Dose anyone know what book was written first? I heard one of the epistles by Paul. Anyone know which one. Now did the church go from the synagogues to the tombs? How could they have celebrated the Eucharist in a synagogue?
Bill
If you mean which writings of the New Testament were composed first, then it is a toss up between the epistles of James and Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. Both were composed in the early 50s of the first century.
The Gospels
While the gospel of Matthew didn’t end up in the Greek format we are familiar with today until maybe a year or so after Mark composed his, the latest critical scholarship believes that the Hebrew collection of Jesus’ sayings or “oracles” was written by Matthew first as claimed by Papias and has a good chance of being the long-debated “Q” source that ended up in the synoptic gospels. This was around the mid-60s of the first century for the completed forms of both gospels, with a likelihood that Matthew’s oracle source came before and might have been known as early as the time Paul was composing his first canonical letters.
Old Testament Books
As for Old Testament books, scholars debate as to whether Job is the oldest or actually a supplement to the very early written forms of the Torah. The oral stories that made up the first part of the Torah or Pentateuch are of course the oldest sources and predate Job.
Early Jewish Christians, the Sabbath, and the Lord’s Day
Early Jewish Christians did NOT celebrate the Eucharist in the synagogue, nor did they stop participating in Jewish worship until the Second Temple fell in 70 A.D. It was that event that created the biggest chasm between Jews and Jewish Christians, even though the division had already begun to grow before, because after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem it was impossible to return to the former way of Jewish cultic worship without the Temple.
Before then Jewish Christians did not celebrate the Eucharist in the synagogue because they were Torah observant at the time. (Acts 21:20) Remember that the Eucharist has been celebrated on the Lord’s Day, the day AFTER the Jewish Sabbath. Jewish Christians still observed the Sabbath and went to the synagogue on that day, Saturday. The Lord’s Day, which began after sundown on Saturday, was when the Jewish Christians got together to break the bread of the Eucharist, and they did this in private homes. Jews could not gather for the Eucharist before as travel was limited as were gatherings outside of Jewish worship.
Eutychus Died and Was Resurrected on Saturday Night
But as soon as Saturday evening came, it appears that the even Gentile Christians would get together at that cue to make it easier for the Jewish Christians to join them. Note how this explains how Paul’s lengthy sermon caused young Eutychus to fall asleep and to his death. (See Acts 20:7-12) This ancient Mass begins “on the first day of the week” but at night because Paul’s homily lasts “until midnight” and the breaking of the bread of the Eucharist happened right after Eutychus was resurrected by Paul. It is unlikely that Paul began his homily in the morning and spoke “until daybreak,” and the late hour explains why Eutychus fell asleep (sure it was a long homily, but the hour was late to begin with).
This “first day of the week” Eucharist celebration was obviously a Saturday night that continued “until daybreak” of Sunday, the Lord’s Day. It didn’t happen in a synagogue but a private home because this event occurred in Troas where no synagogues existed (though apparently some Jews did live there). And Paul had to take advantage of preaching late into the night because in the first century the Lord’s Day was not a work-free day in the Roman world (or in the Jewish world for that matter). Christians had little choice but to take advantage of worship at night, after the Sabbath ended on Saturday night, before the work of the “first day of the week” began.
The Road to the Catacombs
But again, when the Temple was destroyed and Jerusalem fell to the Romans, the previous Jewish culture came to an end. As a consequence Christians were also persecuted by Rome and thus worship had to be done in hiding, hence the worship in the catacombs.
As history continued, Jewish Christians were eventually made to separate from their brethren in the synagogues. There followed even a period of misunderstanding and anti-Semitism that attempted to force Jewish Christians and Jews in general to abandon their culture completely. By this time all connection between the two seemed lost.
A Return to Preserving the Jewish Culture in and Outside the Church
Times have changed however. The Catholic Church has recently come to understand that this division was a sad chapter in Christian history. Today Jewish Catholics are allowed to observe the cultural Holy Days of the Jewish people, and the Church strives to keep a living dialogue going between Christians and Jews. A recent Vatican report on the matter concluded thus:
In the past, the break between the Jewish people and the Church of Christ Jesus could sometimes, in certain times and places, give the impression of being complete. In the light of the Scriptures, this should never have occurred. For a complete break between Church and Synagogue contradicts Sacred Scripture–“The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible” by the Pontifical Biblical Commission, 2001.
