Video Transcript: House Churches in Earliest Christianity

So we have looked a little at the human organization of families, and with children and slaves, and we've looked at some structures of buildings of houses, people, how people actually lived. So let's now take a look at house churches, let's get down to the thing that we're very  interested in how these house churches lived in earliest Christianity and how they were  formed. Paul's favorite name for a community is Ecclesia. That's what he calls them all the  time, the ecclesia in so and so's house, the ecclesia in the city of Corinth. And it's, it's his  favorite word. The the letter of James also refers to a Christian assembly as a sunagoge the  synagogue, it's another word that means assembly. And Ecclesia has a particular civic  meaning in a free city, state, Greek city states it's the assembly of citizens. It's like a town  meeting of citizens, and he adapts that word to the Christian assembly. So it carries the  connotations of a participative assembly of free people who can exercise their rights. And that is that is really the I think the connotation that people would have had when Paul refers to it  that way. So we think that the primary place for the meeting of the Christian assembly is in  working households. As I said, sometimes it seems as if it's in a hall, there's an allusion in Acts to Paul meeting in renting the Hall of Tyrannis for two years for his his lectures, you know that. So that would be another case of meeting in a public place. But for the most part, we think  that they found hospitality in somebody's house. Not necessarily one of those very lavish  houses, the way you saw in the pictures, could be a very ordinary, normal, smaller, modest  kind of house, which would limit the number of people then who could participate. But  remember that if you're meeting in a working household, that means that it's working, it's a  working household, that everything else is going on there. They are preparing food, they are  spinning and weaving and producing cloth. They are doing all those kinds of things. They're  marrying, and their children are born. And there are children running around, pulling some of  those toys that you saw in the previous picture. People are dying. They're holding funerals.  Because both weddings and funerals were household observances. They didn't go anywhere  else for that. The ritual when when someone died is was to hold a vigil, very short vigil.  There's no embalming here, you see, so burial, came pretty soon, but there would be a vigil.  And then there would be a procession to the cemetery, which was outside the city walls,  usually. But it all takes place in houses. And one of my, my co editors on one of the books  about this, who herself was raising several children, said that she imagined people walking in  the front door to attend a house church meeting and tripping over the children's toys that  were left in the front hall, or being very distracted during the meeting of the assembly by the  screams of a woman in a back room giving birth. So you have to factor in these kinds of  things, that everything wasn't neat and orderly, because these were places where families  really did live. So we think that we from from what we read, and what we know, there was a  weekly assembly for worship. It was on the first day of the week, the Jewish first day of the  week after the Sabbath. And that was because of course of the understanding that the  resurrection of Jesus took place on that first day of the week. That's all the narratives of the  empty tomb say that it was the first day of the week after the Sabbath. So that's the day on  which they would meet. Now, there were other, shall we say, private religious groups and  organizations that also had their favorite meeting times. And the work day, I should say to  the, the day off was very irregular. Except for Jews, of course, there was the Sabbath. But the  for in the Roman calendar tended to work in segments of 10 days, and then day off that kind  of thing. So different people were taking a day off at different times, and you simply had to  leave work if you were going to do this? Well, most of the time, no, I think it was probably late afternoon after the workday was over. The workday began very early, very early and knocked  off around three or four in the afternoon, usually, because of the heat, and simply the way, it  was the way the system worked. So probably these assemblies were later in the afternoon,  which was dinnertime anyway, for major dinners. So once a week, on the first day, after the  Sabbath, they would all come together in one of these houses. And there, they would  certainly greet each other and then settle in for the meal. And you remember seeing houses,  the floor plans of houses, and I would point out where the dining room was. And the dining  room I said, was always the room that had the the best view of the of the peristyle of the  garden in the middle. So I asked myself, How many people could these houses hold for a  meeting like this? Well, they could hold as many as you could set up in the dining room and 

around the the open center, you know, the the garden, the peristyle. And usually in Roman  dining rooms, it was set up for reclining at table, you've seen pictures of this, I'm sure of  people on couches, and you reclined on your left arm and you ate with your right hand, and  there would be a table there in front of you. But I wonder, you know whether they really set  up reclining situations for everybody. But my suspicion is that people who didn't fit into the  dining room would be at chairs and tables, which is also a way that they that people ate when it wasn't a formal meal. And of course, they're would all be made of wood and has long since  disappeared. But my after studying this for a long time, my image is is that that certain  people would be invited into the dining room to recline on the couches. Certainly, the hosts  hostesses of the house, whoever's house it was, would be there. If you had your founding  apostle like Paul visiting, he certainly would be there, and perhaps other honored guests, and  then most people really would, would be out in the in the peristyle. Now question, were they  segregated by social status? Did the slaves have to all eat together at the end of the  peristyle? Or were they integrated with their own family units? We don't know. We just don't  know about that. And children were the children all together were they running around in  circles around their parents. We don't know about that either. So so we have this meal, which  I'm going to come back to in a minute the order of that, but to look first at the other activities  that went on in the house church. And one of them certainly is instruction. Those interested in joining the community would have a series of a period of instruction first, and they would  have to go somewhere for that. And, and my assumption is that that would be the house. And then also after baptism, they would be continuing instruction for a while. And that would also  continue so you'd have a lot of meetings going on in the house. Hospitality when you had  members of the community who were traveling somewhere where there was another  Christian community, I think they must have known who to ask for in the city where you're  going go to the the Jewish neighborhood or the Greek neighborhood or whatever it was and  ask for so and so and ask for hospitality there because there's Some evidence that they were  in their hotels, but they really they didn't seem to be very good. So hospitality in somebody's  home would be a much better thing. So again, you would have a guests coming in. And and if  this house was couldn't accommodate them, they would know somebody else in the  community that would. So hospitality for visitors, and networking. So and so arrives in the  city, a member of the community and wants to create is in a certain business and wants to  create connections with somebody in the same business in that city. Oh, I know somebody  who can put you in touch with them. So that's what I mean by networking by creating  networks that are helpful for the for other members of the community. So those are some of  the activities I think that went on in the house church. Now to go back to the the meal, the  weekly meal, they certainly had had to adapt Roman meal customs. They have a tradition of  what Jesus did and said, as his last meal with His disciples. And that constitutes a formula.  And you see it in I Corinthians 11, Paul says that on the night before he died, he didn't this. So that it already in Paul's time, the time of the writing of I Corinthians was probably in the 50s of the first century. There's a formula. And that formula doesn't change much when you compare it to the accounts in the Synoptic Gospels. in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, for what Jesus did at  the supper, there's a basic unity there, even though there are many variations on the  wording. So they've got that, to, to be the moment the the sacred moment of the sharing of  the of the bread and the cup. And in the Roman banquet, the Roman meal, first, there is  eating, you come in, you get your feet washed, you recline or sit wherever you're going to be.  And, and I should say too that in the Roman custom of banqueting, there's a real sensitivity  about place about where people are placed. And there's the the hostess in or hostess in one  position, and next to them, and then from there on down. And the prime place is right next to  the host or hostess, and you get the best view of the garden, from the angle where you are.  So there's, there's that sensitivity to place, you remember the story in the Gospel about the  the man, that is the parable that Jesus tells about somebody who chooses the first place. And  then then the host comes in and says, No, you're not supposed to sit there, he's supposed to  sit there. And and, and there's shame then because he has to move to another workplace. So  there were very definite places established in the in the dining room. And, and they would  come in and they would be placed by the host or by a slave, they were a slave would be a 

steward who would tell people where to go where to where their place is, and they begin with  eating. And there my supposition is that at the end of the, the meal part of it, they would  have this the special words over the bread and cup for the Eucharist. as they transition into  the second part of the banquet, which is the time when the wine is brought in. So perhaps the first cup would be the cup with the Eucharist. And then there is the drinking and drinking and  discussion. And after people have had several cups of wine, the discussion gets better, you  know. So that's the sort of the, the pattern of the banquet. So my supposition is that the order of the Eucharist is the opposite of what we have. We have first word and then table. I think  they probably had it the opposite that it was first table, and then word that the the reading of  the Scripture and the comment on the Scripture and the sharing of news and all of that took  place during the session after the meal after the eating in which they're still in place. And  they're they're serving wine. And I think that that order switched when Eucharist was taken  out of the household context and put into a context of an of an assembly in a hall. And that  seems to have happened sometime at various stages in the second century. So that that's  strictly my own. Thinking about that, though? I think I'm not alone on that. And but this is this  is speculation about what actually happened at the meal. Now, the question who who  presides at the meal is another the, the the owners of a house would be the the natural  presiders at the meal, they would be the ones who would lead with the eating, they would be  the ones who would recite the narrative of the Lord's Supper, and share the the bread and the cup, they would be the ones who would lead the reflection, the reading of the word not  necessarily read themselves, but to be the, the leaders of the ones who move it forward, the,  the readers would be people who were skilled at reading. Because Have you ever seen an  ancient manuscript, there's no punctuation, and there are no spaces between words, there  are just letters, capital letters. And you, you can't just look at it and start reading out loud. To  read it out loud, you really have to already know the text, you have to be familiar with it. So  reading public reading now, I'm not talking about personal read now. But public reading was  quite a skill. And as I said, you had to be familiar with the text first. So even if it's a letter from Paul, you know, the group meeting somewhere in somebody's house in Corinth, and Paul has  sent them a letter, which is circulating among the house churches in Corinth, you can't just  get up and look at this thing and read it you, the reader has to be prepared first. And the  reader then is the person who, who is perhaps perhaps begins the commentary on it. Or  perhaps it's the the owners of the of the House who say, Well, what do you think he meant by  that? And then there would be common sharing of, of interpretation, what are the things we  would love to have is community's answers to Paul's letters. You know, he writes a letter and  he says, I want you to do this, and this and this. And they presumably wrote a letter back to  him. And we don't have that. So we don't know, with with one or two exceptions. There are a  couple of times actually, in I Corinthians where he says, Now you said in the letter. And so we  have one of their questions, but we don't really have their answers to his letters. So in terms  of what happens in a house church, that's, that, I think, is the gist of it. Now, I want to talk  about this a little, I want to talk about this in the next segment, actually, about the different  kinds of people we know, belong to these house churches. And certainly, there were, there  were slaves from households, there were some households that would come all together, free  and slaves. There were some slaves that came from households with nobody else there from  that household. It's a very mixed bag. But if everyone was treated, the same in terms of  seating and food served, and all that kind of thing. What happens when they go home? And  it's not all the same, and the slaves are still expected to be slaves and to serve everybody  else. I suspect that caused some friction. So we will continue this discussion when we're  talking about particularly about women in house churches, which I didn't say much about  here, except that sometimes the house is owned by a woman, in which case, she is then the  ordinary presider at the meal. So, to be continued,