ἐκκλησία - What? That's Greek To Me?

ἐκκλησία - Ekklesia is the Greek word where we are led to believe that we get our words 'church' and 'churches'. Yes, you read that correctly - "where we are led to believe". Let me explain. I will give you a little background information to start with.

One would think that it is common knowledge that the original manuscripts of NT letters have been lost and that our translations that we have in our own languages are based on copies of copies of copies of what those originals were.

We have learned through the course of time how the copies we have came into being. To start, the earliest copies were penned by those in the faith who were literate. Back in Roman times, a very small number were literate. They estimate that around only 10% were literate. So, copying errors where not uncommon in the early centuries because they were typically copied by a non-professional scribe in the assembly. Often the one whose home they gathered in. It wasn't until 331 when Constantine had Eusebius have fifty Bibles made to be available for the fifty 'church' buildings he was erecting. Since that time professional scribes started to be employed in copying the manuscripts. 

Even though professional scribes were then employed, it didn't mean that copies were error free. I'm not going to get into all of that, but I believe that it's important to know that scribes were known to make changes in copying the manuscripts based solely on their theological bias of the Scriptures among other basic copying errors.

So, just as we have no original manuscripts of the NT that was written in the first century. We also do not have any 'Greek lexicons' written in the first century to draw from to know exactly how a word was used or defined in the first century. With this, let's look at the definition of the word ekklesia:

1577 evkklhsi,a ekklesia {ek-klay-see'-ah} 

Meaning: 1) a gathering of citizens called out from their homes into some public place, an assembly 1a) an assembly of the people convened at the public place of the council for the purpose of deliberating 1b) the assembly of the Israelites 1c) any gathering or throng of men assembled by chance, tumultuously 1d) in a Christian sense 1d1) an assembly of Christians gathered for worship in a religious meeting 1d2) a company of Christian, or of those who, hoping for eternal salvation through Jesus Christ, observe their own religious rites, hold their own religious meetings, and manage their own affairs, according to regulations prescribed for the body for order's sake 1d3) those who anywhere, in a city, village, constitute such a company and are united into one body 1d4) the whole body of Christians scattered throughout the earth.

Notice how ekklesia is not defined as the word 'church'. It's basic meaning is a gathering or assembly of people. I would like to point out that ekklesia was used in the Septuagint (OT Scripture in Greek. Also referred to as LXX), to refer to God's children. Let me draw on this further. Ekklesia is derived from the Hebrew word qahal (S# 6951) which is defined as an "assembly, company, congregation and convocation". Understanding this is helpful in why the Jewish translators that translated the Hebrew into Greek (LXX) used the word ekklesia for the word qahal.

As we know, the first Christians were Jews who commonly used the LXX. Even Jesus and the apostles quoted from it. So when the NT letters were written in the common language of Greek, addressed to both Jew and Gentile alike, it was only natural to refer to God's children as ekklesia as seen in the OT, as that was the only Scripture at that time. 

In recent centuries the word 'church' was added to the definition of ekklesia in lexicons. The reason the English word 'church' is a more recent addition to lexicons is because it didn't make it appearance until the mid-fourteen hundreds. So where did we get the word 'church' from? More on that next time.