StrongerBible

sunagōgē

συναγωγή

GreekG4864“synagogue, assembly, ...”

Appears 57 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 4:23Mat 6:2Mat 6:5Mat 9:35Mat 10:17Mat 12:9Mat 13:54Mat 23:6Mat 23:34Mrk 1:21Mrk 1:23Mrk 1:29Mrk 1:39Mrk 3:1Mrk 6:2Mrk 12:39Mrk 13:9Luk 4:15Luk 4:16Luk 4:20Luk 4:28Luk 4:33Luk 4:38Luk 4:44Luk 6:6Luk 7:5Luk 8:41Luk 11:43Luk 12:11Luk 13:10Luk 20:46Luk 21:12Jhn 6:59Jhn 18:20Act 6:9Act 9:2Act 9:20Act 13:14Act 13:42Act 13:43Act 14:1Act 17:1Act 17:10Act 17:17Act 18:4Act 18:7Act 18:19Act 18:26Act 19:8Act 22:19
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Names & words formed with this
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What sunagōgē means

synagogue: the Jewish gathering for Scripture and prayer, the community that gathers, or the building they meet in

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

The word began as a plain noun built from a verb meaning to bring together, and in everyday Greek it could name almost any kind of gathering: a harvest collected, troops massed, even water pooling in one place. Jewish use narrowed it to one thing, the assembly of the people around the Law of Moses, and from there it stretched across everything that assembly involved.

That is why a single word does so much work in the New Testament. It can mean:

  • the building the people meet in
  • the congregation that makes up the local community
  • in one famous insult, a rival group claiming a title it does not deserve

These are not unrelated ideas competing for the same spelling; they are one institution seen from different angles, and only the surrounding sentence tells you which angle is in view. When someone enters, stands up in, or builds a synagogue, a building is meant; when Paul persuades those of the synagogue, the people are meant; and when Jesus teaches in the synagogues from town to town, both the place and the community are in view at once.

Scholars once doubted that purpose-built synagogue buildings existed in Jesus' day, but inscriptions and excavated buildings from before the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 have settled the question: the building sense was already live in the first century, at least in the Jewish homeland.

The same word also carries a sharp edge. Drawing on an old pattern from the Greek Old Testament, where a wicked faction within Israel could be called a congregation of evildoers, the book of Revelation brands a hostile group a synagogue of Satan, claiming the honored title for the true people of God and denying it to the opponents.

Nuances

1athe building or meeting-house where the local Jewish community assembled to read the Scriptures, pray, and teach
Mat 13:54Mrk 1:21Mrk 1:23Mrk 1:29Mrk 3:1Mrk 6:2Luk 4:16Luk 4:20Luk 4:28Luk 4:33Luk 7:5Jhn 6:59
1bthe congregation itself: the local Jewish community or association of people that gathered
Luk 8:41Luk 12:11Act 6:9Act 9:2Act 13:43Jas 2:2
1ca counter-assembly branded as belonging to Satan: a rival group denied the honored title it claims
Rev 2:9Rev 3:9

What scholars say about sunagōgē

συναγωγή is the verbal noun of συνάγω ("bring together") and is overwhelmingly secular and concrete in classical and Hellenistic Greek (LSJ; Moulton-Milligan), the cultic-building sense being essentially unattested outside Judaism before late antiquity. In the LXX it occurs some 200-225 times, rendering עֵדָה in roughly 87% of its occurrences (and never rendered by ἐκκλησία) and sharing קָהָל with ἐκκλησία, a distribution traced by K. L. Schmidt (TDNT 3) and Wolfgang Schrage (TDNT 7: 798-852), whose article remains the standard treatment. BDAG and Louw-Nida organize the NT senses as act of gathering, group/community, and place. The once-influential minimalism of Howard Clark Kee (NTS 36 [1990]: 1-24), who denied a pre-70 building sense, has been decisively answered by Richard Oster (NTS 39 [1993]), Donald Binder (Into the Temple Courts, 1999), Lee I. Levine (The Ancient Synagogue, 2nd ed. 2005), and Anders Runesson, Binder and Olsson's sourcebook (2008), together with the Theodotus inscription (CIJ II 1404; dated pre-70 by John Kloppenborg, JJS 51 [2000]) and excavated pre-70 buildings at Gamla, Magdala, Modi'in, and elsewhere. Runesson's distinction between public (civic) and association synagogues, and Paul Trebilco's and Ralph Korner's work on why early Christians preferred ἐκκλησία, frame the current discussion.

Where scholars disagree about sunagōgē

Whether the synagogue of James 2:2 is a Christian (Jewish-Messianic) worship gathering, a community court session, or an ordinary community meeting. The possessive "your synagogue" has led most to reject the older view that it is a non-Christian Jewish synagogue the readers merely attend.

  • majorityThe readers' own Jewish-Messianic assembly, in an early setting where the words synagogue and church had not yet hardened into Jewish-versus-Christian labels.; Luke Timothy Johnson, The Letter of James (Anchor Bible, 1995); Dale C. Allison, James (ICC, T&T Clark, 2013); Richard Bauckham, James (Routledge, 1999)
  • minorityA judicial gathering of the community modeled on Jewish court practice, given the language of lawcourts later in the chapter.; Roy B. Ward, "Partiality in the Assembly: James 2:2-4," Harvard Theological Review 62 (1969): 87-97; Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James (NIGTC, 1982)

Who the synagogue of Satan in Revelation 2:9 and 3:9 actually are. All major readings agree the phrase reworks an inner-Jewish pattern of branding a rival group as wicked, not a generic anti-Jewish slur.

  • majorityThe literal local Jewish communities of Smyrna and Philadelphia, who had denounced Christ-confessors; the seer denies them the title of true Jews.; David E. Aune, Revelation 1-5 (WBC 52A, 1997); Craig R. Koester, Revelation (Anchor Yale Bible, 2014); Adela Yarbro Collins, "Vilification and Self-Definition in the Book of Revelation," Harvard Theological Review 79 (1986): 308-20
  • minorityAssimilating or pro-Roman Jews within the wider movement, accused of betraying the covenant, on a reading of Revelation as itself a Jewish apocalyptic text.; John W. Marshall, Parables of War (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001)
In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • Wolfgang Schrage, "συναγωγή," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 7 (1971), 798-852dictionary
  • BDAG (A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 3rd ed., 2000), s.v. συναγωγήlexicon
  • Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (Yale University Press, 2005)monograph
  • Donald D. Binder, Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period (SBL, 1999)monograph
  • Howard Clark Kee, "The Transformation of the Synagogue after 70 C.E.," New Testament Studies 36 (1990): 1-24article
  • John S. Kloppenborg, "Dating Theodotos (CIJ II 1404)," Journal of Jewish Studies 51 (2000): 243-80article
  • Anders Runesson, Donald D. Binder, and Birger Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 C.E. (Brill, 2008)monograph
  • Paul Trebilco, "Why Did the Early Christians Call Themselves ἡ ἐκκλησία?," New Testament Studies 57 (2011): 440-60article

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of συναγωγή

dative f p

συναγωγαῖς

Mat 4:23, Mat 6:2, Mat 6:5, Mat 9:35, Mat 10:17, Mat 23:6, Mat 23:34, Mrk 12:39

accusative f s

συναγωγὴν, συναγωγήν

Mat 12:9, Mrk 1:21, Luk 4:16, Luk 6:6, Luk 7:5, Act 13:14, Act 14:1, Act 17:10

dative f s

συναγωγῇ

Mat 13:54, Mrk 1:23, Mrk 6:2, Luk 4:20, Luk 4:28, Luk 4:33, Jhn 6:59, Jhn 18:20

accusative f p

συναγωγὰς, συναγωγάς

Mrk 1:39, Mrk 13:9, Luk 4:44, Luk 12:11, Luk 21:12, Act 22:19, Act 26:11, Act 9:2

genitive f s

συναγωγῆς

Mrk 1:29, Luk 4:38, Luk 8:41, Act 6:9, Act 13:42, Act 13:43, Rev 3:9

nominative f s

συναγωγὴ

Act 17:1, Rev 2:9

genitive f p

συναγωγῶν

Luk 13:10