MetaCatholic

Alan Bandy offers some thoughts on the term  ἐκκλησία (ekklēsia – church). While he rightly dismisses the older etymologizing attempts to turn this into “the called out ones.” he seems to me to go too far in making it a complete equivalent to the OT use of the “assembly of Israel / assembly of YHWH”. While there is a case to be made for taking the regular use of ἐκκλησία in the LXX to translate קהל (qahal) as a significant factor in understanding it, I’m a little dubious about stressing it quite so strongly.

First, I note that I’m unconvinced that all the uses Alan cites in the OT are in fact references to “Israel when assembled together.” In particular I note:

• 1 Sam 17:47, where it refers to the army gathered together (and possibly incuding the Philistines within the reference)
• 1 Sam 19:20 where it refers to the company of prophets
• 2 Chronicles 30:13 is unclear about its “very large assembly” (and therefore the other references in the chapter must also be read with a question mark.
• Nehemiah 5:7 refers to the calling of a very large assembly
• Proverbs 5:14 is also ambiguous in its reference to both קהל (ἐκκλησίας) and עדה (συναγωγῆς) in parallelism with one another.
• Judith 6:16 which clearly refers to a town assembly
• 1 Maccabees 3:13 which refers to a military body
• 1 Maccabees 5:16 which refers to a deliberative gathering
• 1 Maccabees 14:19 which refers to a council of citizens in Jerusalem

Those references at least demonstrate a wider semantic field even within the LXX. And of course, to that must be added the vast number of references outside the Scriptures, where the primary everyday meaning of the term is the assembly of free citizens of any particular city. That more general secular use of the term has to be taken with all due significance. While for Greek-speaking Jews it is not unreasonable to assume that LXX helped shape their vocabulary, it is unlikely that it entirely overrules it. No doubt they would hear scriptural echoes in phrases like “the church of God,” (e.g. 1 Cor 1:2) but it is less likely they would hear them in phrases like “the church of the Thessalonians” (1 Thess 1:1).

Assessing the balance between these two primary aspects of the word’s meaning is not easy, and of course, not the same from one specific utterance to the next. If one were to argue that the use of the term, as portrayed uniquely in Matthew (Matt 16:18), goes back to Jesus, then the sense of “assembly of God” as an eschatological gathering of God’s people Israel lies at the coining of the term for those who would become known as Christians. While I’m not fully convinced of the argument developed by Ben F Meyer¹ he does persuade me that it’s possible to entertain the possibility. Unfortunately, in subsequent scholarship, his argument has been more ignored than explored. But it would help to explain the apparent widespread and non-Pauline use of the term.

Equally, if the regular Pauline use is set alongside a metaphor such as Paul uses in Philippians about “citizenship of heaven” (Phil 3:20) then deliberate political analogies must be seen to contribute to the word’s semantic field. I note, also, in this context, that in the same verse Paul refers to the awaiting of a Saviour for this beleaguered colony. Does παρουσία (parousia – coming) belong to the same discourse of political analogy as ἐκκλησία? If it does, then that further strengthens the political and communal senses of the word in a way which may make the LXX overtones fade more into the background.

The LXX background remains important, I am sure, but it seems to me that there is a greater case for recognising how the contemporary socio-political rhetoric tempers it, and offers a picture of God’s people that is at least as much (if not more) about their current standing (and self-understanding) in a hostile world, as about their taking over the role of Israel.

1. The Aims of Jesus London: SCM 1979 pp185-197 [↩]