“(The ekklēsia) was a popular council with powers relating to decrees, judicial sentences, elections, embassies, and the exchange of honor. The ekklēsia was a public assembly convened in public space. Participation was fundamental...” - Bradley J. Bitner
The word "church" no longer belongs in the bible.
Hi!
I'm The Bible Curmudgeon, and I'm back to expand upon my discussion of the Greek word εκκλησία and its very unfortunate English translation as "church."
In my original article about the word, I complained bitterly about how "church" has taken on ecclesiastical baggage, misdirecting English speakers to visualize either a building or (at best) a religious social club. Quoting from that article:
"The words assembly, congregation, and gathering come to mind. Even group or convocation would be better."
I have a few new observations to add:
The ekklēsia was a public assembly (Source)
Even a transliteration would have been better.
A transliteration simply imports a foreign word into another language by spelling it phonetically. For instance, the Spanish language has made this choice, borrowing the word εκκλησία as iglesia without making any effort to translate it. This approach at least potentially allows a word to define itself by the context in which it is used.
Bible translators have occasionally employed the dodge of transliteration, usually in response to doubts and disagreements about the root meaning of a particular word. Two common examples of bible transliteration from Greek are "angel" and "baptism."
Of course, had translators of the English bible taken that course, by now 'ecclesia' would have gathered all the baggage of inaccurate meanings that the word "church" suffers from.
Note that cognate words have come into usage in English, namely the terms "ecclesiastic" and "ecclesiastical," signifying matters that have to do with the church and clergy.
So, how should we translate εκκλησία (ekklēsia)?
I'm glad you asked.
While working on a personal challenge to read through the Greek New Testament, I've gained some new insights into the meaning and use of the word. During the time of Jesus, the term ekklēsia meant the group in a city that gathered to publicly decide upon local governance issues. I'll reiterate this essay's lead-in quotation:
“(The ekklēsia) was a popular council with powers relating to decrees, judicial sentences, elections, embassies, and the exchange of honor. The ekklēsia was a public assembly convened in public space. Participation was fundamental...” - Bradley J. Bitner
In addition to the way we've always thought of the ekklēsia (i.e. as a religious gathering), Jesus himself used the word εκκλησία ( Matthew 16:18 ) in the governance sense. He spoke in the same breath of "the gates of hell"—i.e., hell's governance structure—as being unable to prevail against his assembly, his εκκλησία. He also spoke of the assembly's judicial functions in Matthew 18:15-20, effectively—if not explicitly—positioning the εκκλησία as "the gates of heaven."
We also see the word clearly used in its governance sense in Acts 19:33, where (in the NASB for example) it is translated as "assembly" instead of "church." As far as I know, this is the only place where even most bible translators seem to have been forced by the context to legitimately translate the word.
This leads me to strongly suspect that we've been "doing church wrong," certainly for all of my lifetime, and probably at least since the time of Roman Emperor Constantine.
"The early New Testament church in apostolic times existed apart from the empire. Constantine made his Roman Christian church hostage to the state so that now it would serve the needs of emperor and empire."
- from "Constantine: The Man and the Church" by Peter Nathan
The church is still far too entangled with the empire. I've come to believe that our Christian assemblies should behave very differently from what we are used to.
In a later essay,
I'll further develop my case that the church ought to be a novel governance structure, one designed to replace the evil state with the righteous Kingdom of God.
However, the primary purpose of this article is to suggest a few new alternative translation possibilities for εκκλησία:
While reading the bible,
whenever you encounter the word "church," mentally substitute of one of the following:
To the words assembly, congregation, gathering, group and convocation, please consider adding forum, or even council or meeting or steering committee as English words that might better convey the original meaning.
=FIN=
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