Alma 16:13: “And Alma and Amulek went forth preaching repentance to the people in their temples, and in their sanctuaries, and also in their synagogues, which were built after the manner of the Jews”.
Luke 4:16; “And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read”.
Well obviously the BoM people thought they knew what synagogues were, but the problem in this example is timing.
Historically speaking synagogues didn’t come about until the intertestamental period. While there are many who believe they existed from the time of Moses, historical evidence and biblical teachings don’t support this. For the Israelites the only place they were to gather in groups to worship was the temple.
Archaeological evidence has shown the first synagogues started near the end of exilic period during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah circa BC 445.
Synagogues existed in many cities and towns throughout Palestine for the purpose of instruction which was sorely needed after the destruction of Solomon’s Temple. We see in scripture there was even a synagogue in Herod’s temple which is where Jesus went to expound and read from the Law. Typically if there were ten or more Jewish men in the population a synagogue would be built and the bigger the city the more synagogues there were. *See note at end with Jewish Encyclopedia resource.
While synagogues served the purposes of teaching and worship they didn’t take the place of sacrifices which took place only at the temple. The Israelites were still expected to attend the seven feasts and festivals during the year.
The text in Alma is also incorrect by using the multiple form of the word temple. There’s never more than one temple at a time anywhere in the Bible – let me clarify that by saying Jewish temple. There were lots of temples everywhere in the world, but other temples were housing false gods.
Strong’s Talking Greek & Hebrew Dictionary defines synagogue this way;
“an assemblage of persons; specially a Jewish “synagogue” (the meeting or the place); by analogy a Christian church :- assembly, congregation, synagogue.”
Holman’s Bible Dictionary says the following about services at synagogues;
“A typical service consisted of the recitation of the Shema (confession of faith in the one God), prayers, Scripture readings from the Law and the Prophets, a sermon, and a benediction. Luke 4:16-21 is the best biblical passage on what happened in a synagogue service in first-century Palestine.”
Alma supposedly lived circa BC 63. How would they have known about synagogues if Lehi and company fled Jerusalem around BC 600? Remember, synagogues didn’t show up for another 160 years!
Furthermore, the word synagogue is Greek. Yeah, you know where I’m going with that one! Joseph Smith promised there were no Greek or Latin words on the golden plates when he ‘translated’ them into English.
“The synagogue as a permanent institution originated probably in the period of the Babylonian captivity, when a place for common worship and instruction had become necessary. The great prophet, in the second part of the Book of Isaiah, in applying the phrase “house of prayer” to the Temple to be built at Jerusalem (Isa. lvi. 7 and, according to the very defensible reading of the LXX., also lx. 7), may have used a phrase which, in the time of the Exile, designated the place of united worship; this interpretation is possible, furthermore, in such passages as Isa. lviii. 4. The term was preserved by the Hellenistic Jews as the name for the synagogue (προσευχή = οἶκος προσευχῆς; comp. also the allusion to the “proseucha” in Juvenal, “Satires,” iii. 296)”
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