As soon as Christianity began to be distinguishable from its Jewish roots, around the end of the first century, its adherents were accused by their contemporaries of being “atheists,” because they neither participated in the religious activities of the surrounding culture nor displayed in their own practices any of the normal cultic features associated with a religion, such as temples, sacrifices, or a priesthood. On the other hand, situated as they were in an environment where the practice of Roman religion was public and all-pervasive, to say nothing of their adoption of the Jewish scriptures as their own, they could hardly fail to be affected by the cultic world around them, even if they had wanted to resist it. For the most part, this influence was exercised in their discourse, in the metaphorical application to their own situation of cultic images and language rather than in the literal appropriation of such practices. So, for example, St. Paul speaks of the bodies of believers as constituting God’s temple (1 Cor 3:16–17; 6:19; 2 Cor 6:16; Eph 2:21–22).
In recent years, however, Margaret Barker has revived the idea that among the unwritten teachings or customs that a number of early Christian authors claimed had been handed down to them in secret from the apostles were authentic temple traditions, though not from the Second Temple known to the first Christians but from Solomon’s original (Barker, 4). While this theory has attracted interest among some who wish to emphasize continuity between the temple cult and later Christian liturgy and sacraments, it has not won general acceptance. Just because early Christian authors asserted that what they believed or practiced was an authentic apostolic tradition does not prove that it was so, and allusions to temple customs are more likely to be imaginative creations based on the literary accounts in the Hebrew Scriptures than genuine oral recollections preserved through centuries. Even material in the Mishnah sometimes appears to be a projection back of what later Jews thought should have been happening in the Temple rather than what is now known through archeological research to have been true of the actual Temple, so this is very much more likely to have been the case in Christian circles.
According to Acts 6:7, some Jewish priests were attracted to join the new Christian movement, but there are no signs that they were granted any privileged role within it. Instead, it is the risen and glorified Jesus to whom the title of high priest comes to be applied in the Letter to the Hebrews, where Jesus is said to possess a priesthood like that of Melchizedek. This designation of Jesus as high priest is not taken up explicitly in any of the other New Testament writings, but it is implicit in other passages that speak of thanksgiving or glory being offered to God through Jesus Christ (see Rom 1:18; 16:27; Col 3:17), and it finds a place in some other early Christian writings. On the other hand, the New Testament does attribute a priestly character to the Christian people. This is made most explicit in 1 Peter 2:9, where four titles that had been applied to Israel in the Hebrew Scriptures are attributed to the body of Christians: they are a chosen race (see, e.g., Deut 7:6), a royal priesthood (Exod 19:6), a holy nation (Exod 19:6), and God’s own people (Hos 2:23). As living stones, they are built up into a spiritual house and “a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 2:5). It cannot be emphasized enough that this description does not refer to the ordained ministry or to the exercise of specific liturgical functions within the church. It concerns the relationship between Christians and the rest of the world. Just as Israel had been intended to be a nation dedicated to the service of God and thus a mediator between other nations and God, so now the Christian church assumes that privilege and duty. The same designation of Christians as priests is also found in the book of Revelation (1:6; 5:10; 20:6). Although, therefore, in one sense the priesthood possessed by Jesus was seen as absolutely unique to him, in other respects Christians could be said to share in that priesthood.
Later Christian authors continued to use sacerdotal language to describe members of the church: they constituted “the true high-priestly race of God” (Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 116.3; see also Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 4.8.3; 5.34.3). Similarly, the baptismal anointing of a convert was interpreted by two early sources as being the equivalent of the priestly unction of Aaron and his successors (Didascalia 3.12; Tertullian, De bapt. 7), and the eucharistic prayer in the Apostolic Tradition speaks of Christians as having been made worthy to stand before God and minister as priests (4.11). Moreover, both widowhood (Tertullian, Ad uxorem 1.7) and martyrdom (Cyprian, Ep. 76.3) could also be described as special forms of priestly consecration.
Alongside this, however, began to develop a different usage, the seeds of which can perhaps already be seen at the end of the first century. Didache 13.3 likened Christian prophets to high priests, though this was in relation to them being the appropriate recipients of the offering of first fruits, and thus the comparison seems to be intended to justify their financial support rather than to ascribe cultic status to them. The same appears to be true in the case of the third-century Syrian church order, the Didascalia Apostolorum, which describes deacons, presbyters, widows, and orphans as the equivalent of Levites in a passage that concerns the offering of tithes (2.26.1–4); and a similar motivation seems to lie behind a later church order, the Testamentum Domini, calling widows, readers, and subdeacons “priests” (1.23). Around the same time as the Didache, however, 1 Clement cited the example of the assignment in the Law of different cultic roles to various ministers as an argument against Christians transgressing the appointed limits of their respective ranks (40–41), and also used the cultic expression “offered the gifts” specifically in relation to bishops rather to than the Christian community as a whole (44.4). On the other hand, these passages are unique within Christian literature of the first two centuries, and in any case do not go as far as explicitly saying that Christian ministers are priests.
Thus, it was not until the third century that sacerdotal terminology started to be used regularly and in a more literal manner to refer to ordained ministers. Tertullian used this language somewhat hesitantly. He applied the term chief/high priest (summus sacerdos) to the bishop only once in his writings, and then in a context that suggests it may perhaps have been a metaphor occasioned by the particular argument rather than a regular term for the office: “Of giving [baptism], the chief-priest (if he may be so called), the bishop, has the chief right, then presbyters and deacons, yet not without the authority of the bishop” (De bapt. 17.1). And he used the word priest (sacerdos) with reference to the bishop only twice, both instances belonging to his Montanist period (De exhort. cast. 11.2; De pud. 21.17). Although on one occasion he does say that presbyters belong to the ordo sacerdotalis (De exhort. cast.7), the other passages where he might seem to call them sacerdotes are all ambiguous (e.g., De pud. 20.7). On the other hand, the Didascalia, while acknowledging that Christ is the true high priest, at the same time freely called bishops “high-priests,” and Cyprian regularly called the bishop sacerdos, reserving summus sacerdos for Christ alone (e.g., Ep. 63.14). He understood presbyters to share in the priesthood exercised by the bishop (e.g., Ep. 61.3.1), but scholars have disputed whether or not he regarded them as priests in their own right, independent of the priesthood of the bishop (see, e.g., Ep. 40.1.2; 67.4.3). In Alexandria Origen consistently described bishops as priests (e.g., De or. 28; Hom. in Lev. 6.3), and certainly saw presbyters as also exercising a priesthood, albeit of an inferior kind to that of the bishop (Hom. in Exod. 11.6; Hom. in Lev. 6.6). This concept was probably inspired by 2 Kings 23:4, which mentions both the high priest and “priests of the second order,” and is one that recurs in later writings, including the classic Roman ordination prayer for presbyters, which equates them with the “men of a lesser order and secondary dignity” (sequentis ordinis viros et secundae dignitatis) chosen by God as assistants to the high priests of the old covenant.
The Hebrew prophets had been insistent that sacrifices and other cultic acts were worthless unless they were accompanied by virtuous acts and just dealings with others, but Christians went further: righteous living was no longer merely to accompany sacrifice; it was itself the sacrifice that God required. The idea is put forward clearly in Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom 12:1). The concept of “spiritual worship” contrasted with the offering of animal was drawn from Greek Stoic and Platonic philosophy and already present in the Hellenistic Judaism of St. Paul’s day, but here he combined it with the notion that it was their bodies, their physical earthly bodies, that God wanted and not just their pure minds and souls.
Even the Letter to the Hebrews, in spite of its emphasis on the unique character of the priesthood of Jesus, urged its readers to offer continually through him “a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of the lips that confess his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God” (Heb 13:15–16). Here we have the twin aspects of Christian priestly living: worship offered through the words uttered by the lips, combined with deeds of charity and generosity toward others, both actions being described as sacrifices. Paul’s letter to the Philippians similarly describes his readers’ sending of financial assistance to him as being “a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God” (Phil 4:18). The expression, “the fruit of the lips,” meaning what comes out of the mouth, and here specifically the verbalization of praise, also occurs in Isaiah 57:19 and Hosea 14:2 and had been taken up by the Jewish community at Qumran, who, finding themselves unable to perform the requisite sacrifices in the Temple because they regarded it as corrupt and defiled, were forced to turn to the offering of verbal praise as a temporary substitute for that activity. However, what they regarded as merely temporary became for Christians the permanent replacement for those sacrifices.
As part of their response to the charge of atheism, Christian apologists in the second century insisted that they did still have sacrifices—but of a quite different kind. Thus, Athenagoras argued that “the Framer and Father of this universe does not need blood, nor the odour of burnt-offerings, nor the fragrance of flowers and incense,” and he speaks of the “bloodless sacrifice and spiritual worship” offered by Christians (Plea for the Christians 13), echoing in part Romans 12:1. A similar conjunction of the two terms is also found in the Jewish-Christian Testament of Levi, which was probably composed about the same period and talks of the “spiritual and bloodless sacrifice” of heaven (3.6); and the expressions recur in many later Christian writings (Stevenson). Once again, the language of “bloodless sacrifice” was already current in Greek thought of the time and appears to have been drawn from there (Eckhardt).
Justin Martyr insisted that “we are not atheists, since we worship the maker of all this universe” (First Apology 13.1), and that “prayers and thanksgivings that are made by the worthy are the only perfect and pleasing sacrifices to God” (Dialogue with Trypho 117.2). Tertullian in north Africa at the end of the second century similarly asserted that Christians did “sacrifice for the emperor’s safety, but to our God and his, and in the way God commanded, by pure prayer” (Ad Scap. 2.8). He also described their offering as “the ascription of glory and blessing and praise and hymns” (Adv. Marc. 3.22.6) and “simple prayer from a pure conscience” (ibid. 4.1.8); and he spoke of prayer as “a spiritual victim (hostia) which has abolished the former sacrifices” and asserted that “we sacrifice, in spirit, prayer—(a victim) proper and acceptable to God, which indeed he has required, which he has provided for himself. This (victim), devoted from the whole heart, fed on faith, tended by truth, entire in innocence, pure in chastity, garlanded with love, we ought to escort with a procession of good works, amid psalms and hymns, to God’s altar, to obtain for us all things from God” (De or. 28; see also Apol. 30.5).
In Didache 14 we encounter the earliest recorded citation of Malachi 1:11 in relation to Christian worship, a text that was to become a standard part of anti-Jewish polemic, although here simply being used to support the need for moral probity in those worshipping. Having first insisted that they must confess their faults and be reconciled with their neighbors, so that their sacrifice may be pure and undefiled, the passage continues: “For this is what was spoken by the Lord, ‘In every place and time offer me a pure sacrifice; for I am a great king, says the Lord, and my name is wonderful among the nations.’” The Septuagint text of Malachi is cited quite loosely here, and treated as a command rather than as a prophecy. The quotation combines elements from verse 11 with elements from verse 14 and omits any reference to incense, no doubt very deliberately because of its association with pagan worship in contemporary culture. A similar combination of the two verses occurs in Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 5.14.136), although later Christian usage normally focused on Malachi 1.11 alone, and as a prophecy fulfilled by Christians as against their Jewish contemporaries: it was Christian worship that was superior, because scripture itself testified that it was the worship that was offered in every place by the Gentiles that was regarded as pure by God and not the worship offered in one place, the Temple, by Jews.
It was, for example, so used in several places in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho (28.5; 41.2; 116.3; 117.1). He also countered the argument that the text could be interpreted as meaning that while God had rejected the sacrifices of Jews in Jerusalem, he was still pleased with the prayers offered by Jews in the Diaspora: Jews did not exist in every nation on earth, whereas Christians did (117.3). Irenaeus later in the century continued in a similar vein to Justin, claiming that the “name” that the prophecy said was to be glorified among the nations was none other than that of Jesus Christ (Adv. haer. 4.17.5–6). For Irenaeus, Malachi’s prophecy was directed not only against the Jews but also against those Christians whom he regarded as heretics.
Although the practice of a prayer at fixed hours was part of early Christian practice—three times a day and once again in the middle of the night being most widely attested—these times of prayer were not usually linked to the occasions of the daily sacrifices in the Temple by Christian writers. Instead, a variety of biblical precedents were cited (Bradshaw, Reconstructing, 101–106). Among these were Daniel’s prayer three times a day (Dan 6:10), the gift of the Holy Spirit at the third hour of the day (Acts 2:15), Peter praying at the sixth hour (Acts 10:9), Peter and John going up to the Temple to pray at the ninth hour (Acts 3:1), and Paul and Silas praying at midnight (Acts 16:25). But the writers were unanimous that there was only one absolute rule for Christians, and that was the one propounded by St. Paul: they are to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17). Indeed, Origen, writing in the middle of the third century, claimed that the daily “perpetual” sacrifices of ancient Israel found their true fulfilment in the perpetual prayer of Christians (Hom. in Num. 23.3; Contra Celsum 8.21–2). Thus, it was not until the fourth century, as part of a new trend to seek physical rather than spiritual counterparts to cultic objects and ritual practices in the Hebrew Scriptures, that the hours of morning and evening prayer began to be regularly interpreted as being the fulfillment of the morning and evening sacrifices in the Temple (see, for example, John Chrysostom, Expos. in Ps. 140.3).
The prayers that were said over eucharistic meals could be regarded as just one of the many instances of the ceaseless prayer of the early Christians, but many of the references to prayer and thanksgiving as constituting the Christian sacrifice cited earlier had the Eucharist specifically in mind, and the meal quickly developed specific sacrificial connotations of its own. St. Paul is an early exponent of this trend, likening the Eucharist to a communion sacrifice, because in it the participants shared not just in food and drink but in the sacrificial body and blood of Christ:
The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar?…You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.
(1 Cor 10:16–18, 21)
Justin Martyr took a different approach. Alongside his affirmation that prayers and thanksgivings were the only perfect and pleasing sacrifices to God, he asserted three times that Christ commanded Christians to offer the bread and cup of the Eucharist (Dialogue with Trypho 41.1, 3; 70.4). Although the verb used in the first occurrence and twice in the last one is poiein, literally “to do,” it is a verb that can have cultic overtones, and the second occurrence confirms that is the meaning here by employing the more common verb for offer, prospherein, as well as the noun thusia, “sacrifice,” in relation to the bread and the cup. As a biblical “type” or prefigurement of the eucharistic bread, Justin cited the oblation of fine flour that had been prescribed for those purified from leprosy (Lev 14:10), in which thanksgiving had also been expressed in a material offering.
Irenaeus followed Justin in seeking a scriptural “type” for the Eucharist, but chose instead another kind of thank-offering, the offering of the first-fruits of creation (e.g., Deut 26) and claimed that Christ “gave instruction to his disciples to offer first-fruits to God from his own creatures,” namely the bread and the cup of the Eucharist, “which the church received from the apostles and offers throughout the whole world to God, who provides us with nourishment, the first-fruits of his gifts in the new covenant” (Adv. haer. 4.17.5). Because immediately before this statement he had just recalled the words of Jesus declaring the bread and cup to be his body and blood, some scholars have understood him to mean that it was the body and blood of Jesus which were offered, but it seems more likely that he meant that bread and cup were offered and that through this offering with thanksgiving they became his body and blood. Irenaeus appears to have selected this particular image because it affirmed not only the continuity of the God of the old covenant and the God of the new but also the intrinsic goodness of created matter—both of these being fundamental planks in his argument against the dualism of his gnostic opponents. Nevertheless, he continued to be insistent that Christians were to offer bread and cup in the Eucharist not as though God needed them, “but that they themselves may be neither unfruitful nor ungrateful” (Adv. haer. 4.17.5; see also 4.18.1). In other words, the prime value of the offering was still understood to lie in the opportunity it gave to worshippers to make a tangible articulation of their praise and thanksgiving rather than in any intrinsic effect the physical act itself conveyed.
The tendency to think of the bread and wine themselves forming the substance of the sacrifice rather than prayer and praise was no doubt encouraged, particularly after the full meal had been abandoned, by the continuing custom of the worshippers bringing those elements with them from their homes to be used in the Eucharist in just the same way as they also brought other things that were to be offered to God. Thus we find the noun “offering” (Greek, prosphora; Latin, oblatio) being regularly and unequivocally used by writers from beginning of the third century onwards to designate the bread and cup.
It was Cyprian, however, who developed the idea of eucharistic sacrifice beyond his predecessors. Like Justin and Irenaeus before him, he asserted that what was offered was the bread and cup (Ep. 63.2, 9, and passim), and he was explicit that this was done in remembrance of Christ (Ep. 63.2 and 14). But he went further than this and described the act as being “the sacrament of our Lord’s passion and of our redemption” (Ep. 63.14) and even said that “the Lord’s passion is the sacrifice that we offer” (Ep. 63.17). This language arose out of the principle of the necessity of imitating Christ that Cyprian had used earlier in his letter to argue against the use of water alone in the Eucharist: “Hence it appears that the blood of Christ is not offered if wine is absent from the cup, nor the Lord’s sacrifice celebrated with a legitimate consecration unless our oblation and sacrifice correspond to the passion” (Ep. 63.9). Thus, it was not only Christ’s action at the Supper but also his sacrifice of himself on the cross that must be imitated: “For if Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, is himself the high priest of God the Father and first offered himself as a sacrifice to the Father, and commanded this to be done in his remembrance, then that priest truly functions in the place of Christ who imitates what Christ did and then offers a true and full sacrifice in the church to God the Father, if he thus proceeds to offer according to what he sees Christ himself to have offered” (Ep. 63.14). Scholars are divided over precisely what he meant. Some would interpret him as saying that in the Eucharist the priest offered the same sacrifice that Christ offered on the cross, i.e., that he “offered Christ,” while others do not think that the image should be taken quite so literally, that it means something like, “just as Christ offered himself as a sacrifice, so too does the priest offer the Church’s sacrifice in memory of him” (see Laurance). But whatever Cyprian may have meant, his language certainly paved the way for a closer association between Christ’s sacrifice and the eucharistic offering that we find among fourth-century theologians.
Although the New Testament makes no reference to a particular direction towards which Christians turned to pray, later sources were adamant that it should be towards the East. Tertullian (Ad nat. 1.13; Apol. 16), Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 7.7), and Origen (De or. 32) all attest to the practice, Origen indicating that it applied to individuals praying at home as well as communal prayer, as he insisted that even if there were a more attractive view through the door of the house in another direction, east was still to be preferred. This orientation has its roots in ancient tradition. Ezekiel condemns the practice of people praying towards the rising sun (Ezek 8:16), but it obviously continued as a deviant custom and is mentioned by Josephus as characteristic of the Essenes (Jewish War 2.128). Something similar is described by Philo with regard to the community he calls the Therapeutae in Egypt (De vita contemplativa 27). His account may be idealized, or the community itself may be entirely imaginary, but there is no reason to doubt that he was aware of the existence of such a practice.
The custom of praying with arms uplifted towards heaven mentioned in a number of places in the Hebrew Scriptures was continued by early Christians, although both Tertullian and Origen encouraged Christians to modify the practice by stretching the arms out in symbolic representation of the crucifixion. They disagreed with each other, however, as to whether the eyes also should be raised to heaven in the traditional manner or lowered, like the arms, as a sign of modesty and humility (Tertullian, De or. 14 & 17; Apol. 30; Origen, De or. 31.2; Hom. in Exod. 3.3).
The ritual laying on of hands features in several different contexts in the Hebrew scriptures: the conferral of blessing on someone (e.g., Gen 48:8–22), on an animal about to be sacrificed (e.g., Exod 29:10, 15, 19; Lev 4:4; Num 8:12; and esp. Lev 16:21, where the guilt of the people is transferred to the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement), and prior to stoning for blasphemy (Lev 24:14). Early Christianity continued its use in relation to the blessing of people, and just once there is a reference to bishop and presbyters laying their hands on the eucharistic bread and wine before praying over them (Apostolic Tradition 4.2), apparently echoing the action in relation to a sacrificial animal in the Temple cult.
Christians, however, employed the action for other purposes too, not found in the Hebrew Scriptures: it is frequently spoken of in relation to healing (e.g., Matt 9:18//Mark 5:23; Mark 6:5; 7:32; 8:23, 25; 16:18; Luke 4:40; 13:13; Acts 9:12, 17; 28:8); and twice in the Acts of the Apostles, though not elsewhere in the New Testament, in relation to the initiation of new converts (8:14–25; 19.1–7; the reference in Heb 6:2 being ambiguous). The author of Acts also records it being used on two occasions in connection with the commissioning of men for particular functions. The imposition of hands is not mentioned at the consecration of the sons of Aaron as priests in Exodus 29, at the anointing of kings (see Judg 9:8, 15; 1 Sam 9; 15:1, 17), in the recognition of prophets, nor even at the authorization of the seventy elders to govern in Numbers 11, but it is possible that the commissioning of Joshua, son of Nun, “a man in whom is the spirit,” as leader by Moses through the laying on of hands (Num 27:16–23; see also Deut 34:9) may have provided the model for the description of the appointment of the Seven “full of the Spirit” in Acts 6:1–6; and perhaps the appointment of the Levites in Numbers 8:10 may have influenced the account of the imposition of hands on Barnabas and Saul in Acts 13.
There is, however, no reason to believe that the use of the laying on of hands for either initiation or commissioning was standard in New Testament Christianity, as many scholars have concluded. It seems more likely that it was introduced into the various accounts in Acts by the author for his particular purposes, as it does not form a part of any later Syrian baptismal rites of which we have knowledge, as it surely would if it had been universal in the first century. Although reference to laying hands in conjunction with commissioning for ministry does also occur in the Pastoral Epistles (1 Tim 4:14; 5:22; 2 Tim 1:6), it is not mentioned in this context in other very early Christian literature, where the Greek verb cheirotonein and its cognate noun have the more usual sense of “raise the hand to elect” rather than “lay hands on.” It seems that it was only in the third century onwards that its meaning shifted to denote the second sense, as that ritual gesture grew in independent importance rather than just being the normal but often unmentioned accompaniment to prayer.
According to the Mishnah, specific psalms for each day of the week were appointed to be sung at the daily temple sacrifices, but evidence for other liturgical uses for the canonical psalms in the Second Temple period is almost non-existent. The early Christians, on the other hand, valued the Book of Psalms very highly: it is cited in the New Testament more often than any of the other Hebrew Scriptures and chiefly viewed as being a book of messianic prophecy—or one might say as the prophetic work par excellence—thought to have been written by King David under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
This same prophetic or Christological method of interpreting psalms was continued by Christian theologians and preachers in the succeeding centuries. Among early examples is Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho. But it was from the third century onwards, apparently under the influence of the exegetical method adopted by Origen from classical literature, that Christological interpretation was gradually extended from certain selected psalms to encompass virtually all the psalms. The words of the psalms were understood either as addressed by the Church to Christ, or as speaking about Christ, or as the voice of the Christ himself. Indeed, even those texts that referred explicitly to God were commonly interpreted as really meaning the divine Christ (Bradshaw, Reconstructing, 117–119).
In the light of this popularity, one might have expected the psalms to have been given a prominent place in liturgical practice, but evidence for this is rather sparse. 1 Cor 14:26 includes a psalmos among the various verbal contributions that believers might make at a community gathering; Eph 5:19 and its parallel in Col 3:16 mention the use of “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs”; and James 5:13 refers to singing psalms. But it is not certain that the canonical psalms are necessarily intended, and we have to wait until the beginning of the third century for clear evidence for their use at a eucharistic meal, and even then it seems that they were not given any particular priority over other compositions: “after the washing of hands and the lighting of lamps, each is invited to stand in the middle and sing a hymn to God, from the holy Scriptures or of his own composition as he is able” (Tertullian, Apol. 39.18). Tertullian also tells us that “those who are more diligent in praying” were now accustomed to include in their daily prayers those psalms that included an Alleluia refrain, which others present used as a response (De or. 27). It was not until the fourth century, however, that non-canonical compositions virtually disappeared from formal liturgies, because they came to be viewed with suspicion as potentially heretical in content, and biblical texts subsequently dominated the scene (Bradshaw, Reconstructing, 122–124).
In spite of the hostility of the earliest Christians to the particular manner in which the Sabbath was being observed by some of their Jewish contemporaries, as evidenced by the preservation in the canonical gospels of the sayings and stories of Jesus in this regard, a significant number of biblical scholars have concluded that at least some of the first Jewish Christian communities of Palestine and Syria did continue to keep the Sabbath, and at some point simply added to that the emerging observance of “the Lord’s Day,” i.e., Sunday. Although reliable evidence for period when this transition took place is lacking, around the end of the first century seems likely.
The few New Testament references to activities by Christians taking place on “the first day of the week,” as distinct from the mere dating of the resurrection of Jesus, are insufficiently detailed to demonstrate that this was already an established weekly occasion for their assemblies (1 Cor. 16:2; Acts 20:7–12; Rev.1:10). The earliest mention of Christian worship happening on “the Lord’s Day” seems to be Didache 14.2, but even that has been challenged by some, either with regard to its date or as to its meaning. The more dateable reference in the letter of Pliny the Younger (c. 112) to Christians meeting on a “fixed day” unfortunately might well mean the Sabbath rather than Sunday. If the earlier date now being proposed for the Epistle of Barnabas is correct (c. 96–98 rather than the end of the first quarter of the second century), that would make it the earliest fairly sure witness to Sunday worship: “we keep the eighth day with rejoicing, on which also Jesus rose from the dead” (Bradshaw & Johnson, 3–13).
The continuing pressure from Christian apologists in the second century for believers to abandon Sabbath keeping suggests that the transition was not made with ease everywhere. They generally interpreted the commandment to observe the literal Sabbath as having been only a temporary measure, which had now been abrogated by Christ; Christians should instead fulfil it in a spiritual manner by living in holiness every day rather than by what they described as living in idleness on just one day, and the true Sabbath was the rest that believers would enjoy in the age to come. Nevertheless, Justin Martyr, while sharing the general criticism of the Jews for spending their Sabbaths in idleness, was prepared to tolerate Jewish Christians continuing to observe the Sabbath; it was only those who tried to compel Gentiles to do that as well whom he opposed (Dialogue with Trypho 12, 47).
Traces of Sabbath influence can still be seen in later Christian practice. It has been suggested that the whole idea of having readings from a holy book in the Sunday Eucharist could have no other root than the Sabbath day readings in the synagogue, this being particularly evident in the custom of the churches east of Antioch that had regular readings from the Law and the Prophets as well as from the New Testament (Rouwhorst, 255–261). Tertullian in North Africa in the early years of the third century regarded Saturdays as inappropriate for fasting, except for one day in the year, Holy Saturday, and also spoke of some who refrained from kneeling on the Sabbath just as they did on Sundays. Both these aspects of respect for the day seem to stem from an earlier tradition of keeping the Sabbath, and examples of this continue to crop up in some third- and fourth-century sources (Bradshaw & Johnson, 14–24).
In spite of occasional attempts by some scholars to find connections between other Jewish holy days and early Christian practice, especially the Feast of Tabernacles, only Passover and Pentecost seem to have established a continuing legacy. With the possible exception of 1 Corinthians 5:7–8 (which is probably intended to be understood in a metaphorical rather than literal sense), all the New Testament references are to the Jewish observance of Passover and not to its adoption among Christians (Matt 26; Mark 14; Luke 2:41; 22; John 2:13, 23; 6:4; 11:55; 12:1; 13:1;18–19; Acts 12:3–4; 20:6; Heb 11:28). For that reason, older generations of scholars concluded that the Christian celebration of Easter (Pascha, the same word being used for both the Jewish and the Christian festival) on the Sunday after Passover was its oldest form and the custom among some groups of keeping it on the fourteenth night of the Jewish month of Nisan found in the second century onwards was a later “judaizing” aberration. More recent scholarship, however, has effectively reversed that conclusion, and most scholars now believe that these Quartodecimans (i.e., “fourteeners”), as they are known, witness to a practice that began at a much earlier date as a Jewish-Christian adaptation of the Passover, while the celebration of Easter on a Sunday in Gentile churches was a considerably later development than is often supposed, and that it was not adopted at Rome until about the year 165, although it may have emerged in Alexandria and Jerusalem somewhat sooner. Prior to this time, these churches would actually have known no annual Easter observance at all.
The earliest reference to a Quartodeciman celebration seems to be in the second-century Epistula Apostolorum, now extant only in Coptic and Ethiopic but based on a missing Greek original from Syria or Asia Minor. In the Coptic version Jesus instructs the apostles to “remember my death. Now when the Passover (Pascha) comes, one of you will be thrown into prison. . . .” Jesus will release him and “he will spend a night of watching with [you] and stay with you until the cock crows. But when you have completed the memorial that is for me and my agape, he will again be thrown into prison. . . .” The Ethiopic version appears to confirm that the memorial agape (by which a eucharistic meal is seemingly meant) actually ended, rather than began, at cockcrow, with the vigil of watching preceding it. Some later sources imply that the later hour for the meal than its Jewish counterpart had been made in order to distinguish the two forms, the Christians fasting and praying for the Jews while the latter were feasting; and there are even possible signs that as late as the mid-second century there may have been disagreements between different groups of Quartodecimans over whether or not to postpone it in this way.
While it was not easy for Jews in distant parts of the diaspora to learn exactly when the Passover was to be celebrated in a particular year, this was an even greater problem for many Christians. Although some seem to have felt no embarrassment in having to ask their Jewish neighbors when they should celebrate their festival, others found this demeaning and so sought alternative solutions, in particular the compilation of their own paschal tables. Even Quartodecimans experienced this difficulty, and in both Asia Minor and Cappadocia we find some communities attempting to solve it by choosing to observe the fourteenth day of the first month of spring in their local calendars rather than persevering with ascertaining the Jewish date each year (Bradshaw & Johnson, 39–47).
As in the case of the Passover, the earliest references to Pentecost in Christian texts are to the Jewish feast rather than a specifically Christian one (Acts 2:1; 20:16; 1 Cor 16:8). Similarly, when the Epistula Apostolorum claims that the coming of “the Father” will occur between Pentecost and the feast of Unleavened Bread, it is widely agreed that this is referring merely to points on the Jewish calendar and does not indicate the existence of any specifically Christian feast. It is not until towards the end of the second century that the earliest attestation of a Christian observance as such occurs, and in contrast to Jewish practice, it consists of a fifty-day period beginning on Easter Day rather than a feast on the day of Pentecost alone. It was regarded as a time of rejoicing, and every day was treated in the same way as a Sunday, that is, with no kneeling for prayer or fasting, which seems to suggest that it had originated as an extension of Easter Day. This practice is attested in several sources from different parts of the word at this period, and although some are less trustworthy than others, we can be reasonably certain that the season was being observed at this time in North Africa, Egypt, Caesarea, and in some—but not all—communities in Asia Minor.
Because we have no earlier explicit testimony to the Christian observance of the season than these, it is something of a mystery as to why it would emerge apparently from nowhere at this time and yet spread quite rapidly to various parts of the ancient world. While its name is obviously derived from the New Testament, its form and meaning are so markedly different from the Jewish observance that it is not easy to attribute it wholly to that source. Although valiant efforts have been made by some scholars to establish some sort of link between the two, none have won general acceptance (Bradshaw & Johnson, 69–74).
As stated at the beginning, the earliest Christians mostly gave a metaphorical or spiritual interpretation to aspects of worship and ritual found in the Hebrew Scriptures that they appropriated; only very rarely were elements adopted unchanged. Thus, it was for the most part only from the fourth century onwards that they began to look for a more literal one-to-one correspondence between specific Christian liturgical practices and ritual objects and those in mentioned in those scriptures (as, for example, describing a church building as a temple), as the Church emerged more fully into mainstream life, as its worship became a cultus publicus for the state, and as its leaders sought the vocabulary to address the pagan world around.