were not allowed to enter a synagogue. So, the common Sabbatarian teaching that Christians were meeting to worship Jesus in synagogues on the Sabbath is rubbish.
John 9:22
His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.
Hi Steve,
In Acts 2:46-47 it says;
“
Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
In Acts 5:42 it says;
“
Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah.”
Paul also went to the Temple. He went to the Temple and according to Jewish custom, participated in the purification ceremony with the four Jewish men who had taken a vow;
“Then Paul took the men, and the next day purifying himself with them went into the temple, declaring the fulfillment of the days of purification, until the offering was offered for every one of them” (Acts 21:26)
What role did the Synagogue play in the lives of the Early Church?
Paul and the early disciples, were accustomed to going to the synagogue to hear the Torah (the Law, the first five books of Moses) and Haphtorah (the Prophets) read and continued to do so after the death and resurrection of Jesus.
In Acts 13:15-41, and it says;
“
After the reading from the Law and the Prophets, the leaders of the synagogue sent word to them, saying, “Brothers, if you have a word of exhortation for the people, please speak.”
Standing up, Paul spoke at length (13:15-41) and verse 42 says that
they were asked to by the gentiles who heard his Words in the synagogue to come back the next week “to speak further about these things
on the next Sabbath”.
Acts 13:42-44,
[42], And when the Jews were gone out of the synagogue,
the Gentiles sought that these words might be preached to them the next sabbath.
[43], Now when the congregation was broken up, many of the Jews and
religious proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas: who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.
[44], And
the next sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God.
This was no isolated incident.
ACTS 14:1 "And it came to pass in Iconium, that they went
both together into the synagogue of the Jews, and so spake, that a great multitude both of the
Jews and also of the Greeks believed
ACTS 17:1-4 says;
“"Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica,
where there was a synagogue of the Jews. Then Paul, as his custom was, went in to them, and
for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, "This Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ." And some of them were persuaded;
and a great multitude of the devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women, joined Paul and Silas".
ACTS 17:10-12 it also says
"And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea: who coming thither
went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind,
and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. Therefore, many of them believed; also of honourable women
which were Greeks, and of men, not a few"
And again, in ACTS 18:4
"And he reasoned
in the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded the
Jews and the Greeks"
The early believers went to synagogue (Acts 13:15, 42; 14:1, 17:1, 2; 17: 10, 17, 18:4, 7, 18:19, 26) and continued to go to hear the Torah and Haphtarah portion for the with the other believers. These meetings were held in homes of the early believers and they also met daily in the Temple Courts as well. (Acts 2:46).
Paul, went to the synagogue as well (Acts 13:13-15) and not just on isolated occasions. Like Jesus, Paul went to the synagogue “
as was his custom on the SABBATH”. (Acts 17:2)
“
As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue and on
three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures.”
He also went and taught in the synagogue every Sabbath for 3 months (Acts 19:8).
However, as Jesus prophesied (Matt 5:11-12, Matthew 10:16-22) persecution came. The Jews had issue with the teachings of the Nazarenes. A year after the crucifixion, Stephen was stoned for what was viewed as his transgression of orthodoxy with Saul (who later became Paul) looking on. In 41 CE, Agrippa I had James martyred and Peter narrowly escaped. After Agrippa’s death, the high priest Annas II took advantage of the power vacuum to attack the Jewish believers and executed James the Just, who was considered head of Jerusalem’s Nazarene community. Paul was imprisoned on several occasions by Roman authorities, stoned by Pharisees and left for dead and was eventually taken as a prisoner to Rome. Peter was also imprisoned, beaten and harassed.
Meanwhile in the Jewish community as a whole protests about Roman taxation in 66 CE resulted in the Romans plundering the Temple and killing of 6,000 Jews. This was the start of the Jewish-Roman war (66-73 CE). The Nazarenes (early Christian believers) were seen as a Jewish sect by the Romans and fared no better than non-believing Jews and as a result of the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, fled Jerusalem.
With the Temple destroyed, the Christian believers who were accustomed to attending synagogue to hear the Law and the Prophets read continued to do so until changes in the synagogue liturgy made by Gamaliel II (grandson of the Gamaliel referred to in Acts 5) in 72-73 CE made it impossible. These changes in liturgy were designed to expose what Gamaliel considered “minim” or heretics, including the Nazarenes (Jewish believers). By adding a prayer to the Amidah (the central prayer of the liturgy) cursing the “mimin”, the Nazarenes could neither say the prayer nor respond ‘amen’ to it. So forty years after Jesus’ death, the traditional synagogue was no longer open to Jewish believers.
“Blessing” of the Heretics
The
Amidah (Hebrew: תפילת העמידה, Tefilat HaAmidah, or “The Standing Prayer”) originally consisted of eighteen benedictions (blessings) written during the Mishnaic period, i.e. before the destruction of the second Temple, but an additional one called the
Birkat ha-Minim (Hebrew ברכת המינים literally “Blessing on the heretics”) was added under the direction of Gamaliel II in 72-73 CE.
Rather than a blessing, the
Birkat ha-Minim is a curse specifically directed at the
Nazarenes (Jews who believe that Jesus is the Messiah) and other Jewish sects deemed to be heretics, including the
Essenes (the sect that hid the Dead Sea Scrolls) — calling for them to be destroyed and blotted out of the Book of Life.
This is the Birkat ha-Minim;
“For the heretics let there be no hope. And let the arrogant government be speedily uprooted in our days. Let the Nazarenes [name for Jewish believers] and the minim [any of the other Jewish sects considered to be heretics] be destroyed in a moment. And let them be blotted out of the Book of Life and not be inscribed together with the righteous. Blessed art thou, O Lord, who humblest the arrogant.”
The Talmud states (B’rakhot 28b29a) that the original form of this “blessing” had the term
laminim which served to separate out the Messianic Jews and other “minim”, and if the leader of a synagogue made a mistake in reading this particular blessing but none other, he was excommunicated.
The Talmud says:
“If the chazan [leader of the synagogue] makes a mistake in any other of the blessings they do not remove him, but if he makes a mistake when saying the Birkat HaMinim they remove him because he is suspected of being a min [heretic] himself” (B’rakhot 28b).
For the first 3 generations after the death of Jesus, the Jewish believers were still able to attend the traditional synagogue but in 72-73 CE (40 years after Jesus’ death), the addition of the
Birkat ha-Minim forced the Jewish believers from the traditional synagogue. (Main source:
Jewish Roots of Christianity).
Sorry Steve, God's WORD disagrees with you.
Hope this helps.
