The Jewish Influence on
Early Church Meetings

So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.—Acts 2:46,47, NKJV

And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.—Acts 5:42, NKJV

Leonard Griehs

For the first three hundred years of its existence, Gentile Christians did not hold meetings in specially designed buildings. In his letter concerning Philemon, Paul addresses Archippus and the church in his house (verse 2). In Colossians, Paul greets the church that meets in the house of Nymphas (4:15). In Thyatira, a congregation meets in the house of the city’s first convert, Lydia. (Acts 16:40). 2 John warns the congregation in Ephesus not to receive false teachers into their house (verse 10).

Early Jewish followers of Jesus followed a slightly different practice: they continued going to the synagogue. Acts 12:12 alludes to a group of brethren gathering in Jerusalem at the home of Mary, John Mark’s mother, during Passover. However, this may have been brethren at Jerusalem celebrating the memorial feast together rather than gathering for regular worship.

Religious Meetings Outlawed in Rome

Julius Caesar, first Emperor of Rome, forbad all religious societies in Rome other than Judaism. Jewish communities only could worship freely because they predated the Empire’s presence. As collegia—a religious and legal entity with the right to assemble, to have common meals and to share property—the synagogues governed their congregation (Romans 13:1), enforced their own discipline (John 18:31) and collected taxes (Matthew 17:24).

While the Jewish synagogue system was autonomous locally, congregations throughout Israel and the Roman provinces came under the uniformity dictated by Jerusalem. Each required reading of Torah, observance of the Sabbath, circumcision of males, and following of dietary halakhah (legal rulings). All synagogues answered to the high priest and the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of Jerusalem.

The Sanhedrin, (Sanhedriyaot), the Jewish “Supreme Court,” consisted of seventy-one great Torah Sages and met in the “Lishkat HaGazit,” the “Office of Hewn Stone” adjacent to the Jerusalem Temple. Members were required to have a background of training in tradition as young men. The Sanhedrin debated fundamental principles of Torah and ruled by majority vote. As Supreme Court, the Sanhedrin exercised authority in difficult cases, or in offenses requiring capital punishment.

Josephus reports that the Roman procurator appointed the High Priest at Jerusalem (Antiquities 18, iv, 3), suggesting the quasi-political nature of the position. Roman governors expected the individual to be a liaison between Roman authority and the subject population. Caiaphas, high priest at the time of Jesus (John 18:13), was expected to prevent trouble at the threat of his own existence (John 11:48-50). Any insurrection was expected to be dealt with swiftly, with offenders surrendered to Roman authorities.

While politically motivated, the high priest maintained wide authority over Jewish religious life throughout the Roman Empire. This provided Saul the means to wreak havoc with Jewish followers of Jesus: “And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, and desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem” (Acts 9:1, 2).

The Congregation at Rome, Both Jew and Gentile

Paul does not use the word ekklesia for those who met in Rome, nor indicate that he or any other apostle founded the group (Romans 15:20). The first believers in Jesus there were Jews and Gentile proselytes who returned from Jerusalem after hearing Peter’s message at Pentecost: “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place … now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven … and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes” (Acts 2:1,5,10, RSV). Baptized into Christ, the Messianic believers returned to Rome and preached Jesus in the synagogue. This apparently led to the peculiar situation of a synagogue system that contained practicing Jews and proselytes, Messianic Jews, and Gentile believers in Jesus.

Paul wrote a letter to the Gentile believers who lived within this strange mix. Jewish believers in Jesus were faced with the similar situation of continuing to abide in the only permitted worship while trying to grow in their new found faith in Jesus. {Footnote: For a thorough discussion of the history and development of the church at Rome, see The Mystery of Romans: the Jewish Context of Paul’s Letter, by Mark D. Nanos, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1996.}

Priscilla and Aquilla were Jewish Christians who lived in Rome. They had heard of Jesus from Paul while working in Corinth under banishment during the reign of Claudius in 52 A.D. (Acts 18:2). When they returned to Rome as believers they sponsored an ekklesia in their home (Romans 16:5; 1 Corinthians 16:19), indicating this may have been exclusively Christian believers, either Jewish or Gentile. Archaeologists have uncovered ruins in Rome of at least twelve such first-century synagogue communities, some within the larger homes of the less wealthy sections of the city.

In the list of more than twenty Christians Paul greets in his letter to Rome (chapter 16) only five to eight names are Jewish. Apparently many Gentiles—either proselytes or recent converts—were among those who gathered in Rome and were eager to hear Paul’s advice regarding their keeping their faith in the midst of both Jewish and Roman authority.

The Mix of Jews and Gentiles

Paul’s advice to the peculiar congregation at Rome undoubtedly was founded on the agreement that had been made at the council in Jerusalem. James and the others agreed to settle the issue by eliminating the requirement for circumcision from the list of practices expected of Gentile Christians meeting in the synagogue to hear the word of the Lord: “Therefore it is my judgment that we do not trouble those who are turning to God from among the Gentiles, but that we write to them that they abstain from things contaminated by idols and from fornication and from what is strangled and from blood. For Moses from ancient generations has in every city those who preach him, since he is read in the synagogues every Sabbath” (Acts 15:19-21). The authority of the synagogue would still provide direction, but Gentile believers in Christ would have no need to be initiated through circumcision. They would only be expected to respect the Jewish practices of the synagogue.

Luke amplifies on this in recording Paul’s later encounter with James on his final visit to Jerusalem (Acts 21:20-26). After praising Paul’s success among the Gentiles, the elders of Jerusalem requested that Paul dispel the rumors that he had urged Jews who lived away from Israel to abandon Jewish practices and traditions, including circumcision. This was clearly untrue (Acts 16:1-3), for Paul never demanded that Jewish Christians forsake their heritage. He only resisted attempts to force Gentile converts to comply with Mosaic Law in order to be accepted into the community. James and the other elders feared that Paul’s presence in Jerusalem, along with a huge crowd of Jews attending the feast from all over the area, would cause a riot among the Jews.

When the elders suggested to Paul that he could show respect for the Law by supporting individuals in Jerusalem who had taken a Nazarite vow (see Numbers 6:1-21), Paul agreed to join them and pay for their sacrifices initiating the period of purifying. Josephus indicates (Antiquities 19.6.1) that this was a permissible practice as Agrippa I paid for many Nazarite sacrifices.

Paul’s agreement indicates that he saw no violation of principle in continuation of Jewish practice, and may help explain his advice to Roman Gentile Christians to submit to the requests of the synagogue leaders: “We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let every one of us please his neighbour for his good to edification … For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” (Romans 15:1,2,4). There is no evidence that the Jerusalem elders were not abiding by the decision of the Jerusalem council pronounced by James since they referred to it: “But concerning the Gentiles who have believed, we wrote, having decided that they should abstain from meat sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication” (Acts 21:25, NAS).

Historically, this was still a period of transition, and we find the Jewish segment of the Christian church following temple worship and feasts (Acts 18:21; 20:16; 24:11). As long as it was voluntary and not imposed upon Gentile believers in Christ, Paul nowhere opposes such activity.

Early Church Worship

The first five chapters of Acts describe a body of Jewish believers that met daily in the temple (Acts 1:13; 2:46; 5:42) as well as in Solomon’s Porch (5:12). It comes as no surprise that Jewish Christians in Jerusalem and Gentile Christians in Rome were comfortable meeting together with non-believers in the synagogue and the temple. God had preserved his word within that institution (Luke 4:17) and it burned a fire in the early Christian heart.