Preaching in the Jewish synagogue instructed members in faith and practice but also could be intended for indoctrination and proselytizing. Christianity first spread through the preaching of Paul and others who traveled from city to city, preaching Jesus and the Resurrection and calling Jews to conversion in Christ.
Preaching in the Synagogue
The most significant institution in Jewish life was the synagogue. Prior to and during the apostolic period, the synagogue was a developing institution. Synagogues were established in every town or village in Palestine and the Diaspora wherever Jews lived in sizable numbers. There was no central authority to maintain particular patterns of practice or belief. Jerusalem, Rome, and the other large cities had several synagogues. Acts 15:21 confirms the existence of such synagogues: “For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.”
Preaching occurred in the synagogues on a regular basis in relation to the reading of Scripture. Peter and Paul are recorded as preaching and teaching in the synagogues of the dispersed Jews. Preaching was not primarily a missionary activity in Judaism but was the activity of instructing the people. The preaching in the synagogue was done by both priests and lay teachers. F. C. Grant (Ancient Judaism and the New Testament [New York: Macmillan, 1959], 45) described the practice of teaching as follows: “The preacher—who was really a teacher—sat (Matt. 5:1; Luke 4:20), and any likely visitor might be asked to give the sermon, homily, or exhortation (Luke 4:17; Acts 13:15).”
In addition to providing instruction in faith and life for members of the synagogue, the homily was also used for indoctrination and proselytizing purposes. Preaching was a practice of missionary enterprise of Judaism prior to the destruction of the temple in a.d. 70. It needs to be emphasized that this teaching practice of delivering a homily was for both believers and unbelievers. The synagogue service was one place for the unbeliever to learn of the Jewish religion, and it was used for this purpose. The service in the synagogue could and did serve multiple functions, including the spreading of different schools of thought within Judaism by way of traveling teachers who were propagandists, preachers, and lecturers.
It is important to recognize in the background of Christianity a number of synagogues that served as foci of different modes of thought. Missionary homilies, propaganda addresses, legal halakic discourses, and extremely loose, narrative, haggadic, instructive sermons were all characteristic of the synagogue at the time of Christian beginnings. Distinctions between preaching and teaching were not made.
This instructive activity was not confined to the synagogue. Both preaching and teaching occurred in the open air, a common practice in both Palestine and Babylonia. Courtyards, vineyards, the shade of buildings and walls, marketplaces, open fields, and banks of rivers were used as sites of teaching-preaching.
Teaching and Preaching
No rigid distinction can be made between preaching and teaching in Judaism of the first century. This period of Judaism provided the immediate context and certainly the background of practices for the earliest church. There was a great difference within Judaism between the more popular haggadic, narrative style of homily or address and the strict halakic discourse. The popular address was given much more frequently in the synagogue service. This popular address or homily was considered a teaching practice whether it was oriented toward making proselytes, converts, or the edification of the congregation.
Neither preaching nor teaching as used in Judaism of the first century denote a distinct style or kind of activity with a distinct content. Both words refer to a variety of activities that took place as the Jewish congregation was exhorted, instructed, and edified. It cannot be claimed on the basis of existing evidence that preaching was a more spiritual, emotional, or vigorous activity than teaching, or that preaching was a missionary activity while teaching was for a local congregation. There is an interchangeability in the use of these words that corresponds remarkably to the interchangeability that is found in the New Testament.
The Preacher/Darshan
The most common word in Judaism for preacher was darshan. This person engaged in the activity darash, which meant “to inquire,” “to seek after,” and “to interpret.” It also applied to the method of exegesis of the Pentateuch, which led to the interpretation of the Pentateuch. The darshan was an interpreter. The many uses of darash and its derivatives support the idea that the preacher was one who examined, questioned, taught, lectured, argued, and interpreted the law.
Daube has pointed out that the term darshan originally was used to describe that person who expounded the law, the teacher of the halakah; but this use lost its significance. It eventually came to refer to the teacher “who addressed the people in general, taught them the doctrines of religion and morality, confronted them in the grievous days that followed the destruction of the temple, and expounded texts of Scripture not with a view of their halakic or legal interpretation but to their haggadic or edifying possibilities” (“Rabbinic Methods of Interpretation and Hellenistic Rhetoric,” Hebrew Union College Annual, 22:240).
The possible differences between the preaching activity in the early church and that conducted by the darshan needs to be noted. The possibility of new and distinctive patterns of activity and content in the early church exists. The Jewish darshan, for example, was not a post-Resurrection figure in that we do not find evidence of a direct continuity of his office in the early church. It is certain that he as a Jewish preacher did not have a kerygma in the sense of a particular body of content or tradition. He was primarily an interpreter and expositor of Scripture.
The activity of Jesus corresponds closely in many ways to that of the darshan. The similarity between the darshan and the post-Resurrection apostles is not as apparent. The style of teaching-preaching of the apostles is primarily that of delivering a narrative, haggadic midrash. The darshan also taught and preached in this style, but is not noted for this in the same way he is noted for halachic discourse. The historical link between Jesus and the darshan is clear because the styles of teaching-preaching have a great similarity.
It can also be argued that the darshan has a close similarity to apostolic teaching-preaching in that both used the loose, narrative, haggadic style of communication. The distinctions are not as clear and rigid as C. H. Dodd and others have made them. There is a real possibility that early Christians used the modes of interpretation and retained many of the practices from Judaism to communicate their own post-Resurrection faith. The darshan was a teacher in early Judaism, and the early church was probably influenced to a considerable degree by his practices.
Teaching-Preaching in the Early Church
This aspect remains a central feature of teaching-preaching in the earliest church. The multiple theological-Christological interests and commitments form the basis of teaching-preaching. Also in contrast to Dodd’s theory is a view of the diversity, pluralism, and complexity of Jewish interpretative practices that form the background of the multiple contents of teaching-preaching.
From a theological-Christological basis, early teacher-preachers were free to use a variety of interpretive practices, modes of reasoning, and cultural-linguistic carriers of meaning. Teacher-preachers apparently used the thought forms and modes of reasoning from a pluralistic Palestinian milieu to interpret the Christian faith. Tradition, the Bible (Old Testament), and contemporary events were interpreted through a theological-Christological interest and commitment using the linguistic instruments surrounding the early church. It is obvious that early teacher-preachers made both past and present serve their theological commitments.
The style of teaching-preaching that the early church had was that of combining theological concerns, Scripture and tradition, and cultural carriers of meaning to interpret Christian faith to believers and unbelievers in a variety of locations. Teaching-preaching was more than a transmission of tradition. There was struggle and dynamism in the process of interpretation as those early Christians brought their intellect, their knowledge of Scripture and tradition, a variety of modes of reasoning, and cultural carriers of meaning to serve faith and the Lord of that faith in the communication of the good news of God’s work in Jesus of Nazareth.
Teaching-preaching was the way of communicating Christian faith to believers and unbelievers in different contexts through the interpretation of tradition, and through the interpretation of the work, person, and sayings of Jesus. Teaching-preaching used a variety of methods, ideas, and practices from different sources to the end that those who heard would receive life in the kingdom, in Christ, in the post-Resurrection Christian community.