2. In the magisterial functions of the synagogue also we may trace the outline of a Christian institution. The tKKKijoia, either by itself or by appointed dele- gates, was to act as a court of arbitration in all dis- putes among its members. The elders of the Church were not, however, to descend to the trivial disputes of daily life (r« /Siwrtfca). P'or these any men of com- mon-sense and fairness, however destitute of oflicial honor and position {o\ t^ov^ivrm'tvoi), would be enough (1 Cor. vi, 1-8). For the elders, as for those of the svna- gogue, were reserved the graver offences against relig- ion and morals. In such cases they had power to ex- communicate, to "put out of" the Ecclesia, which had taken the place of the synagogue, sometimes by their own authoritj', sometimes with the consent of the whole society (v, 4). It is worth mentioning that Hammond and other commentators have seen a reference to these judicial functions in James ii, 2-4. The special sin of those who fawned upon the rich was, on this view, that the)' were ^'judges of evil thoughts," carrying respect of persons into their administration otjustice. The inter- pretation, however, though ingenious, is hardly suffi- ciently supported.
3. The ritual of the synagogue was to a large extent the reproduction (here also, as with the fabric, with many inevitable changes) of the statelier liturgy of the Temple. It will be enough, in this place, to notice in what way the ritual, no less than the organization, was connected with the facts of the New-Test, history, and with the life and order of the Christian Church. Here, too, we meet with multiplied coincidences. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the worship of the Church was identical with that of the synagogue, modified {(i) by the new truths, (JJ) by the new institu- tion of the supper of the Lord, (c) by the spiritual cha- risintita.
(1.) From the sjniagogue came the use of fixed forms of prayer. To that the first disciples had been accus- tomed from their youth. They had asked their Master to give them a distinctive one, and he had complied with their request (Luke xi, 1), as the Baptist had done before for his disciples, as every rabbi did for his. The forms might be, and were, abused. The Pharisee might in synagogues, or, when the synagogues were closed, in the open street, recite aloud the devotions appointed for hours of prayer, might gabble through the Shema ("Hear. O Israel," etc., from Dent, vi, 4), his Kadish, his Shemoneh Esreh, the eighteen Berakoth, or bless- ings, with the " vain repetition" which has reappeared in Christian worship. But for the disciples this was, as yet, the true pattern of devotion, and their blaster sanctioned it. To their minds there would seem noth- ing inconsistent with true heart-worship in the recur- rence of a fixed order (icnTu ra^iv, 1 Cor. xiv, 40), of the same prayers, hymns, doxologies, such as all liturgical study leads us to think of as existing in the apostolic
SYNAGOGUE
!l
SYNAGOGUE
age. Tf the gifts of utterance wliich characterized the first periiid (if that age led tor a time to greater freedom, to uii|)rctTieditated prayer, if that was in its turn suc- ceeded by the renewed preilominance of a formal fixed onler, the alternation and the struggle which have re- appeared in so many periods of the liistory of the Church were not without their parallel in that of Judaism. There also was a protest against the rigidity of an un- bending form. Eliezer of Lydda, a contemporary of the second (iamaliel (cir. A.D. )S0-115), taught that the legate of the synagogue should discard even the Shemo- neh Esrt/i, the eighteen fixed prayers and benedictions of the daily and Sabbath services, and should pray as his heart prompted him. The offence against the formal- ism into which Judaism stiffened was apparently too great to be forgiven. He was excommunicated (not, indeed, avowedly on this groinul), and died at Cwsarea (Jost, Gescfi. (IfS Judenth. ii, 30, 45).
(2.) The large admixture of a didactic element in Christian worship, that by which it was distinguished from all Gentile forms of adoration, was derived from the okler order. " Closes" was " read in the synagogues every Sabbath day" (Acts xv, 21), the whole law being read consecutively, so as to be completed, according to one cycle, in three years, according to that which ulti- mately prevailed and determined the existing divisions of the Hebrew text (Leyrer, hic. cit.), in the fifty-two weeks of a single year. See Bible. The writings of the prophets were read as second lessons in a corresponding onler. They were followed by the J>erash, the Xoyof ■irnpaK\i}(TH0Q (Acts xiii, IT)), the exposition, the sermon of the synagogue. The first Christian synagogues, we must believe, followed this order with but little devia- tion. It remained for them before long to add " the other Scriptures" which they had learned to recognise as more precious even than the law itself, the "prophetic word" of the New Test., which, not less truly than that of the Old, came, in epistle or in narrative, from the same Spirit. See Scuipture.
(3.) To the ritual of the synagogue we may prob- ably trace a practice which has sometimes been a stum- bling-block to the student of Christian antiquity, the subject-matter of fierce debate among Christian contro- versialists. Whatever account may be given of it, it is certain that Prayers for the Dead appear in the Church's worship as soon as we have any trace of it after the im- mediate records of the apostolic age. It has been well described by a writer whom no one can suspect of Rom- ish tenilencies as an " immemorial practice." Though " Scripture is silent, yet antiquity plainly speaks." The prayers "have foimd a place in every early liturgy of the world." (Ellicott, Destiny of the Creaiure, serra. vi). How, indeed, we may ask, could it have been oth- erwise? The strong feeling shown in the time of the Maccabees, that it was not "sn|)ertluous and vain" to pray for the dead (2 Mace, xii, 44), was sure, under the influence of the dominant Pharisaic scribes, to show itself in the devotions of the synagogue. So far as we trace back these devotions, we may saj' that there also the practice is " immemorial," as old, at least, as the tra- ditions of the Rabbinic fathers (Buxtorf, />e Si/nar/of). p. 709, 710 ; M-Caul, Old Paths, ch. xxxviii). The writer already quoted sees a pnjbable reference to them in 2 Tim. i, 18 (Ellicott, Past. Epistles, ad loc). But it is by no means certain that Onesiphorus was at that time dead. See Dead, Prayers for the.