On "Worship in the Early Church" by Ralph P. Martin ***

Based on a single quote in another work, I had at one time had high hopes for this work, but after reviewing its table of contents, my expectations waned. Still, when opportunity to purchase the book at a discount price (it was not available at my local library), I took advantage. Having now read it, my lower expectations were indeed correct. The work is a good summary of various views regarding worship practices in the early church as expressed by various scholars up through the early 1970s, but as with so much of our understanding of the practices, much is conjecture and much of the rest is implied by Scripture such that any devout reader of the latter is likely not to pick up much new here.

Martin largely notes just that--that we don't know for sure a lot about these practices. He summarizes views of others. I was, in part, particularly interested in his take on service organization and on the introduction of the eucharist into that service. He does see some connection between the eucharist and the Passover, but interestingly he claims that diaspora Passovers consisted only of bread and wine. Thus, there was no lamb at the Gospel Passover (to his point, the Scriptures don't reference the lamb, though, as with so much from this period, the historical evidence elsewhere may not be so conclusive as to say that lamb wasn't served as opposed to simply wasn't mentioned). The other major point one gathers from Martin's reading of worship practices is that they became more settled as Christians settled into their second century of being.

One nice thing is that Martin's survey did provide me with other areas that deserve more study on my part, such as focusing on the nature of Jesus's prayers outside of his model prayer.