Meeting in Homes, Reading Moses

It is true that the New Testament speaks of believers meeting in homes. Paul greets them by name:

Romans 16:5 Greet also the ekklesia ἐκκλησία ek-klay-see'-ah(called-out community) at their house. Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who is a first fruit of Achaia for Messiah.

1 Corinthians 16:19 The ekklesiai(called-out communities) of Asia greet you; Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the Lord, with the ekklesia(called-out community) that is in their house.

Colossians 4:15 Greet the brothers who are in Laodicea and also Nymphas and the ekklesia(called-out community) that is in his house.

Philemon 1:2 and to Apphia our beloved, and to Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the ekklesia(called-out community) in your house:

Priscilla and Aquila, Nymphas, and Philemon make three households where the ekklesia gathered. Believers did meet in houses. But the objection hides an assumption: that people who met in homes could not also have gone to the synagogue, as though it had to be one or the other.

No one reasons that way about a family today. If a family holds a Bible study in its living room on a weekday evening, no one concludes that it must stay away from the main gathering at the end of the week. There is no more reason to think it about the households of the first century.

Both, Not Either

Begin with Jerusalem:

Acts 5:42 and every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease to teach and proclaim Yeshua as the Messiah.

“In the temple and from house to house”: they went to both, day after day.

Someone might reply that this was Jerusalem, where the temple stood. Out in the cities of the nations, where there was no temple, surely the house churches and the synagogues went their separate ways.

The text answers that as well. Priscilla and Aquila hosted an ekklesia in their home, yet they first met the gifted preacher Apollos elsewhere:

Acts 18:26 And he began to speak out with parresia(boldness) in the synagogue; but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.

They met him in the synagogue at Ephesus.

In Corinth, Paul’s week ran the same way:

Acts 18:2-4 And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, having recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome; and he came to them, and because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and they were working together; for by trade they were tent-makers. And he was reasoning in the synagogue every sabbaton σάββατον sab'-bat-on(referring to every Moed of Leviticus 23) and trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.

During the week he lived and worked with Aquila, making tents, and every Sabbath he was in the synagogue.

The house and the synagogue were not rivals. Both belonged to the same life.

When They Did Leave

There were times when believers left a synagogue. But the reason is worth reading: the departures were never planned, and they came because of opposition.

Acts 18:6-8 But when they resisted and blasphemed, he shook out his garments and said to them, "Your blood be on your own heads! I am clean; from now on I will go to the Gentiles." Then he left there and went to the house of a man named Justus, a worshiper of God, whose house was next to the synagogue. Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, believed in the Lord with all his household, and many of the Corinthians when they heard were believing and being baptized.

Even then, Paul went to a house “next to the synagogue.” And the leader of the synagogue himself believed.

Acts 19:8-9 And he entered the synagogue and continued speaking out with parresia(boldness) for three months, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. But when some were becoming hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the Way before the people, he withdrew from them and took away the disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus.

In Ephesus Paul taught in the synagogue for three months before he moved, and he moved because some had become hardened. When separation came, it came from resistance, not from a teaching that believers belonged somewhere else.

The Same Scrolls in the House

What did they read when they met in homes? Paul told Timothy:

1 Timothy 4:13 Until I come, give attention to the public reading of scripture, to paraklesis παράκλησις par-ak'-lay-sis(the act of coming alongside to call, comfort, exhortation) and teaching.

“The public reading.” The Greek word is anagnosis ἀνάγνωσις an-ag'-no-sis, the same word Luke used for the reading in the synagogue: “After the reading of the nomos νόμος nom'-os(law) and the Prophets” (Acts 13:15). Whether they met in a synagogue or in a home, they read the same Scriptures: Moses and the Prophets.

One Bible

There is a detail we have almost entirely forgotten. When those first believers gathered, no one took out a pocket New Testament, because the apostles’ writings had not yet been collected into a New Testament. Listen to what Paul says to Timothy:

2 Timothy 3:15-16 and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the sophia σοφία sof-ee'-ah(wisdom) that leads to Salvation through faith which is in Messiah Yeshua. All graphe γραφή graf-ay'(written-scripture) is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for paideia παιδεία pahee-di'-ah(training, discipline) in dikaiosyne δικαιοσύνη dik-ah-yos-oo'-nay(righteousness);

“From childhood you have known the sacred writings.” Which writings could Timothy have known as a child? They were the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings, what Christians now call the Old Testament. When Paul says “All graphe(written-scripture) is God-breathed,” that is the Scripture he has in mind.

The same is true of the Bereans, whom Luke praises as noble-minded:

Acts 17:11 Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the logos λόγος log'-os(word) with great eagerness, examining the graphe(written-scripture)s daily to see whether these things were so.

They checked Paul’s message about Yeshua against the Scriptures, and the only Scriptures they had were the Hebrew Scriptures. They used the Old Testament to test the gospel.

The Man Who Wanted a Shorter Bible

The idea that a believer does not need the Old Testament, that faith in Yeshua is all that is required, would have been unthinkable to the first believers. History shows what happened when someone finally proposed it.

In the second century, around AD 144, a man named Marcion decided that the God of the Hebrew Scriptures was too severe, too concerned with law and judgment, to be the God of love he saw in Yeshua. So he proposed a new Bible: the entire Old Testament thrown out, and only an edited Luke and some of Paul’s letters kept, stripped of their Jewish roots.

The believers in Rome did more than disagree with him. They put him out as a heretic.

The Next Question

So the first believers did not separate from the synagogue, and they would not separate from the Scriptures. Yet we have not seen how deep their roots in Jerusalem went. How many believed there, and where did they gather, day after day?