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Synagogue and Temple
As already noted, the synagogue was another major institution in the public and religious life of the Jews during the first century A.D. However, while Jewish believers continued an association with the temple, Luke is silent about any contact with the synagogues in or around Jerusalem. One surmises that the house gatherings of the early believers replaced the synagogue meetings by providing similar opportunities and structures of Christian worship and fellowship.
Contacts with the synagogue apart from Stephen and the "synagogue of the Freedmen"1 were important in Paul's missionary activity only as opportunities to initiate the proclamation of the gospel and a model for Christian house churches in the Greco-Roman world.2Consider the special roles of the Temple before and after its destruction in AD 70. How did the synagogues and then the house churches take over in the early years of the Christian community in Jerusalem?
1Acts 6:9 2Ephesians 2.19
"Christians continued to worship in Synagogue and Temple."
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