The Influence of the Synagogue on Early Christian Worship

The New Testament records that Jesus and his disciples, as well as early Christian preachers such as Paul and Barnabas, attended the synagogue assemblies. The true influence of the synagogue on early Christian worship, however, is difficult to assess. Contacts between Christians and Jews continued up to the fourth century; thus, in the post–New Testament period Jewish influence can be seen in the development of Christian prayer and the Christian calendar.

That Jewish worship influenced ancient Christian liturgy is widely assumed in contemporary liturgical studies. However, the scholarly landscape has shifted enormously in the years since the publication of W. O. E. Oesterley’s The Jewish Background of the Christian Liturgy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925) and C. W. Dugmore’s The Influence of the Synagogue Upon the Divine Office (London: Humphrey Milford, 1944). Biblical and historical studies since the Second World War have demonstrated the diversity and complexity of first-century Judaism. Therefore, contemporary scholars are hesitant to speak with Dugmore and Oesterley’s certainty about the structure and content of Jewish worship in the first century, when the Jewish influence upon the liturgical life of the nascent Christian movement would have been most direct. We can no longer say that there was in first-century Judaism a standard synagogue that influenced Christian worship; rather, Christian worship emerged within the context of a variety of Judaisms, each with its own developing liturgical traditions.

Even after the separation of the Christian movement from Judaism, the relationship between Christian communities and their Jewish neighbors was complex and varied greatly according to geographical locale. Some fourth-century Christians borrowed prayers that appear to be Jewish in origin, perhaps as a result of the ongoing contact between Christians and Jews in some areas.

First Century Synagogue Influence

The New Testament Period. The New Testament records the traditions of Jesus’ attendance at synagogue services, and the disciples’ frequenting the temple after the Resurrection (cf. Mark 1:21, 6:2, and parallels; Matt. 4:23 and parallels; Matt. 9:35; Luke 4:15–16; 6:6, and parallels; Luke 13:10–27; John 6:59; 18:20; Acts 2:42, 46–47). We know little, however, about the content of these liturgical services in which Jesus and his disciples participated, because the evidence for the content of Jewish worship before 70 c.e. is scant. The most that we can say is that synagogue worship in the first century contained readings from the Torah and prophets, the Shēma‘; and a form (varying from synagogue to synagogue) of the Tƒfillah, or “prayer,” containing a variable number of sections. It is difficult, therefore, to determine the extent to which Jewish liturgical traditions influenced the development of Christian worship. How the liturgical practices of the earliest Jewish disciples carried over into the liturgical life of the earliest Christian communities is largely unknown.

The Eucharist and Its Roots in Jewish Prayer. The primitive Christian Eucharist provides a good example of the ambiguity involved in determining the Jewish roots of Christian worship. While the Gospels and Paul clearly place the Last Supper in the context of the Passover (whether or not the Last Supper actually was the Passover meal), it is impossible to know the extent to which first-century Jewish Passover rituals contributed to the structure of the first-century Eucharist. The prayers of Didachē 9 and 10 (see below) resemble most closely Jewish table prayers (which were also used at the Passover meal). In the next glimpse we get of Christian weekly worship (in the First Apology of Justin Martyr, mid-second century), the Eucharist had acquired a “shape” that was to become standard: a service of readings, preaching, and prayer followed by a ritual meal (Justin, Apology I 67). While most scholars today recognize the Jewish roots of these two parts of the Sunday service, no evidence exists that links the readings and meal of the Eucharist to specific Jewish liturgical texts. The most that we can say is that both Jews and Christians read Scripture at their services and that both Jews and Christians had traditions of prayer at their sacred meals.

The Didachē. The Didachē, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, reached its final form by the end of the first century, although portions of this church order may be as old as the 50s or 60s of the first-century c.e. Of all first-century sources, the Didachē contains the clearest example of some early Christian liturgical practice related to Jewish worship. Chapters 9 and 10 describe a ritual meal that consists of (a) a prayer over the cup and bread (chapter 9); (b) a meal; and (c) a thanksgiving after the meal (chapter 10). The thanksgiving after the meal of Didachē 10 is very similar in content and structure to the Jewish blessing after the meal, or Birkat hammazon, and appears to be a Christian version of that prayer, a form of which appears as early as Jubilees 22 (second century b.c.e.).

Thanksgiving or Blessing? Didachē 10 points to the predilection of Christian prayer for thanksgiving (todah) rather than blessing (bērakah), which by the second century became the usual form of Jewish prayer. The extent to which the Christian thanksgiving form of prayer is rooted in other first-century Jewish forms of prayer (such as those attested at Qumran) continues to be debated. However, it would be wrong to press too far this distinction between the Christian “thanksgiving” and the Jewish “blessing”: prayers found in the second and third century apocryphal “acts” (i.e., the Acts of John, Acts of Paul, Acts of Peter, and Acts of Thomas) are often couched in both terms.

Reproduced below are two “trajectories” of the Jewish blessing after meals: a Christian text (Didachē 10) dating anywhere from 50 to 100 c.e.; and a version of the prayer from a very early Jewish prayer book, the tenth-century Siddur Rav Saadya. Although these two texts are separated by nine centuries, they show a striking similarity in themes. Note that the prayer for Jerusalem in Rav Saadya dates from after 70 c.e.

The New Testament records that Jesus said a blessing before he miraculously fed multitudes of people (Mark 6:41; Matt. 14:18; Luke 9:16; Mark 8:6–7; Matt. 15:36; John 6:11). The narratives of the Last Supper (Mark 14:22–25; Matt. 26:26–29; Luke 22:15–20; 1 Cor. 11:23–26) also record that Jesus said a blessing at the breaking of bread, and the story of the post-resurrection appearance to the disciples at Emmaus mentions Jesus’ saying the blessing at the beginning of the meal (Luke 24:30, 35). Given this wide attestation in the tradition to Jesus’ use of the Jewish liturgical practice of blessing God at meals, it is not unlikely that the great prayer of thanksgiving at the Eucharist derives to some extent from forms of the Jewish blessing before and after meals familiar to Jesus and his disciples.

Didachē 10. And after you have had your fill, give thanks thus:
We give thanks to you, holy Father, for your holy name which you have enshrined in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which you made known to us through your child Jesus; glory to you forevermore.

You, Lord Almighty, created all things for the sake of your name and gave food and drink to men for their enjoyment, that they might give you thanks; but to us, you have granted spiritual food and drink for eternal life through your child Jesus.

Above all we give you thanks because you are mighty; glory to you for evermore. Amen.

Remember, Lord, your church, to deliver it from all evil and to perfect it in your love, and bring it together from the four winds, now sanctified, into your kingdom which you have prepared for it; for yours are the power and the glory forevermore. Amen.

Rav Saadya. Blessing of him who nourishes
Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, for you nourish us and the whole world with goodness, grace, kindness, and mercy. Blessed are you, Lord, for you nourish the universe.

Blessing for the earth
Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, for you nourish us and the whole world with goodness, grace, kindness and mercy. Blessed are you, Lord, for you nourish the universe.

Blessing for the earth
We will give thanks to you, Lord our God, because you have given us for your inheritance a desirable land, good and wide, the covenant and law, life and food. And for all these things we give you thanks and bless your name forever and beyond. Blessed are you, Lord our God, for the earth and for food.

Blessing for Jerusalem
Have mercy, Lord our God, on us your people Israel, and your city Jerusalem, on your sanctuary and your dwelling-place, on Zion, the habitation of your glory, and the great and holy house over which your name is invoked. Restore the kingdom of the house of David to its place in our days, and speedily build Jerusalem.

On the feast of Passover, this embolism follows in the Jewish prayers:

Our God and God of our fathers, may three arise in your sight, and come, and be present, and be regarded, and be pleasing, and be heard, and be visited, and be remembered our remembrance and our visitation, and the remembrance of our fathers, and the remembrance of the Messiah, the son of your servant David, and the remembrance of Jerusalem, the city of your holiness, and the remembrance of all your people, the house of Israel; for escape, for prosperity, for grace, and for loving-kindness and mercy, for life and for peace, on this day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Remember us on this day, Lord our God, for prosperity, and visit us on it for blessing, and save us on it for life. And by the word of salvation and mercy spare us, and grant us grace, and have mercy on us, and save us: for our eyes look to you, for you, O God, are a gracious and merciful king.

Blessed are you, Lord, for you build Jerusalem. Amen.

Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, God, our father, our king, our creator, our redeemer, good and beneficent king, who day by day is concerned to benefit us in many ways, and himself will increase for us for ever in grace and kindness and spirit and mercy and every good thing.

Continuing Influence of the Synagogue on Christian Worship

After the first century, Christian liturgy continued to develop in a variety of trajectories largely independent of those followed by post–first-century Jewish worship. With the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 c.e. and the formal separation, toward the end of the first century, of the Christian movement from Judaism, the links between the two were never again as close as they were formerly. Yet contact between Christians and Jews continued, as evidenced by the fourth-century church councils that legislated against Christian attendance at Jewish worship (cf. Council of Laodicea, canons 29, 37, 38; Apostolic Canons 70–71: see Apostolic Constitutions VIII.47.7–71). In addition, the eight homilies against the Jews preached by John Chrysostom in Antioch in 386 and 387 also suggest that Christians and Jews were worshiping together in that city.

The Christian Calendar. The Quartodeciman controversy of the second century, so-called for the observance of Passover on the Jewish date 14 Nisan (described by Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History V. 23–24), indirectly attests to the Jewish influence upon the Christian calendar. The issue at stake in Quartodeciman practice (reflected, for example, in the second-century Epistula Apostolorum) was whether or not Easter should be celebrated at the same time as the Jewish Passover (which may very well have been the more ancient practice). Some have also suggested that the Christian appropriation of Wednesday and Friday as special liturgical days (cf. Didachē 8) may be related to an Essene solar calendar that highlighted those particular days of the week.

Christian Borrowing of Jewish Prayers. The Apostolic Constitutions, a church order compiled in the environs of Antioch around the year 380, contains a collection of prayers of Hellenistic Jewish origin on a variety of topics (VII, 33–38). The existence of these prayers in the Apostolic Constitutions points to the ongoing appropriation of Jewish liturgical forms by at least one Christian community after the first century.

Conclusions

The decades before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 c.e. saw the greatest influence of Jewish worship upon Christian liturgy. After the destruction of the temple and the emergence of rabbinic Judaism at the end of the first century, Christian and Jewish worship continued to develop independently. Contact between Christians and Jews continued in subsequent centuries, but there is little evidence for any ongoing Jewish influences upon Christian worship after the formative period of the first century.

We should not expect direct verbal or structural parallels between first-century Jewish and Christian worship. In the first century, both liturgical traditions were diverse, not yet committed to writing, and in flux. To be sure, first-century Christians and Jews drew from a fund of liturgical structures, terminology, and imagery that each group used in increasingly divergent ways in subsequent centuries. Therefore, the Christian and Jewish liturgical traditions that emerged after the first century were more nearly cousins than siblings, descendants of liturgical ancestors that in the first century may have been closer relatives.