It seems the synagogue developed in the days when the nation of Israel/Judah was taken into captivity in far-off Babylon. There in Babylon, the Judahites (--> Jews) no longer had access to their temple (which was destroyed, and far, far away), wherein joyful worship took place. In this vacuum, the more somber activities of Sabbath study developed, which became the synagogue.
(It should be noted that the synagogue has no scriptural authority for being; apparently it is entirely a human-invented institution, and yet Jesus gave his apparent approval by making it his custom to attend the synagogue every Sabbath - Luke 4:16.)
While in the Babylonian Captivity, the "official" theme developed that the captive Jews were too sad to praise God in joyful ways. This is the thrust of the book of Lamentations, opening with the line, "How the city sits solitary, that was full of people!" The whole book laments that "Judah is gone into captivity...she finds no rest."
When the Babylonian captors asked their Jewish captives to sing about their homeland, the captives put away their instruments and replied, "We're too sad to sing of home" (Ps 137). (Notice the very meaning of "sing" implied the use of instruments; this is the way God uses the term, regardless of how Strong's or anyone else may define it.)
When the Jews were allowed to return home and rebuild their temple, there was great joy. The new temple was inaugurated with great joy:
WEB Ezra 6:15 This house was finished on the third day of the month Adar, which was in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king. 16 The children of Israel, the priests, and the Levites, and the rest of the children of the captivity, kept the dedication of this house of God with joy.But these Jews also brought the more somber synagogue home with them, and by the time of Jesus, it was a well-developed system with established rules and regulations. Jesus participated in both Temple and synagogue assemblies. (He started as a child, even neglecting to return home with his parents on one occasion so that he could hang out with the temple experts, calling the temple his "father's house". He used this same phrase as an adult when he chased out the marketers.)
When the church was established in Acts 2, his apostles knew that Jesus considered the temple his father's house. They knew that Jesus had been participating in temple worship all his life. They knew Jesus participated in synagogue worship all his life. They knew he had prophesied that they themselves would be kicked out of those synagogues for being his followers.
This early church met daily in the temple, wherein the joyful musical assemblies took place. Not one word was spoken against the temple assemblies. They also met in private homes. They met in synagogues (James 2 refers to "your synagogue", although most English translations hide this fact). They met beside rivers. They met in lecture halls. Later they met in underground cemeteries. Later still they built their own buildings for their meetings.
But in these earliest days, when the church existed only in the city of Jerusalem, the main meeting place was the temple.
When the church began to spread out and away from the city and its temple, the natural meeting place was the synagogue. It is here, in the synagogue, where the non-Jew learned "how to do church". And here, in the synagogue, instruments were not used. Not because of any command from God, but because of a human tradition.
Over the next few decades, the Gentile segment of the church outgrew the Jewish segment. This Gentile segment, for the most part, had never experienced instrumental praise in the name of Jesus; all they had ever been exposed to, as a norm, was non-instrumental praise. A couple of generations later, and the kids who had grown up non-instrumental developed the idea that the way they had personally always done things must be *the* way to do things.
When the Jewish population of Christians was snuffed out almost completely by the destruction in 70AD of the Jewish Temple and city of Jerusalem, these Gentile Christians seem to have gotten it in their heads that all things Jewish were condemned by God.
These two factors - "We've always been non-instrumental", and "God hates all things Jewish, including their instruments" - led the late first-century and early-second century churches to solidify on the Gentile/synagogue way of doing things. The Sabbath was Jewish; Sunday was the new Lord's Day. Instruments and joyful dancing and incense were Jewish; solemn head-bowing and sitting quietly is how Jesus wants us to assemble. Everyone contributing their spirit-gifting in the assembly was the mystical Jewish way of doing things; we Gentiles believe in logic and science and that requires the learned philosophers to teach the non-learned, in a lecture format.
Through the intervening centuries, and the Roman Catholic Church, we have inherited this Gentile mindset. And when we go looking in the scriptures, we bring our mindset with us, and gloss over the things that don't fit in with the "way we've always done them", and when we fail to find explicit teachings to support the way we've always done things, we turn to later, post-Bible writings, and sure enough, find support for what we believe.
Although this was long, it should help to explain why it was "the norm", by tradition, not command, for church music to be non-instrumental by the second century or so. This was not because of any command from God, but because of the natural progression of the church moving from the instrumental Jewish temple to the non-instrumental Jewish synagogue to the non-Jewish, non-instrumental assembly.
No command against instruments. No demand for instruments. Total freedom. But tradition, and the practical loss in history of the earlier tradition and the practical highlighting of the later one resulted in the norm for early Christianity to be non-instrumental.
Originally published at:
https://kentwest.blogspot.com/2018/01/why-norm-for-early-christian-assemblies.html
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