Sabbath and Synagogue: The Question of Sabbath Worship in Ancient Judaism.

• Author: Harrington, Daniel J.

McKay, senior lecturer in religious studies at Edge Hill College, Lancashire, investigates the literary and archaeological evidence for the sabbath activities of Jews in the cities and towns of the central and eastern Mediterranean world in the period prior to 200 C.E. Her examination is carried out in eight chapters: sabbath and new moon (the Hebrew Bible); sabbath as holy day of the Jews (early Jewish literature); sabbath as day of rest and study of the Law (Philo and Josephus); sabbath as domestic celebration (Greco-Roman non-Christian sources); sabbath in the synagogues (New Testament sources); the debate over keeping the sabbath (early Christian sources); sabbath as day of rest and reading the Torah (the Mishnah); and the unobtrusive sabbath (archaeological data, inscriptions, and papyri).

At the outset of her study McKay proposes some important distinctions: between sabbath rest (cessation from work) and sabbath worship of God (prayer and sacrifice), between sabbath worship of God and sabbath gatherings and/or study, and between the synagogue as a gathering of people and the synagogue as a building. Her results are mainly negative:

If collective sabbath worship, or even daily worship also on the seventh day, took place in those Jewish communities, few descriptions of it have survived, and those relate to the priests of the Jerusalem Temple and to members of particularly religious groups of Jews. Communal sabbath religious rituals and practices for non-priestly Jews are not described in any of the surviving texts. (p. 247)

McKay has worked through a large amount of textual material. Her preliminary set of distinctions helps the reader to become more sensitive to what the pertinent texts do and do not say. While remaining duly critical in her expositions, she generally adopts a positive and irenic stance toward her ancient sources and defends them against the sometimes extreme and anachronistic criticisms of modern scholars. She writes admirably clear prose, and one is rarely in doubt about her views. Her professedly "symbolic" reading of Mark 5:21-43...