Jerusalem’s Believers at the Temple

On the day of Pentecost, Peter stood up in Jerusalem and told the crowd what they had done to Yeshua:

Acts 2:23 this man, delivered over by the determined plan and foreknowledge of God, you took, and nailed to a cross by the hands of anomos ἄνομος an'-om-os(Torah-less) men and put to death.

The Greek word for “Torah-less” is anomos (ἄνομος), a person without Torah. It is the same word Paul uses for the figure at the end of the age, “that lawless one” (2 Thessalonians 2:8).

What followed was astonishing.

Three Thousand, Then Five Thousand

Acts 2:41 So those who gladly received his logos λόγος log'-os(word) were baptized, and that day about three thousand psyche ψυχή psoo-khay'(soul)s were added.

Acts 2:46-47 And day by day, devoting themselves with one mind in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they were sharing food with joy and singleness of kardia καρδία kar-dee'-ah(heart, soul-domain), praising God and having charis χάρις khar'-ece(grace) with all the people; and the Lord was adding those being saved day by day to the ekklesia ἐκκλησία ek-klay-see'-ah(called-out community).

Acts 4:4 But many of those who had heard the logos(word) believed, and the number of the men came to be about five thousand.

Where did this new community gather? “Day by day … in the temple.”

The word for “devoting themselves” is proskartereo προσκαρτερέω pros-kar-ter-eh'-o, which means to hold on firmly, to keep close to something. Luke used the same word four verses earlier:

Acts 2:42 And they were devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to koinonia κοινωνία koy-nohn-ee'-ah(fellowship) and to breaking of bread and to prayers.

Luke uses one word for both: they held fast to the apostles’ teaching, and they held fast to the temple. The two went together.

Twenty-Five Years Later

Perhaps this was only the beginning, and the believers drifted away as the years went by.

Move forward about twenty-five years, to around AD 57. Paul arrives in Jerusalem, and James and the elders say this to him:

Acts 21:20 And when they heard it they began glorifying the Lord; and they said to him, "You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the nomos νόμος nom'-os(law);

“How many thousands.” The Greek word is myriads, tens of thousands. “And they are all zealous for the nomos(law).” A quarter of a century after the resurrection, there had been no drift.

Paul, a Man from Abroad

These, of course, were Jewish believers in the land of Israel. Paul, the apostle to the nations, might seem a different case.

But consider who Paul was:

Acts 22:3 "I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated under Gamaliel, strictly according to the nomos(law) of our fathers, being zealous for God just as you all are today.

Acts 22:28 The commander answered, "I acquired this citizenship with a large sum of money." And Paul said, "But I was actually born a citizen."

He was born not in Israel but in Tarsus of Cilicia, and he was a Roman citizen from birth. If anyone could have said that the pilgrim feasts were only for the Jews of the homeland, it was Paul.

The Torah commands this:

Deuteronomy 16:16 Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the face of the LORD your God, in the place that He will choose: at the feast (chag חַג khag) of unleavened bread, and at the feast (chag) of weeks, and at the feast (chag) of booths; and they shall not appear before the face of the LORD empty.

And Paul, the Roman citizen from Tarsus, kept it:

Acts 20:6 We sailed from Philippi after the days of Unleavened Bread, and came to them at Troas within five days; and there we stayed seven days.

He sailed after the days of Unleavened Bread, and, as we saw in Chapter 7, he was hurrying to be in Jerusalem “on the day of Pentecost” (Acts 20:16). Pentecost is the Torah’s Feast of Weeks, Shavuot, one of the three pilgrim feasts of Deuteronomy 16:16.

Standing before the governor Felix, what reason did he give for coming?

Acts 24:11 since you can take note of the fact that no more than twelve days ago I went up to Jerusalem to worship.

Acts 24:17-19 Now after several years I came to bring alms to my nation and to present offerings; in which they found me occupied in the temple, having been purified, without any crowd or uproar; but there were some Jews from Asia — who ought to have been present before you and to make accusation, if they should have anything against me.

He came “to worship” and “to present offerings,” and when they found him in the temple, he had “been purified.”

Tens of thousands of believers, all of them zealous for the Torah, and the apostle to the nations going up for the feasts with offerings in hand: this is what the ekklesia looked like as it grew up around the apostles. It believed, and it obeyed the Torah.

So When Did It Change?

If the first believers were this deeply rooted in the temple and the Torah, then the divided world we live in today must have come from somewhere. When did the church and the synagogue go their separate ways?

The answer lies outside the Bible altogether. The parting did not happen within its pages.