Why would a 1st-century Sidur be different from what has been done in history from the 3rd century onwards until today?
It must be understood that there exists an official Christianity that has persisted to this day, but gradually, with archaeological advancements, inscriptions, and ancient texts that have emerged, a clearer vision of the substantial change in church liturgy that occurred during this time has emerged as well, producing a liturgy that has arrived and now completely imposes itself separate from apostolic reality. As we have seen in other articles on this Blog (see it here), it does not condemn most people to hell, because it can be classified as a development of spontaneity, even if its pedagogical and cooperative function in the harmonious worship of a community of faith is not fully utilized. And this is without counting those cases where they simply followed a pagan model of worship, turning their liturgy into yet another strange cult.
Where does this order come from that tries to rescue the Way Up Sidur?
The order that the church followed in its beginnings and that we try to rescue in the Way Up Sidur was transmitted from ancient times through oral tradition. This is why we cannot find among the Apostolic Writings a letter or book detailing the Sidur they followed, because it was part of their oral tradition. Of course, we will find traces of it among their writings, although not a Sidur as such.
Why did none of them make a Sidur to facilitate the permanence of that liturgy in the church?
There are two main reasons: Priority and oral tradition. Remember that making a book in apostolic times was very expensive, until centuries later the printing press appeared [1]. So the sections, prayers [2], and everything that formed the liturgical order was done from memory, since from childhood they repeated it every day and transmitted its details orally. This form of transmission through oral tradition in their time was so developed that it had its own laws and was not simply a matter of word of mouth. What undermined this were the subsequent social conditions of persecution and rapid growth where weeds were more prolific than wheat. Note that one of the few failures in terms of this oral transmission as a system was Christianity; because Judaism and most Semitic peoples have continued to use this methodology of educational and cultural transmission very effectively to this day.
On the other hand, in biblical times as until today, there were people specialized in liturgy, called Shaliaj Tzibur, or ‘apostles of the congregations’, who were so important that it was even said that a Shaliaj in a congregation, if there was only a budget to hire one person, was more important than someone who knew Scripture (a rabbi).
Before continuing, it would be good to clarify that the same people who preserved Scripture for centuries also preserved this oral tradition. It was not until the gospel reached the Gentiles in large numbers and the neo-Pharisees began to manipulate that tradition (after the 2nd century) that the oral tradition began to be discredited among Jesus’ followers. Interestingly, textual criticism today has shown that even the written tradition is not entirely reliable, when just in the so-called New Testament we have more than 250,000 textual variants. So, historical research and comparison with Scripture will be key to rescuing that oral tradition and bringing it to Scripture. However, what we are doing does not disqualify the oral tradition, because there will always be much that is impossible to put on paper and will continue to be transmitted from mouth to mouth.
As an interesting fact, it should be added that the new Pharisees, as a consequence of their new status of exiles and not to lose that tradition, were forced at the end of the 3rd century to write a reduced part of the oral tradition in what is known as the Mishnah, of which none of these reduced manuscript documents has reached us but rather late copies made from the 9th century of it [3] in its Talmudic version. On the other hand, the Sidur of these Jews began to be written later, perhaps by the 3rd century based on the data provided by the Mishnah itself. Copies of it have reached us very late as with the case of the Mishnah. However, in Christianity we have no indication that this oral tradition transmitted by the apostles had a similar process and was written in order to preserve it, which contributed to its almost complete disappearance until today. The closest thing to that are the descriptions made by Hippolytus of Rome of baptism or some homilies about Easter and hymns by Ambrose, where rather some practices of their congregations are being described with a more apologetic purpose against the social criticisms made to them. Everything else is isolated details of some of their religious practices. Of course, thanks to today we can unite all that we can see a harmony in what the church did in its first centuries with Judaism, although with time and little by little they were separated.
Author: Dr. Liber Aguiar
[1] The printing press began to be used for book publishing in the medieval period (1440 AD) by Johannes Gutenberg.
[2] What the apostles called “spiritual songs”.
[3] Codex Kaufmann, Codex Parma, Cairo Genizah Manuscripts.
Author: Dr. Liber Aguiar
0 Comments