CHAPTER II.

THE SYNAGOGUES, SCHOOLS, AND HOUSES OF

PRAYER.

THE term synagogue, primarily signifying an assembly, came, like the word church, to be applied to places in which any assemblies, especially those for the worship of God, met, or were convened. The Jews use it in the primary sense, when they speak of the great synagogue; meaning the court of seventy elders, which they pretend to have been instituted originally by Moses, and the members of which they afterward increased to one hundred and twenty.

We are now to treat of synagogues, chiefly in the latter sense; namely, as denoting places of worship. And thus they were a kind of chapels of ease to the temple, and originally intended for the convenience of such as lived too remote statedly to attend the public worship there. But in the latter ages of the Jewish state, synagogues were multiplied far beyond what such convenience required. If we may believe the rabbies, there were no less than four hundred and eighty, or, according to others, four hundred and sixty,* of them in Jerusalem, where the temple stood. So great a number indeed exceeds all reasonable belief. Nevertheless, it is easy to imagine, that as the erecting synagogues came to be considered as a very meritorious work of piety (see Luke vii. 4, 5), the number might soon be increased, by the superstition of religious zealots, beyond all necessity or convenience.

The almost profound silence of the Old Testament concerning synagogues hath induced several learned men to con

* Gemar. Hierosol. tit. Megill. cap. iii. fol. 73, col. 4, and tit. Cethuboth, cap. xiii. fol. 35, col. 3. Vid. Selden. Prolegom. in librum de Successionibus in Bona Defunctorum, p. 15, 16, apud Opera, vol. ii. tom. i. Or Lightfoot, Centur. Chorograph. Matt. xxvi.

clude, that they had a very late original. Mr. Basnage supposes them to be coeval with the traditions in the time of the Asmonean princes, but a few ages before Christ. Dr. Prideaux does not admit there were any synagogues before the Babylonish captivity.* Vitringa is of the same opinion, and hath said a great deal in support of it.+ In favour of which sentiment Reland also quotes some passages from the rabbies. But I cannot think their arguments are conclusive. For, in the seventy-fourth Psalm, which seems to have been written on occasion of the Babylonish captivity, there is mention made of their enemies having burnt or destroyed "all the synagogues of God in the land,"col-mongnadhe-el baarets, Psalm lxxiv. 8: in which passage not only Symongnadhè, from Ty jangnadh, convenire fecit ad locum tempusque statutum, seems to be properly translated synagogues, where the people were statedly to meet for divine worship; but the words col and baarets, all the synagogues of God in the land, being added, prevent our understanding this expression, as some do, only of the temple, and the holy places belonging to it at Jerusalem. Vitringa seems sensible of the force of this argument, and endeavours, therefore, to show, that the phrase may either mean all the places throughout the land, where God had occasionally met his people in old time, and which, on that account, were had in peculiar veneration; or, at least, the schools and academies of the prophets. An interpretation which seems not very natural; and indeed this learned author himself was so doubtful of it, that he adds, discerning persons will not imagine, that this one passage, which is of an uncertain sense, is sufficient to counterbalance the arguments I have produced, to prove that synagogues were of a later original.

Again, I observe, that St. James speaks of Moses being read in the synagogues "of old time;" Acts xv. 21. And indeed it can hardly be imagined, that the bulk of a nation, which was the only visible church of God in the world, should, in their purest times, in the days of Joshua, Samuel, and David, seldom or never pay him any public worship and * Connect. vol. ii. P. 534-536.

+ Vitring. de Synag. Vet. lib. i. part ii. cap. ix.—xii.

Reland. Antiq. Sacr. part i. cap. x. sect. iii. p. 128, 129, 3d edit. 1717.

this must have been the case, if they had no other places for it besides the tabernacle; and on this supposition likewise the Sabbath could not be kept according to the law, which required a holy convocation, p-p mikra-kodhesh, on, or for, that day, in, or among, all their dwellings, or throughout the whole land; Lev. xxiii. 3. The word pp mikra, which we render a convocation, seems more naturally to import a place of public worship in which the people assembled than the assembly itself. As in the following passage of Isaiah: "And the Lord will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, mikrajeha, a

cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night," chap. iv. 5: in which there is a manifest allusion to the tabernacle, whereon the cloud and pillar of fire rested in the wilderness; Exod. xl. 38. And what then could these ppp mikrè kodhesh be, but synagogues, or edifices for public worship?*

However, the dispute perhaps may be compromised if we allow that the custom of erecting those sorts of chapels, in later ages called synagogues, and appropriated to public worship alone, first began after the return from the captivity; and that in former times, from their first settlement in the land of Canaan, the people used to meet either in the open air, or in dwelling houses, particularly in the houses of the prophets (as seems to be intimated in the husband of the Shunamite inquiring of her, when she was going to Elisha's house on occasion of the death of her son, Wherefore wilt thou go to him to day? It is neither new moon nor Sabbath," 2 Kings iv. 23), or in any other place or building convenient for the purpose.

But though we cannot help concluding they had extempore synagogues, if we may so style them, without which religious assemblies could not be ordinarily held, from their first settlement in Canaan; nevertheless, it must be acknowledged, these assemblies were sometimes neglected, and in a manner laid aside, for years together; which made it necessary for Jehoshaphat to send Levites, a sort of itinerant preachers, with a book of the law with them, throughout the cities of Judah; * See on this subject, Leydecker. de Republ. Hebr. lib. viii. cap. v.

sect. ii.

2 Chron. xvii. 9. And from the long disuse of reading it in such public assemblies, the knowledge of the law was at a very low ebb in Josiah's time; which may be supposed, in part, to have occasioned the pleasure and surprise of the king and of Hilkiah the high-priest, when the book, or autograph, of the law, which had been long neglected and lost, was found, as they were repairing the temple; 2 Kings xxii. 8.

In the sixth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles there is mention made of the synagogue of the Libertines, ver. 9; concerning whom there are different opinions, two of which bid fairest for the truth. The first is that of Grotius and Vitringa,* that they were Italian Jews or proselytes. The ancient Romans distinguished between libertus and libertinus. Libertus was one who had been a slave, and obtained his freedom;+ libertinus was the son of a libertus.‡ But this distinction in after-ages was not strictly observed; and libertinus also came to be used for one not born, but made free, in opposition to ingenuus, or one born free.§ Whether the libertini mentioned in this passage of the Acts were Gentiles, who had become proselytes to Judaism, or native Jews, who having been made slaves to the Romans were afterward set at liberty, and in remembrance of their captivity called them* Grot. in loc.; Vitring. de Synag. Vetere, lib. i. part i. cap. xiv. p. 254,

255.

+ Cives Romani sunt Liberti, qui vindicta, censu aut testamento, nullo jure impediente manumissi sunt. Ulpian. tit. i. sect. vi.

This appears from the following passage of Suetonius concerning Claudius, who, he says, was ignarus temporibus Appii et deinceps aliquamdiu Libertinos dictos, non ipsos, qui manumitterentur, sed ingenuos ex his proIn Vitâ Claudi, cap. xxiv. sect. iv. p. 78, Pitisci.

creatos.

§ Quintilian. de Institutione Oratoriâ, lib. v. cap. x. p. 246, edit. Gibson, 1693. Qui servus est, si manumittatur fit Libertinus. Justinian. Institut. lib. i. tit. v. Libertini sunt, qui ex justâ servitute manumissi sunt. Tit. iv. Ingenuus est is, qui statim ut natus est, liber est; sive ex duobus ingenuis matrimonio editus est, sive ex libertinis duobus, sive ex altero libertino, et altero ingenuo.

Of these there were great numbers at Rome. Tacitus informs us (Annal. lib. ii. cap. lxxxv.), that four thousand Libertini of the Jewish superstition, as he styles it, were banished at one time, by order of Tiberius, into Sardinia; and the rest commanded to quit Italy, if they did not abjure by a certain day. See also Suetonius in Vitâ Tiberii, cap. xxxvi.; Josephus (Antiq. lib. xviii. cap. iii. sect. v. edit. Haverc.) mentions the same fact; and Philo (Legat. ad Caium, p. 785, C, edit. Colon. 1613) speaks of a good

selves libertini, and formed a synagogue by themselves, is differently conjectured by the learned.*

It is probable, the Jews of Cyrenia, Alexandria, &c., built synagogues at Jerusalem at their own charge, for the use of their brethren who came from those countries; as the Danes, Swedes, &c., build churches for the use of their own countrymen in London; and that the Italian Jews did the same; and because the greatest number of them were libertini, their synagogue was therefore called the synagogue of the Libertines.

The other opinion, which is hinted by Oecumenius on the Acts,† and mentioned by Dr. Lardner, as more lately advanced by Mr. Daniel Gerdes,+ professor of divinity in the university of Groningen, is this, that the Libertines are so called from a city or country called Libertus, or Libertina, in Africa, about Carthage. Suidas, in his Lexicon, on the word λιβερτινος, says it was ονομα εθνους, nomen gentis. And the glossa interlinearis, of which Nicolas de Lyra made great use in his notes, hath over the word libertini, è regione, denoting that they were so styled from a country.

In the acts of the famous conference with the Donatists at Carthage, anno 411, there is mentioned one Victor, bishop of the church of Libertina: and in the acts of the Lateran Council, which was held in 649, there is mention of Januarius gratia Dei episcopus sanctæ ecclesiæ Libertinensis; and therefore Fabricius, in his Geographical Index of Christian Bishoprics, has placed Libertina in what was called Africa Propria, or the proconsular province of Africa. Now, as all the other people of the several synagogues, mentioned in this passage of the Acts, are denominated from the places from whence they came; it is probable, that the Libertines were so too; and as the Cyrenians and Alexandrians, who came from Africa, are placed next to the Libertines in that catapart of the city beyond the Tiber, as inhabited by Jews, who were mostly Libertini, having been brought to Rome as captives and slaves, but being made free by their masters, were permitted to live according to their own rites and customs.

- Vid. Selden, de Jure Nat. et Gent. lib. ii. cap. v. Oper. vol. i. tom. i. p. 200, 201; et Alting. de Proselytis.

+ In loc. tom. i. p. 57.

Vid. ejus Exercit. Academ. lib. iii. Amstel. 1728, 4to.