The word “church” has three meanings: a building for worship, an institution or social structure, and the body of all Christians. It probably comes from the Greek phrase kuriakē oikia “Lord’s house,” but the Greek word from which “church” is translated is ekklēsía “out-called” (G1577) (there is no Hebrew word that is translated as church, even though ekklēsía is used in the LXX). Ekklēsía could be used of any crowd of people, from the political assembly, to an angry mob (cf. Acts 29:28-41). Ekklēsía had none of the religious or Christian connotations that “church” has.
Because of this difference in meaning, “church” is a misleading word choice. The reader has to guess whether “church” is supposed to mean a building, an institution, or Christianity, yet none of these things is suggested by ekklēsía. If context does prove one of thoses meanings, then the text is clear without changing it.
Adding “church” to the Bible has been the fuel of many doctrines of men and many infantile fights, fights over a word that shouldn’t be used anyway. Please let me know your thoughts on this subject.
Sola Scriptura!
Copyright © 2011 David S. Robinson. Any part of this work may be transmitted, reprinted, or otherwise used in any form, so long as 1) I am clearly identified as the author, and 2) a link or URL to this site is included.
Because of this difference in meaning, “church” is a misleading word choice. The reader has to guess whether “church” is supposed to mean a building, an institution, or Christianity, yet none of these things is suggested by ekklēsía. If context does prove one of thoses meanings, then the text is clear without changing it.
Adding “church” to the Bible has been the fuel of many doctrines of men and many infantile fights, fights over a word that shouldn’t be used anyway. Please let me know your thoughts on this subject.
Sola Scriptura!
Copyright © 2011 David S. Robinson. Any part of this work may be transmitted, reprinted, or otherwise used in any form, so long as 1) I am clearly identified as the author, and 2) a link or URL to this site is included.
The word EKKLESIA is found very frequently in the Greek Old Testament that Jesus Disciples were very familiar with.
ReplyDeleteI believe that they used the word EKKLESIA in the Greek New Testament writings because it was the word they had been familiar with from the Greek Old Testament.
It is interesting to know that the Greek Old Testament uses the word EKKLESIA most often to translate the Hebrew word QAHAL.
In the Gospel accounts Jesus words are all translated into Greek and He is found using the word EKKLESIA twice but the word He actually used is QAHAL.
The word EKKLESIA was the traditional translation for the word QAHAL before the disciples were even born so this was the best word they thought to use because of all it's connotations for the Hebrew people.
The meaning of QAHAL is just a multitude of people. Any time there are a lot of people. In English the word "lot" is an adjective but the word "QAHAL" in Hebrew is a noun with the same meaning so it is hard to translate literally/ directly
And yes the etomology of the word EKKLESIA is "out-called" but that is because the citizens were called out to the city square to debate Greece's political problems in open forum.
The double meaning that the disciples most likely found fascinating with the word EKKLESIA is that before they were even born, this word was used to define the word QAHAL and found multiple times in there Bible.
Not only that but because the Christian people were called by God to come out of the world they found an interesting double meaning in this word that I'm sure stirred their hearts every time they read the Old Testament.
I believe we can come to the best understanding of the word EKKLESIA in the New Testament by translating it as "multitude" Once you do that you will see that it is not a church service or body of people (though the NT Christians did gather often and did worship or praise God often) but it is just a lot of people.
If you want to find good scriptures about Christian fellowship and prayer and praise etc and gathering together then just looking up the word EKKLESIA is not going to help you so much because the word EKKLESIA is often used when there is a lot of non christians around as well ... it just means a lot of people, not necessarily God's people.
Though there are many NT scriptures that refer to "God's people" and guess what you can find them by doing a search of not EKKLESIA but of "God's people" or "my people" or "his people" etc...