SYNAGOGUE
80
SYNAGOGUE
members as were best qualified to aid them in the ad- niinistratiiin of the communal alTairs. These consti- tuted a local self-governing and independent college; they issued all the legal iustrnnionts. such as marriage contracts, letters of divorce, hills of exchange, business contracts, receipts, etc. They had the power of inHicting corporal punishment on an}- ottender, or to put him out of the synagogue (=excommuuicate) altogether (Matt. xviii, 15-17; John ix, "22; xii, 42; xvi, 2), The pini- ishment of excommunication, however, was very seldom resorted to, as m.iy be seen from the fact that though Clirist and his apostles opposed and contradicted the heads of the synagogue, yet they were not put out of the synagogue. In some cases they exercised the right, even out.side the limits of Palestine, of seizing the per- sons of the accused and sending them in chains to take their trial before the Supreme Council at Jerusalem (Acts ix, 2; xxii, o).
2. It is not quite so easy, however, to define the nat- ure of the tribunal and the precise limits of its jurisdic- tion. In two of the passages referred to (Matt, x, 17; Mark xiii, 9) they are carefully distinguished from the (TvvE^pta, or councils, j^et both appear as instruments by which the spirit of religious persecution might fast- en on its victims. The explanation commonly given lihat the council sat in the synagogue, and was thus identified with it. is hardly satisfactory (Leyrer, in Her- zog's Real-EncyUop. s. v. " Synedrien"). It seems more probable that the council was the larger tribunal of twenty-three, which sat in every city [see Council], identical with that of the seven, with two Levites as assessors to each, which Josephus describes as acting in the smaller provincial towns (.1 nt. iv, 8, 14; War, ii, 20, u). and that under the term synagogue we are to under- stand a smaller court, probably that of the ten judges mentioned in the Talmud ((Jem. Hieros. Sanhedr. loc. cit.), consisting either of the elders, the chazzan, and the legate, or otherwise (as Herzfeld conjectures, i, 392) of the ten Batlanin, or otiosi (see above, IV, 6).
VII. Relatiom of the Jewish SynagogHe to the Chris- tian Church. — It is hardly possible to overestimate the inrtucnce of the system thus developed. To it we may ascribe the tenacitj' with which, after the Maccabajan struggle, the Jews adhered to the religion of their fa- thers, and never again relapsed into idolatry. The peo- ple were now in no danger of forgetting the law, and the external ordinances that hedged it round. If pil- grimages were still made to .lerusalem at the great feasts, the habitual religion of the Jews in, and yet more out of, Palestine was connected much more intimately with the synagogue than with the Temple. Its simple, edifying devotion, in which mind and heart could alike enter, attracted the heathen proselytes who might have been repelled by the bloody sacrifices of the Temple, or would certainly have been driven from it unless they could make up their minds to submit to circumcision (Acts xxi, 28). See Proski.vtk. Here, too, as in the cognate order of the scribes, there was an influence tending to diminish and ultimately almost to destroy the authority of the hereditary priesthood. The ser- vices of the synagogue recjuired no sons of Aaron; gave them nothing more than a complimentary precedence. See Pkikst; ScuiiiE. The way was silently prepared for a new and higher order, whi(di should rise in " the fulness of time" out of tlic decay and abolition of both the priesthood and the Temple. In another way, too, the synagogues everywhere prepared the way for that order. Not '' Moses" oidy, but " the prophets" were read in them every Sabbath day; and thus the Messianic hopes of Israel, the expectation of a kingdom of heaven, were universally diffused.
1. It will be seen at once how closelj' the m-ganiza- tion of the synagogue was reproduced in that of the Ecclesia. Here also there was the single presbyter- bishop [see Bishop] in small towns, a council of pres- byters under one head in large cities. The legatus of the synagogue appears in the dyyfXoq (Rev. i, 20 ;
ii. 1\ perhaps also in the oTroffroXoc, of the Christian Church. To the elders as such is given the name of Shepherds (Kph. iv, 11 ; 1 Pet. v, 1). They are known also as I'lyovfitvoi (Heb. xiii, 7). Even the transfer to the Christian proselytes of the once distinctively sacer- dotal name of 'lepivg, foreign as it was to the feelings of the Christians of the apostolic age, was not without its parallel in the history of the synagogue. Sceva, the exorcist Jew of Ephesus, was probably a " chief priest" in this sense (Acts xix, 14). In the edicts of the later Roman emperors, the terms ap^itptvg and iepavc; arc repeatedly apjdied to the rulers of synagogues (Cod. Theodos. I)e Jud., quoted by Vitringa, De JJecem Otiosis, in Ugolino, Thes. xxi). Possibly, however, this may have been, in part, owing to the presence of the scat- tered priests, after the destruction of the Temple, as the rabbins or elders of what was now left to them as their only sanctuary. To them, at any rate, a certain prece- dence was given in the synagogue services. They were invited first to read the lessons for the day. The bene- diction of Numb, vi, 22 was reserved for them alone.