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Old Time Religion

Friday, December 07th, 2012 | Author:

I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors, with a clear conscience, as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day.  2 Timothy 1:3  ESV

As did my ancestors – Sometimes the smallest phrases require the greatest attention.  In this introduction to his letter to Timothy, Paul makes an almost parenthetical remark (to use an anachronism) that seems inconsequential to most of us.  But when we take a closer look, we discover just how radically different our idea of the believing community of the saints is from the implications of Paul’s throw-away phrase.

In Greek, the words are apo progonon (literally, “from parents”).  The idiom certainly implies Paul’s acknowledgement of his predecessors.  But look what he says about them.  They served the same God that he does.  “Well, of course,” you say.  “What’s so surprising about that?”  The surprise comes in the word latreuo (to serve).  In Hebrew, that verb is ‘avad.  And what does ‘avad mean?  To work, to serve and to worship.  In other words, Paul is equally saying that he worshipped in the same way as his ancestors.

What?  Does that mean Paul didn’t start a new assembly for “Christians”?  No, he didn’t.  Does that mean he continued to practice the rituals, sacrifices and customs of Judaism and the synagogue?  Yes, he did.  Does that mean that the way Paul worshipped was still defined by the culture and  history of Israel?  Yes, it does.  There is no indication in Scripture (New or Old Testaments) that the earliest believers in Yeshua as Messiah changed anything about their rites, rituals or practices when it came to worshipping YHWH.  In other words, the New Testament authors do not give us any basis for what we now call “the Church.”  Insofar as our rituals, rites and practices are different from those of first century Messianic synagogue believers, we have invented them after the end of the Apostolic era.  Paul asserts that he has not changed anything about how he worships.  That raises the significant question, “Why have we?”

Once again we are faced with conflicts of paradigms, cultures and histories.  Once again we will have to investigate that common question, “When did all of this start to change?”  Marianne Dacy provides some telling answers.  According to her work, from about the time of Ignatius, Marcion and Origen, the Gentile dominance within the Messianic community shifted the perspective from ancestral Judaism to Greek philosophy – and the process of syncretism began.  In other words, the principle reason that we do not find occurrences in our churches today that we read about in the book of Acts is that our churches today are no longer biblical representations of the way God wants to be worshipped.  Ouch!

Topical Index:  serve, latreuo, ‘avad, worship, church, synagogue, 2 Timothy 1:3, apo progonon, ancestors


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The First Synagogue

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012 | Author:

Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so.  Genesis 1:9 NASB

Place – In Hebrew, the word translated “place” is maqom.  From a root meaning “to stand,” it is fairly straightforward as far as translations go.  It means some space, a particular spot, a location.  There’s nothing too significant about this Hebrew word.  But when it comes to the LXX translation, then things get quite interesting.  In the LXX, the Greek word used to translate maqom is synagoge.  Yes, that’s right.  A place to stand in Greek is a synagogue.  It’s a particular spot, a gathering, an assembly.  The first use of the Greek word synagoge in Scripture is not about a religious gathering.  It is about God’s fashioning the oceans, collecting the waters into particular spots.  The first “synagogue” in Scripture didn’t have a single human being in it.  It was nothing more than the vast ocean all in its proper place.

While this tidbit of linguistic information may seem cute and clever, it has further implications.  It implies that the term synagoge used in the New Testament is not restricted to a religious gathering.  The term simply means assembly.  It doesn’t matter if the assembly is for worship or for swimming fish.  This explains why the New Testament authors do not use the word synagoge when they describe the gathering of Messianic believers.  The word is too loose.  It could mean a synagogue, a religious gathering, but it doesn’t specifically mean this kind of gathering, as the Genesis text demonstrates.  In other words, the meaning of synagoge is determined by the context, not by its inherent distinctions.

But ekklesia has a similar problem.  It never means “a religious assembly” in classical Greek.  However, it does mean a gathering called for a specific purpose and that is the key to its use in the New Testament.  The Hebrew comparable word is qehelah, a word used in the Tanakh for the assembly of human beings for a specific purpose.  The New Testament authors shy away from the loose synagoge and adopt ekklesia, but they change the meaning of ekklesia from any called-out assembly to an assembly called for the purpose of worship.  They avoid synagogue by creating a new, specialized meaning for the old term ekklesia.  What they have in mind is not maqom but rather qehelah.

This tells us something important.  First, it tells us that ekklesia has been given a new meaning, distinct from its classical Greek sense and distinguished from the possible substitute synagogue.  Second, it tells us that the use of this term must have been deliberate since these distinctions are not inherent in the language itself.  Whatever the New Testament authors had in mind, they specifically avoided prior understandings of the two Greek words synagoge and ekklesia.  Finally, it tells us that wherever we find ekklesia in the New Testament Greek, we must translate it according to the distinctions these authors intended.  The word is unique to New Testament usage.  It has one and only one meaning.  Therefore, there is absolutely no warrant for translating ekklesia  as “church” in some places and as “congregation” in others.  Stephen’s speech is not about the “congregation” in the wilderness.  It is about the ekklesia, the called-out gathering, exactly the same called-out gathering in Ephesus or Corinth or Rome.  The gathering of God’s people isn’t different in the Tanakh when compared to the Brit Hadasha.  God’s “church” began at Sinai and continues today.  If that’s true, don’t you suppose His instructions to His people are the same now as they were then?

Topical Index:  synagogue, gathering place, maqom, ekklesia, synagoge, Genesis 1:9

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