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It may be surprising to many of you, but the New Testament, that is, the collection of Christian writings that came into existence in the second half of the first century, bears abundant witness to the existence of the Jewish liturgy, not only to the Jewish Messianic congregations but the Gentile Messianic congregations as well! This is a startling revelation in light of our experience today as contemporary Christians whose worship is patterned after little, if any, Jewish liturgy as was our counterparts in the first three-four centuries! The witness in the New Testament of Jewish liturgy is unfortunately not descriptive. In other words, it tells us that in the time of Jesus and beyond as seen in the book of Acts, that certain prayers, rituals, and ceremonies existed, but it does not tell us in what they consisted or how they were practiced. The New Testament tells us little about the content, structure, and dynamics of such liturgy. If you wanted to learn what the realities were behind the terms, prayers, rituals, and ceremonies recorded in the New Testament you would have only one recourse open to you: to draw on your own experience through your own direct participation in such liturgies, which is lacking in most Christians, or consult a variety of sources where you could read about the various liturgical rites and texts used in the services. In doing this type of study we stumble at the beginning because we link the words we read to our very own personal experiences and the realities that are a part of our very own cultural world, instead of their intended meaning when spoken in their original setting.
The apostles and the first readers of the Christian scriptures were in a privileged hermeneutical position: when they read of synagogue and Sabbath and Passover, they were brought in contact with realities they knew and were familiar with; for example they observed Passover because the Holy Scriptures instructs us to celebrate and observe it; whereas such observance is foreign and strange to most Christian Churches because they have replaced
Passover with Easter which was totally foreign to the believers in the first century let alone considered an idolatrous expression of pagan worship. Present-day readers (and those of centuries past) of the Christian scriptures find themselves in the opposite hermeneutical situation: a situation of uneasiness and danger. Uneasiness, because they keep encountering terms now outside their cultural horizon; danger, because they are easily tempted to fill the Jewish words with a content alien to them, a context often 180 degrees opposite their original intended meaning! Such a failure in correct interpretation of the words of our Bibles have lead Christians to mistakenly believe when reading the New Testament that Jesus came to replace Jewish worship with a new variant of Christian worship! This phenomena is extremely important because it shows clearly that the New Testament writings can be approached with different and opposite understandings which may be in harmony or out of harmony with those of the religion of Jesus (Judaism). If they are in harmony, the writings reveal hidden yet luminous meanings which those without the proper understanding of the Hebrew behind the English overlook. Such conditions result in one reading the New Testament with a mistaken understanding, thus arriving at the erroneous conclusion of seeing Jesus and his followers replace the faith and religion given to them God with one that denies the eternal truths and precepts enumerated at Sinai.
If then, we are to avoid misinterpreting the liturgical information provided in the New Testament literature, we much have recourse to other sources that are more directly and explicitly Jewish that explain in detail what is only alluded to in the New Testament. This statement explains the series of publications that Bet Emet has recently begun in order to cite some of the many New Testament passages that attest to the existence of Jewish liturgy in early Christianity before changed by paganism as this Jewish revelation was taken to Gentile land in the third and fourth centuries. Our studies will contain important documentation of the liturgy in the Temple and synagogues, the liturgy as seen in the Sabbath, and the liturgy as seen in the celebration and observance of Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, Hanukkah, and Yom Kippur. Next we will examine "the prayer" (Shema), and the Lord's prayer. Lastly we will conclude with sources from the Mishnah, the Talmud, and the prayerbook (Siddur). Let us not forget that our inquiry is to ascertain and confirm not only the presence of Jewish worship in the early Christian community, both Jewish and Gentile, but to come to an understanding of the worship service as it existed then in order to model our lives in such worship that was "in spirit and in truth."