The Shape of Synagogue Worship
The Shape of Synagogue Worship
In the Old Testament, human worship was originally held at handmade altars. We see this pattern with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Job. At the time of Moses, God centralized worship at a divinely commanded tent that housed the Ark of the Covenant. This tent was known as the Tabernacle. It could be taken down, moved to a new place in the wilderness, and pitched again. During the time of King David, God gave the plans for a permanent stone Tabernacle which is known as the Temple. David’s son, Solomon built this Temple in Jerusalem. There is a difference in these two places of worship. The Tabernacle of Moses was built by Jews alone for Jews alone. King Solomon’s Temple was built by Jews and pagan Sidonians and Tyrenians. Moreover, King Solomon’s temple was built to be a “House of Prayer for all Nations.”
Most scholars agree that the structure of Christian worship came almost directly from the Synagogue form of Jewish worship. [1] The importance of the Synagogue to the Jews was due to a historical experience, the Babylonian exile. With no Temple in which to worship and sacrifice, faithful Jews were forced to gather around their elders to listen to the Word of God, for teaching, and to worship. This form was retained and matured after the return from the exile, and became a normal part of Jewish religious life. It was patterned on Temple worship, and was held at the same times as services in the Temple.
A brief description of the architecture of the average Synagogue in the time of Christ can help explain these factors. There were several very distinct features. The first was the seat of Moses, which was represented by seats in the Synagogue occupied by the rabbis. These seats were located on a raised platform called a bema, which had a central location in the Synagogue building. Each Synagogue had an Ark, which was protected by a veil and before which burned a seven-branched candlestick — the Menorah. "The Ark in the Synagogue contained the Scriptures and spiritually pointed to the Ark of the Covenant in the Temple, as the physical alignment of the Synagogue pointed toward Jerusalem. The ultimate focus of synagogue worship was the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem, just as the focus of worship in the Temple was likewise the Holy of Holies." [2]
The temple reveled to the Jews that God’s scope of salvation included all of mankind. When Christ came proclaiming himself as the new Temple of God, he was claiming that He would include both Jews and Gentiles in the cultic worship of God. In The Crucified Rabbi, we examine how the Catholic Church is the Third and Final Temple because it is the Body of Christ resurrected from the dead. “Jesus answered, and said to them: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (Jn 2:19).
Notes:
[1] Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology; St. Vladimir's
Press, New York, 1973
[2] Louis Bouyer, Liturgy and Architecture; Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, p. 13. Note that the synagogue was oriented toward Jerusalem.
Excerpted from: Williams, B. and Anstall, H.; Orthodox Worship: A Living Continuity with the Synagogue, the Temple and the Early Church; Light and Life Publishing, Minneapolis, 1990.
The Shape of Catholic Worship
Catholics have often endured the charge that we are an unbiblical Church; a strange accusation, really, for the Church that collected the Scriptures, determined the canon of Scripture and preached it for 1,500 years before there ever was a Protestant denomination. The fact is, we are quite biblical and often in ways that are stunningly powerful. For the Church, the Scriptures are manifest and proclaimed in the sacraments, in the liturgy, in how we live, in how we are organized hierarchically and even in our buildings.
Long before most people could read, the Church was preaching the Gospel. And to do so, she used the very structure of her buildings to preach. The Scriptures come alive in our art, statues, paintings, and majestic stained glass windows that soar along the walls of our Churches like jewels of light. Even the height and shape of our older churches preach the word. The height draws our sights up to heaven as if to say, “Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at God’s right hand.” (Col 3:1). And the shape of most of our older churches is the shape of a cross, as if to say, “May I never glory in anything, save the Cross of my Lord Jesus Christ.” (Gal 6:14).
Most Catholics are unaware of the fact that our traditional church buildings are based on designs given by God Himself. Their designs stretch all the way back to Mount Sinai, when God set forth the design for the sanctuary in the desert and the tent of meeting. Many of the fundamental aspects of our church layouts still follow that plan and the stone version of it that became the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Our traditional church buildings also have numerous references to the Book of Revelation and the Book of Hebrews, both of which describe the heavenly liturgy and Heaven itself.
The Church itself is designed around the Book of Revelation, Chapters 4 and 5 in which Saint John is caught up into heaven and describes it in detail. The fundamental design of the sanctuary drawn from Revelation 4 and 5 includes the throne and altar (cf. Rev 4:2), seven tall candles around the throne (cf. Rev 4:5), the four living creatures in the clerestory windows above the altar (cf. Rev 4:6-8). At the center of the altar is the tabernacle wherein dwells Jesus, the Lamb of God, once slain, who lives forever (Rev 5:6). This is seen in our high altar and tabernacle. Around the throne /altar are seated the twenty-four elders (cf. Rev.4:4) and the multitude of angels who surround the throne (cf. Rev 5:11) represented by the images of the saints and angels in statuary and stained glass. For what John saw in heaven is what God had prescribed to Moses.
Moses was told quite explicitly by God how to construct the ancient sanctuary in the desert, based around the Tabernacle or “Tent of Meeting.” The layout, materials and elements are all carefully described, and having given these details God said, “Make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them. Make this tabernacle and all its furnishings exactly like the pattern I will show you.” (Exodus 25:8-9). Again God later said, “See that you make them according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.” (Ex 25:40). And yet again God repeats: “Set up the tabernacle according to the plan shown you on the mountain.” (Ex 26:40). The Book of Hebrews, commenting on this pattern says why God insists on the following of the pattern so exactly: “They serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven.” (Heb 8:5). In other words, the Ancient Temple was a replica, or a pattern really of the heavenly sanctuary. Simply put, the Church remarkably depicts the Ancient Temple and also the vision of heaven in the book of Revelation. This is what Church building should do: exemplify the heavenly sanctuary, a plan which God himself gave. Sadly, modern architecture has departed from the plan significantly in recent decades there has been a casting aside of these biblical roots in favor of a “meeting house” approach to church design.
No longer was the thinking that our churches should reflect heavenly realities, teach the faith, and follow biblical plans. Rather, the idea was that the church simply provided a space for people to meet and conduct various liturgies.
Thus churches began to look less and less like churches and more and more like meeting halls. The bare essentials such as an altar, pews or chairs, a pulpit, and very minimal statuary were still there, but the main point was simply to provide a place for people to come together. There was very little sense that the structure itself was to reflect Heaven or even remind us of it. That is beginning to change, however, as newer architects are returning more and more to sacred and biblical principles in church design. Further, many Catholics are becoming more educated on the meaning of church art as something more than merely that it is “pretty.” They are coming to understand the rich symbolism of the art and architecture as revealing the faith and expressing heavenly realities.
Take stained glass for instance. Stained glass is more than just pretty colors, pictures, and symbols. Stained glass was used for centuries to teach the faith through pictures and symbols. Until about 200 years ago, most people—even among the upper classes—could not read well if at all. How does the Church teach the faith in such a setting? Through preaching, art, passion plays, statues, and stained glass. Stained glass depicted biblical stories, saints, Sacraments, and glimpses of Heaven. Over the centuries a rich shorthand of symbols also developed: Crossed Keys = St. Peter, a Sword = St. Paul, a Large Boat = the Church, a Shell = Baptism, and so forth. And so the Church taught the faith through the exquisite art of stained glass. But stained glass also served another purpose: acting as an image of the foundational walls of Heaven. Recall that traditional church architecture saw the church as an image of Heaven. Hence a church’s design was based on the escriptions of Heaven found in the Scriptures. Now among other things, Heaven is described in the Book of Revelation as having high walls with rows of jewels embedded in the foundations of those walls:
One of the seven angels … showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall with twelve gates … The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst ... (cf. Rev. 21).
Thus because Heaven had great, high walls, older churches almost always had a lot of verticality. The lower foundational walls gave way to the higher clerestory and above the clerestory the vaults of the ceiling rose even higher. And in the lower sections of the walls, extending even as high as the clerestory, the jewel-like stained glass recalled the precious gemstones described in the lower walls of Heaven. The compelling effect of a traditional church is to say to the believer, you are in Heaven now.
Most Catholic Churches maintain the basic pattern of what Moses was shown. You can see a depiction of the setup of the Tent of Meeting as it was when the people were still in the desert, next to a picture of a Catholic Church showing the remarkable similarity in the sanctuary, the Holy place, and the Holy of Holies. In effect the builders of a Church are saying, when you walk into the church, you have entered heaven. Indeed, it is a replica of the heavenly vision of John. And when we celebrate the liturgy it is more than a replica; for we are taken up to heaven in every Mass where we join countless angels and saints around the heavenly altar, where we worship God with them. We don’t have to wait for the rapture, we go there in every Mass.
The Catholic Church is surely a biblical Church. We, as Catholics, preach the word not only with ink and speech, but also in stone, wood, glass, liturgy and music, all to the glory of God. The Catholic Church is the locus of true human worship. It is a building constructed of human stones consecrated by the Blood Christ in which the Holy Spirit dwells. This living temple is truly universal, or to use the Greek word, it is truly Katholikos (Catholic).
Excerpted from: Williams, B. and Anstall, H.; Orthodox Worship: A Living Continuity with the Synagogue, the Temple and the Early Church; Light and Life Publishing, Minneapolis, 1990.
Q&A From the November 2004 Parish Bulletin
Our Lady of the Rosary
Question: The local paper has a Jewish section. I’ve noticed that, very often, the prayers they print are similar to Catholic prayers. Is there a relationship between the Jewish and Catholic religions?
Answer: Absolutely! Catholicism is the fulfillment of Judaism. Almost all of what Catholics call the Old Testament can be found in the books which the Jews consider scriptural. (The few remaining books, Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiaticus, Baruch, 1 & 2 Machabees, and parts of Daniel and Esther were written by Jews in Greek instead of Hebrew and are therefore omitted from the Jewish Canon of Scripture.) The Ten Commandments, which embody God’s Natural Law, found in the Books of Exodus and Deuteronomy, are the basis for all human moral and civil law. A great deal of the material found in both Jewish and Catholic prayers is taken from the Scriptures—especially the Psalms—so the similarities are not accidental, but the result of having a common source.
Like traditional Catholics, orthodox Jews employ a liturgical language. The revelations by God to Moses and most of the prophets were written down in Hebrew, and that language is used for the public worship of traditional Judaism. Even though Jews in Palestine were speaking Aramaic by the time of Christ, and now speak the various languages of the modern world, Hebrew remains the official liturgical language of the observant Jew. Hebrew is to the Jew as Latin is to the Catholic.
The synagogue service of the Jews is similar to our “Mass of the Catechumens,” a series of scriptural readings and a commentary or sermon by someone trained in their meaning. The rabbi who presides over the synagogue is a doctor of the Old Testament law. Like the Protestant minister, the rabbi has no priestly character—both serve as teachers, administrators and presiders, but have no sacrificial function.
Up until the time of Christ, the center of Jewish worship was at the single Temple in Jerusalem, where bloody animal and non-bloody cereal sacrifices and offerings were made to God, who dwelled in the Holy of Holies, in accordance with His instructions which are found in the books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The descendants of Moses’ brother Aaron were true priests—intermediaries between God and man, offering sacrifice on behalf of sinful mankind. These sacrifices were planned by God as a foreshadowing of the bloody Sacrifice on the Cross, and its un-bloody renewal in the Eucharistic Sacrifice of the Mass. When the Catholic priest offers Holy Mass, he joins Jesus Christ in offering the Sacrifice of the Cross—the perfect fulfillment of the imperfect offerings of the Temple—perfect because, in the Catholic Sacrifice, the Victim offered to God is the perfect Victim, Christ Himself.
God’s presence—the Shekinah—inhabited the Holy of Holies, just beyond the altar of the Temple at Jerusalem, a real and local presence somewhat like the Eucharistic Presence in the tabernacles on the altars of Catholic churches. The tearing of the veil of the Holy of Holies, “from the top even to the bottom,” suggests that the Shekinah no longer dwelt in the Temple after the crucifixion of Christ. [i] Not long after (A.D. 70), the Temple would be completely destroyed as our Lord predicted.[ii] The animal sacrifices to God were forever concluded and fulfilled in the Holy Sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
The Passover Seder—the sacrifice each year commemorating the Exodus from bondage in Egypt—provided the context for the Last Supper and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The unleavened bread and pure grape wine become the Body and Blood of Christ—the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb pointed to the Sacrifice of the true Lamb of God on the Cross—the liberation from the bondage of sin. In every Mass we ask God to accept the offering of the Eucharistic
Sacrifice: “as Thou didst deign to accept the offerings of Abel, Thy just servant, and the sacrifice of Abraham our Patriarch, and that which Thy chief priest Melchisedech offered unto Thee, a holy sacrifice and a spotless victim.” Abel, Abraham, and Melchisedech were priests of the Old Testament even before Moses and Aaron. Abel, the first to offer sacrifice to God, put to death by his envious brother; Abraham, the obedient one of God, willing to sacrifice his only son; and Melchisedech, the mysterious king-priest, offered a sacrifice of bread and wine. All of these Old Testament priests point to the eternal priesthood of the New Testament.