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The
liturgy of Judaism is that of the
synagogue, which arose during and after the Babylonian Exile of 586-538
BCE and gradually replaced the Temple cult as the spiritual centre of
Jewish life. The Hebrew biblical canon and the liturgy of the synagogue,
to a great extent, grew up together.
Because
the synagogue arose in a land separated from the Jerusalem Temple with its
sacrificial emphasis and its priestly class, worship in the synagogue
differed from what went before it in several respects. A local
congregation worshipped together on a certain day of the week in a place
set apart for that purpose, rather than primarily on special festival days
and periods. The people worshipped without priest or cultic sacrifice, yet
consciously as a community within a larger covenant fellowship and in
response to a divine word that was written down in a holy scripture. Bible
reading and interpretation, the singing of psalms, and prayers, both
corporate and individual, were the staple content of the liturgy. The
ancient synagogue liturgy has come down to the present in two books: the Siddur,
or daily prayer book, and the Mahzor,
or festival prayer book.
The
biblically prescribed rhythm of days, weeks, months, and years gave order
to the lives of the people. The Bible became familiar to old and young by
being read aloud in the synagogue, and no part of worship was esteemed
more highly than the reading of scripture. The Torah,
the first five books of the Bible, is handwritten on a scroll. Viewed as
the holiest object in the synagogue, it is kept in a sacred cabinet called
the ark. Special prayers and ceremonies accompany its being taken out and
replaced in the ark, and during the course of the year it is read in its
entirety at the sabbath services. Torah portions are also read on the
religious holidays.
A
reading from the Prophets, called the Haftarah, follows each Torah
reading. One of the five Megillot (Scrolls) is read on certain holidays:
the Song of Solomon at Pesah (Passover), the Book of Ruth at Shavuot
(Weeks), Lamentations of Jeremiah at Tisha be-Av (Av 9), Ecclesiastes at
Sukkot (Tabernacles), and the Book of Esther at Purim (Lots). The Book of
Jonah is read on the afternoon of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). Psalms
are said or sung in every service. From the chanting of biblical texts,
especially the Psalms, the music of the synagogue's cantor has developed
into an incomparable art form (see also JUDAISM ).
The
first Christians were Jews, and they
worshipped along with other Jews in the synagogue. The earliest Gentile
converts also attended the synagogue. When Christians met outside the
synagogue, they still used its liturgy,
read its Bible, and preserved the main characteristics of synagogue
worship. Every historic liturgy is divided into (1) a Christian revision
of the sabbath service in the synagogue and (2) a celebration of Jesus'
Last Supper with his disciples as a fulfillment of the Passover and a new
covenant with a newly redeemed people of God. Thus, the church was never
without traditional forms of worship.
For
more than 100 years Christians had no authorized New Testament, the Old
Testament being read, as had been done previously, in the worship service.
By the middle of the 2nd century, however, Christian writings also were in
the Sunday service. The Old Testament, the version used most generally in
its Greek translation (the Septuagint), was the Bible from which the
Gospel was preached. Its reading preceded that of the Christian writings,
and the reading was far more extensive than it is in modern Christian
churches.
As
the liturgies grew longer and more elaborate, the biblical readings were
reduced, and the New Testament gradually displaced the Old Testament. No
Old Testament lesson remained in the Greek or Russian liturgy or in the
Roman mass, though it has been reintroduced in the 20th century in most
liturgies. All liturgies have at least two readings from the New
Testament: one from a letter or other (non-Gospel) New Testament writing,
and one from a Gospel, in that order. The Eastern liturgies all honour the
Gospel with a procession called the Little Entrance. This action is
accompanied by hymns and prayers that interpret the Gospel as the coming
of Christ to redeem the world.
The
Eastern liturgies, especially after the great theological controversies of
the first four centuries, have favoured composed texts of prayers, hymns,
and choral anthems that summarize the thought of many biblical passages,
thus becoming short sermons or confessions of faith. The Nicene Creed (4th
century) itself is one such text, in contrast with the Shema ("Hear,
O Israel"--a type of creed) in Judaism, which consists of verbatim
passages from Deuteronomy and Numbers.
The
Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox churches contains many such
composed texts, such as prayers that proclaim Orthodox theology (e.g.,
the "Only begotten Son and Word of God" following the second
antiphon). Isaiah, chapter 6, verse 3 ("Holy, holy, holy is the Lord
of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory"), used in the Jewish
Kedusha (Glorification of God), generates two separate texts in the
Eastern liturgy: the Trisagion (a solemn threefold acclamation to God) at
the Little Entrance and the Greek original of the "Holy, holy,
holy" in the eucharistic liturgy.
Psalms
are sung extensively at the daily hours of prayer in the East as in the
West. At the beginning of the Sunday service, entire psalms or more than
one psalm are sometimes sung. More often, however, a psalm verse or two
are combined with other material into a composite text of a hymn or
anthem. A mosaic of selected psalm verses may be used either as a text for
music or a spoken prayer. Most characteristic of all, especially in the
Greek Church's tradition, however, is the freely composed and imaginative
hymn text, based on a biblical incident or person, or an extended
paraphrase of a passage of scripture. In addition to such biblically based
psalms and other hymns, there are the famous Cherubic Hymn of the Greek
and Russian liturgies and the original texts of hymns that have become
well known in the Western churches--e.g.,
"O gladsome light of the Father immortal," and "Let all
mortal flesh keep silent."
Liturgical
worship in both Judaism and Christianity is an action that moves within
the framework of biblical ideas and explains itself in biblical language.
Preoccupied with really different views from opposite windows, Jews and
Christians have often overlooked the common heritage that they share. This
has likewise been true of the differences between Eastern and Western
Christians.
At
Rome, the liturgy was sung and said in Greek until the 4th century and was
probably more like the liturgy of Syria at that time than that of Rome
after the 16th century. The Latin rite developed many distinctive
features, but what happened in Rome happened also to some extent in the
East. The biblical readings at mass were reduced to two: the first
reading, formally called the Epistle, was usually from an apostolic letter
but sometimes from the Acts of the Apostles or even the Old Testament, and
the second was a Gospel passage selected as appropriate for that
particular day in the Church Year. The West, like the East, retained the
Jewish week and developed a yearly cycle of Easter-Pentecost and
Christmas-Epiphany celebrations with appropriate biblical selections. The
development of the Church Year became so elaborate in the West, however,
that the Roman calendar provided for every day in the year.
In
the West as in the East, monastic and other religious communities observed
the daily hours of prayer, in which there was little Bible reading as such
but a great deal of corporate praying as well as the reading or singing of
psalms. The Roman canonical hours were further enriched with homilies and
legends from many sources, with Latin metrical hymns, and with biblical
canticles, including a daily singing of the early Christian songs that are
quoted in the Gospel According to Luke: the "Benedictus"
("Song of Zechariah") in chapter 1, verses 68-79, at Lauds
(morning prayer), the "Magnificat"
("Song of Mary") in chapter 1, verses 46-55, at Vespers (evening
prayer), and the "Nunc Dimittis"
("Song of Simeon") in chapter 2, verses 29-32, at Compline
(prayer at the end of the day). The great anonymous canticle called the "Te
Deum," a vast array of biblical images ascribing praise and
glory to God, is sung every day at Matins (an early morning prayer).
The mass
is an abbreviation of a much longer liturgy. Many items are mere vestiges
of more elaborate actions or texts. The psalms once sung at the entrance,
for example, have been reduced to a traditional form of a sung text: an
antiphon of one or two verses from a psalm, the first verse of the psalm,
the "Glory be to the Father," and the antiphon repeated. The
same has occurred in other parts of the mass. Psalms were once
interspersed among the readings of scripture. The traditional gradual was
a formalized text sung between the Epistle and Gospel, but in the reformed
mass it becomes a responsorial psalm between the first and second
readings. The short texts at the Offertory (offering of the bread and
wine) and Communion are fragments in biblical language, but they are also
masterpieces of the Latin genius for brevity, clarity, and order--as are
the inimitable Latin collects (prayers), each basing its definite petition
on an equally definite biblical revelation.
For
centuries the mass was heard only in Latin and repeated the same readings
on the same days every year, with the result that only a limited number of
unconnected passages were heard in church. The second Vatican Council
(1962-65) approved the plan of having a three-year cycle of biblical
readings, providing an Old Testament lesson for every mass, a more nearly
continuous reading from one of the Gospels each year, and a reading from
one of the letters or other New Testament books over a period of weeks.
The
term Protestant covers so wide a variety of theological views and
religious and cultural groups and so many different ways of worshipping
and using the Bible in worship that it is virtually impossible to say
anything about the liturgy or the Bible's place in worship that would be
true of all Protestants. Among Anglicans, what was said of the Bible in
the Roman Catholic liturgy would generally apply. It would also apply to
most Lutherans in the 20th century, but not to all Lutherans. On the other
hand, there have been and are Protestants who claim or tacitly assume that
nothing but the Bible should be used in worship. The use of the Bible in
Protestant liturgy lies between these extremes.
In
the 16th century, the New Testament was appealed to as a guide for
reforming the worship as well as the doctrine of the time. Because the
worship reflected in the New Testament is synagogue worship, Protestant
worship of the less liturgical kind became, in many respects, a return to
synagogue worship. Protestants separated the two services (instructional
and Eucharistic) that had been joined together in the historic liturgy of
Christendom. The Protestant Sunday service is the Liturgy of the Learners,
a new revision of the synagogue liturgy. It centres in the biblical word
read and preached. The congregation worships in anticipation of and
response to the scriptural word. Praise becomes corporate only in hymns
sung by the congregation, and prayer voices human need and misery as
revealed in the Bible and claims the promises heard there.
The
absence of a developed liturgy generally limits the amount and variety of
scripture read in the course of a year, as well as the forms of
congregational participation. On the one hand, it limits worship to the
resources and skill of local ministers, but, on the other hand, it also
leaves a freedom to choose what is useful from any source--this has become
an increasing practice in almost every Protestant church in the 20th
century. Such freedom has been welcomed by many in the latter part of the
20th century--when all Protestant and Catholic liturgies seem likely to
change without much advance notice (see also CHRISTIANITY
). (H.G.D.)
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