Synagogue

A synagogue is a Jewish assembly and the place where that assembly gathers; the Greek word synagōgē, from synagein, "to bring together," is used in the New Testament for both the congregation and its meeting place. The text presents synagogues as settled local institutions of first-century Galilee and the Diaspora: "Jesus went about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the Good News of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness among the people" (Matthew 4:23). Luke's account of Jesus' sermon at Nazareth has him read from Isaiah and announce that the Spirit-anointed speaker is sent "to preach good news to the poor," "to proclaim release to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind," and "to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:18–19). Linguistically, the same Greek noun was used by the translators of the Hebrew Scriptures for the congregation of Israel, so the word carried both an assembly sense and a locational one well before the New Testament.

The text also presents synagogues as bodies with authority over their members. Jesus warns disciples that they will be brought "before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities" (Luke 12:11) and that "they will put you out of the synagogues" (John 16:2), so expulsion from the assembly functioned as a real social and religious penalty. Acts shows Paul using the synagogue as a preaching venue, arguing there that God's promise to the fathers is fulfilled in Jesus (Acts 13:22, 33) and that "through this man is proclaimed to you remission of sins," so that "everyone who believes is justified from all things, from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses" (Acts 13:38–39). Historically, the synagogue as a local institution is generally dated to the Second Temple period, existing alongside the Jerusalem temple rather than replacing it, and first-century synagogue buildings and inscriptions have been excavated at sites such as Gamla and Magdala; scholars still debate how far back the institution's origins reach.

Two of the letters in Revelation use the phrase "synagogue of Satan" for opponents in Smyrna and Philadelphia, described as "those who say they are Jews, and they are not, but lie" (Revelation 2:9; 3:9). Interpreters differ over the referent: some read it as a specific group within the Jewish community that opposed or denounced the churches, others as a symbolic designation for a false assembly whatever its ethnic makeup, and others as a polemic against Gentile Judaizers. Historically, this phrase has been used in Christian preaching to justify hostility toward Jews, and many modern interpreters and church bodies hold that such use misreads a passage whose own wording denies that the opponents truly are Jews.

Christian traditions read the synagogue differently. In this tradition, several churches see continuity between synagogue Scripture reading and preaching and their own liturgy, treating Luke 4:18–19 as a pattern for the ministry of the Word, while others stress that the New Testament distinguishes the assembly gathered in Jesus' name from the synagogue that expelled his followers (John 16:2). Jewish usage, by contrast, knows the institution as the house of assembly where prayer and Torah study are conducted, without reference to the New Testament texts at all. One way to read the whole range of passages is to see the synagogue as the ordinary setting in which the gospel was first announced and first contested, rather than as a single fixed concept.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.