ABSTRACT
Early Christian worship, practice and belief, as contemporary liturgical scholarship has come to realize, is a topic of enormous complexity: it is diverse in its origins, multi-linear in its development, and closely related to the several cultural, linguistic, geographical, and theological expressions and orientations of distinct churches throughout the early Christian world. This chapter focuses on the principal liturgical acts of and occasions for worship where such diversity in practice and theological interpretation was most apparent, namely, in the rites of Christian initiation, the Eucharist, daily prayer, and the liturgical year. Because of important changes in liturgical practice after the Council of Nicea. Traditional scholarship sought to demonstrate that daily morning and evening prayer were 'public' liturgical gatherings in direct continuity with Jewish synagogue practice, with prayer at the third, sixth, and ninth hours added as 'private' occasions. The story of Christian worship, practice, and belief in the first five centuries of the common era is one of development, change, accommodation, and adaptation.
