Now, you may wonder what a Minyan is. Is it a special Torah scroll? Perhaps a sacred candle? Or maybe a specific prayer that is chanted at the beginning of every service?

No, it's none of these. A Minyan in English is called a quorum. It is a core of at least ten Jewish men, each a bar mitzvah (son of the law) by ritual installment. If there are less than ten present than the synagogue service cannot go forward.

This might shed some light as to why Lydia and the other observant Jews were meeting by the river bank in Acts 16. It seems there was no active synagogue in Phillippi because they might not have had enough men to fulfill the requirement of the Minyan. Anything less than 10 bar mitzvah-ed men would render it impossible to have an acceptable synagogue.

You can get much more on issues like this in our series:

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