United States or San Marino ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Leaving Timothy and Luke at Philippi, Paul and Silas proceeded to Thessalonica, the largest and most important city of Macedonia, where there was a Jewish synagogue in which Paul preached for three consecutive Sabbaths. A few Jews were converted, but the converts were chiefly Greeks, of whom the larger part were women belonging to the best society of the city.
Straight to the synagogue, as before, they went. It was their best introduction to the new field. There, if we take the plain words of Acts xiv. 1, they found a new thing, 'Greeks, heathens pure and simple, not Hellenists or Greek-speaking Jews, nor even proselytes, in the synagogue.
Awakened from their dream of prophecy and conquest, they assumed the behaviour of peaceable and industrious subjects. The worship of the synagogue became the great bond of racial union, and through centuries held the scattered nation in the closest uniformity. The middle of the third century beheld all Isræl incorporated into their two communities, under their patriarch and their caliphate.
He followed the observance of wearing his hat while at synagogue, but during no other religious ceremony; troubled himself but little regarding the dietary laws; dressed as his Christian neighbor did; and strictly prohibited any superstitious practices in his house. He even permitted his wife to let her hair grow, a bold innovation. His appearance was by no means suggestive of the hero.
The Anglo-Saxon stolidity of the West-End Synagogue service, on week days entirely given over to paid praying-men, was a typical expression of the universal tendency to exchange the picturesque primitiveness of the Orient for the sobrieties of fashionable civilization.
Fanny turned round to beckon Baron Arnstein to join them, but he had just left with the rabbi and the other officers of the synagogue. The ladies were now alone, for the ceremony was about to begin. And now the women entered, whose duty it was to raise loud lamentations and weep over the fate of the brides who were about to leave the parental roof and to follow their husbands.
And as he approached the narrow door of the Jews' church, he saw that a crowd of men stood round it, some in high caps and some in black hats, but all habited in short muslin shirts, which they wore over their coats. Such dresses he had seen before, and he knew that these men were taking part from time to time in some service within the synagogue.
It was not long, perhaps, before the Jews themselves, animated with a fiercer zeal and a more jealous faith, perceived the gradual separation of their Nazarene brethren from the doctrine of the synagogue; and they would gladly have extinguished the dangerous heresy in the blood of its adherents.
The Rabbi did not reply, but his heart echoed his daughter's forebodings. Kathinka now rarely went out, and never alone. On her way to the synagogue and upon her little errands of mercy, she was invariably attended by her devoted Joseph. The very danger to which the girl had been exposed served to cement their hearts more closely. For a time, nothing was seen of Loris.
Without saying thanks or good-night, he was gone. Meanwhile the cause of all this disturbance had arrived at the end of her flight. Close by the synagogue was situated the house of the rabbi. It was built in an angle of a very narrow street, set in a framework of tall shade-trees. Even by daylight it was dismal enough.
Word Of The Day