New Testament InterpretationAnswered

How do liberals interpret 'the synagogue of Satan' in the Apocalypse?

A viewer asks how liberal or pro-Israel scholars interpret the phrase 'synagogue of Satan' in the Apocalypse.

Answer

What the liberals say is that there was a big fight between Christians and Jews, and that second-generation Christians who had great animosity for the Jews inserted these snide remarks, so that we supposedly have a redacted form of the gospels and Apocalypse with the 'synagogue of Satan' passages added to make the Jews look bad. We know better. The real story is the same thing that happened with St. Paul: everywhere he went, to Galatia, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Colossae, the judaizers followed him, poisoned the well by inciting the city leaders against him, and stirred up riots, because the unconverted Jews were jealous of how rapidly the Christian church was growing, 3,000 converts at Pentecost, 5,000 in Acts 4, so many that Luke stops counting. They tried to kill Paul many times. So the Jews were called the synagogue of Satan for one reason: they tried to destroy the Christian churches Paul was building by coming in and preaching that people had to keep the Mosaic law, so much so that Paul even had to correct Peter for succumbing to it. That is the real history, not the liberal claim that Christians who hated the Jews stuck these phrases in to smear them.

Dr. Robert Sungenis

Related Questions