Acts 13 - Introduction

Excursus.

On the Jewish Synagogue.

The Synagogue was the connecting link between the Temple of Jerusalem and the Church of the Christians. It was the synagogue and its services which prepared the mind of those Jews who, obeying the command of the Master, laid the foundation of the Christian Church. It was in the synagogue that the Jews first learned how to dispense with the elaborate ceremonial of sacrifice and offering which the Jews of old time considered the one way to approach the Eternal. It was in those countless synagogues which arose in distant countries during the rule of the Ptolemys in Egypt, and subsequently when Roman rule was making the West and much of the East one nation, that the scattered people, many of whom had never seen Jerusalem and the Temple, worshipped the Eternal without the aid of priest or Levite every Sabbath day with a more spiritual though perhaps with a less ceremonial service.

It is generally supposed that the ‘synagogue,' as we understand the term, arose during the Captivity; though the frequent references before the Captivity to the schools of the prophets, the words of Psalms 74:8, and more certainly Acts 15:21 , and rabbinic tradition, point to a more ancient date for these congregational meetings, than the period of the Captivity of Babylon.

These synagogues in some places small and unpretending, such as we may imagine the place by the river-side near Philippi (Acts 16:13); in the greater cities of the empire, such as Alexandria, were large and magnificent. The internal arrangements seem to have but little changed. We read of the closed ark on the side of the building nearest to Jerusalem, where the rolls of the Law were kept; the desk in the centre, where the reader read the book of the Law and spoke to the people; the seats all round the building for the men; the women apart in a gallery or behind a screen of lattice-work; the chief seats for the rulers or elders of the synagogue. In all times the service of these synagogues seems to have varied but slightly, and was of course the model which has been copied in the services of the various Christian churches. There were in use set forms of prayer, and regular lessons for each Sabbath day chosen from the Law and the Prophets; and after the reading from the holy books, a sermon was usually delivered by one of the elders of the congregation or by a stranger of known learning and ability. Our Lord was often asked to deliver the discourse in the synagogue in which He happened to be present. Paul, too, as in Antioch (Acts 13), seems frequently to have received a similar invitation. The ruler of the synagogue superintended the affairs and arranged the services; with the ruler were associated a council of elders. There was a special person appointed to lead the devotions of the worshippers as reader of the prayers. He was often termed the ‘angel.' A minister, as in Luke 4:20, was in charge of the building, and took care of the sacred books.

These persons were set apart for their several holy offices by imposition of hands. The synagogue was used also for purposes of instruction and religious disputation.

These synagogues in the time of our Lord seem to have possessed among the people judicial functions; they watched with jealous eyes over the faith of which they were the guardians. Allusion to this judicial authority is made in Matthew 10:17; Matthew 23:34; Acts 22:19; Acts 26:11.

The Church of Antioch.

It the year 44 - 45 Jerusalem ceased to be the central point of Christian activity. For the first twelve years after the resurrection of the Founder of the religion, the history of Christianity could be written in two distinct records, both treating of the same period the one telling of its marvellous progress in spite of persecution and opposition from the great and powerful; the other detailing its internal struggles to free itself from the restraints of Judaism.

For the first few years the followers of Jesus seemed to the ordinary observer but a narrow though enthusiastic band of Hebrew separatists; and such they would probably have remained had not the Master, ruling invisibly from His glory-throne in heaven, watched over His work, and raised up such men as Stephen, and Barnabas, and Paul, who, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, first grasped the idea of a Church world-wide, of a great society to be made up of all races of Gentiles as well as Jews.

The church of Jerusalem was too powerfully influenced by local associations ever to have freed itself from the trammels of Hebrew prejudice; besides which, a hopeless attempt to carry out a beautiful idea impoverished and fatally weakened the influence of the mother church of Christianity. The leading spirits among the Jerusalem Christians, without positively enforcing, certainly encouraged a voluntary sharing of property among its members. The result of such a life, as might have been expected, was a general state of extreme poverty, the ordinary stimulus to all commercial industry and enterprise being removed. But while the Jerusalem Church was thus being gradually impoverished by its communistic policy, and owing to its close connection with Jewish memories and customs, while increasing in numbers, seemed likely to be permanently confined to the narrow limits of a Hebrew sect, nobler, certainly, and more spiritual than the great mass of Jews from whom this sect had separated, but still Hebrew and exclusive, a new centre of Christian life had silently arisen. The religion of Jesus after the year 35 - 36 had rapidly made its way into the hearts and homes of many a dweller in the great Syrian city, Antioch. The Christianity of Antioch was a more robust, more comprehensive religion than the Christianity of Jerusalem. It was free from the narrow prejudices of the mother church. In the restless Gentile city there was no time- honoured temple with its sacred ritual, so dear to every Jew; there was no glorious history of a storied past to influence the Jewish Christian, a great Church, free and all-embracing, had rapidly grown up in Syrian Antioch.

It was this church of Antioch which so generously came forward to the assistance of the mother church at Jerusalem when the great famine of 44 and the following years had begun to press hardly upon the numerous poor congregations of the Holy City; and from this time onward it is the church of this Syrian city which we must regard as the centre of Christian life and progress. It was in Antioch that the first great missionary expeditions were organised; it was from Antioch that Paul and Barnabas, Mark and Silas, started on their noble enterprises. It was to Antioch that they returned to tell the story of their toils and their success.

With the change of capital a new era dawned on Christianity. Henceforth the religion of Jesus was no longer confined to Palestine or Syria; it was proclaimed with strange rapidity in the chief centres of Asia Minor, Greece, Egypt, and Italy: the glad sound of its good news was soon heard in the more distant of the isles of the Gentiles. It was to be no longer merely the faith of an earnest sect of reformed Jews it was to be preached as the religion of the world.