Previous installments: Introduction, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
Centuries before Jesus told His disciples (almost certainly in Aramaic) that he would build of himself his ἐκκλησία (ekklēsia),[1] that word was familiar to Hellenophone Israelites exiled in Alexandria, for they used the Septuagint (hereafter, LXX), a third-century BC Greek translation of the Old Testament. The Jewish diaspora used the LXX wherever Greek was the lingua franca.
Christians who read “church” (i.e., the religious society they belong to) into the New Testament should consider that ekklēsia translated the Hebrew word קהל (qahal).[2] The Holy Spirit, Sellers notes:
inspired the writer of Hebrews to use ekklēsia as a rendering for qahal in Hebrews 2:12. [“Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church (ἐκκλησίας, ekklēsias) will I sing praise unto thee.”] In ancient Israel, the word qahal was always used of companies, large or small, that had a position out of God. The “great qahal” which Christ promised to build “out of himself” will be composed of every public servant in Israel. This waits for the coming of the Kingdom of God.
But the use of ekklēsia as a governmental term preceded the Septuagint’s translators by at least three centuries.
In Athens [Sellers writes], the famous ekklēsia, which was instituted by Solon [d. 560 BC], often spoken of as “the assembly of all the citizens,” was composed of “assemblymen” who were called ekklēsiastes. The hall in which they met was called an ekklēsiasterion, and the payment received by the Athenian citizens who sat in the ekklēsia was called ekklēsiastikos. In a period of acute economic distress, Solon had been elected archon and given absolute powers to initiate economic and constitutional reforms. He reorganized the popular assembly, giving to these men powers and positions that belonged to him, and thus laid the foundations of Athenian democracy. These men had their positions out of Solon, were nicknamed “Solons,” a term still applied to members of a legislative body. . . . [T]herefore, the twelve disciples knew quite well what He [Jesus] meant when He spoke of building His ekklesia. We today will never understand it until we break with the tradition that the ekklesia of which He spoke is the institutional Church in its various historical manifestations. [Emphasis added.—A.G.F.]
When the Holy Spirit breathed out the word ekklēsia to express קהל (qahal) in Hebrews 2:12, He instantiated what Sellers called “the divine interchange principle”: “Hebrew and Greek words that are used interchangeably by the Holy Spirit are identical in value and meaning.”[3]
From this it can be seen that if the word ekklesia does not mean the same as the word qahal, then Paul misrepresented David by declaring that he said something which He did not say at all.
The 123 verses where the word qahal is found represent “123 opportunities to discover what qahal means based on its Old Testament usage. . . . And if its meaning cannot be found from these occurrences,” Sellers concluded, “then there is simply no way it can be found.”
If each one of these 123 occurrences of the noun qahal, also the 39 occurrences of the verb, is carefully examined in its context, it will be seen that every one of them is related to representative, governmental bodies. The qahal had to do with the administrative processes of the people of Israel. It was always composed of out-positioned men.
In Genesis 28:3, Jacob’s descendants are prophesied to become a qahal of peoples (plural), a prophecy that coheres with God’s promise to Abraham “that one nation should have a position out of God and be a channel of blessing to all nations (Genesis 12:2-3).”
Again, in Genesis 35:11 God declares that “a nation, even a qahal of nations” would spring from Jacob, who repeats this promise: “I will multiply thee, and I will make of thee a qahal of peoples” (Genesis 48:4). “Thus we see that a nation is to be given a special mediatorial position out of God and so becomes an ‘out-positioned’ nation to be used of God.” That has not yet been fulfilled, but will be when God establishes his worldwide government.
In Genesis 49:6, Simeon and Levi’s governing tribal council is their qahal (“assembly” in the KJV). “Jacob asked that his honor be not linked up with the [cruel] acts of this qahal. This is about the same as if the President should not agree with some act of the Congress and ask that he be not in any way related to it.”
In Exodus 6:14-27 the “heads” of each house are listed. A “head” had his position out of the family and he represented and stood for every member of the family. Individually they were “elders,” and collectively they were a qahal or, as a Greek would say it, an ekklēsia.
Sellers gives an example from his adopted state.
. . . at certain times each year it is necessary to assemble the people of California in the state capital, Sacramento. The times for such assemblies are set by law, but the governor has power to call for such an assembly . . . . Those who make up this assembly are called assemblymen. These are men who have their positions out of the people of their district. They are duly elected representatives, and when they are officially assembled in Sacramento, then all the people of this state are assembled there in the persons of their chosen representatives. (Emphasis added.—AGF)
. . . If the above paragraph had been written in the first century A.D. the word ekklēsia could have been used in place of “assembly,” and the verb ekklēsiazō could have been used for every occurrence of “assemble.”[4] This would have been “good Greek,” using words from everyday speech, and would have been readily understood by all who heard or read it. In view of this, we need to ask, “What did the disciples understand when the Lord spoke of building His own ekklesia?”
If a group of people owed their standing and position to a monarch, this “cabinet” was his or her ekklēsia. The KJV translators knew better than to render ekklēsia “church” in Acts 19, verses 32, 39, 41: in Ephesus, whose Diana-merchandising artisans were ready to tear Paul and his companions apart, were a mob, not an authorized “assembly” (or even a “church”):
Some therefore cried one thing, and some another: for the assembly (ekklēsia) was confused: and the more part knew not wherefore they were come together (συνεληλύθεισαν, sunelēlutheisan) . . . . But if ye enquire any thing concerning other matters, it shall be determined in a lawful assembly (ekklēsia). . . . And when he had thus spoken, he dismissed the assembly (ἐκκλησίαν, ekklēsian).
Most of them didn’t even know why they were there; there is reference to a lawful assembly, but their “coming together” didn’t constitute one; the duly authorized town clerk dismissed them. Note well, Sellers writes:
. . . the presence of asiarchs [Ἀσιαρχῶν, Asiarchōn; “chiefs of Asia”], some of whom were friendly to Paul (19:31), and . . . these events took place in close proximity to “the theatre,” the usual place for official meeting. These asiarchs were the men from each city who elected a representative annually . . . . These special asiarchs who had their position out of the body of asiarchs were meeting in Ephesus when the riot described here took place.
Paul’s preaching of Christ was bad for the idol-peddling business, so Demetrius fired up his fellow silversmiths to invade the theater where the asiarchs were assembled.
When their emotions were drained, the “town clerk” took charge. He was the chief official in Ephesus, and his appearance brought prompt silence. He pointed out the impropriety of the mob’s actions, declared that they had brought their complaints to the wrong ekklēsia, and placed all in legal jeopardy, by forcing the ekklēsia to deal with matters that did not concern it. Thus a lawful ekklēsia could become unlawful if it dealt with matters not under its jurisdiction. Having so declared the town clerk dismissed the ekklēsia. This was not the mob, but the ekklēsia that was in session in the theatre to whom the mob had wrongfully taken their complaint.
Sellers ended this study with a quotation from Karl Ludwig Schmidt (1891-1956) whom we cited in Part 2 of this series: “Ekklēsia cannot be translated, it must be taken over.”[5]
The job of “taking over” ekklēsia begins by studying its usage—and not just in the New Testament—and by resisting any confirmation bias we may harbor toward “church” such that we find ours in embryo, as it were, in the activity of Christ’s apostles and other disciples during His earthly ministry and the Acts period.
The moral of the story, to which we’ll return, is this: no matter how many and noble are the good works Christians have performed through their churches—the educational institutions and their scholarly products; the lexicons, concordances, and dictionaries their learned members have compiled to aid in Bible study; the ethical insights they’ve gained from such study and their implementation; the charities, hospitals, and hospices they’ve instituted; the pastoral care they provide in their spirit-dependent effort to follow Christ—all these are irrelevant to ascertaining the answer to one question: do any individual or any societies thereof (“churches”) over the past two millennia have a position out of Christ?
If, as Sellers argues, no one has enjoyed such a position since Acts 28:28, then ekklēsia cannot refer to any post-Acts society of believers; neither may we impute guilt for the atrocities many of them, with or without the instrumentality of their churches, have committed to the ekklēsia that Christ built of Himself.
Historically, the word ekklēsia began its symbolic life as a term of governmental art; in the Scriptures, it is almost always related to God’s Kingdom purposes. When He suspended the latter at Acts 28:28, there continued to be believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, but no ekklēsia. (See the introduction to this series.) When He resumes those purposes, believers will have a position out of Christ that they do not have now. They—including we who profess Christ today— will be ekklēsia.
Notes
[1] See “Otis Q. Sellers on ἐκκλησία, Part 4: The Rock and His Substance,” August 30, 2022.
[2] “The noun ekklēsia is found at least eighty times in this version, and the verb ekklēsiazō occurs seven times. “ Otis Q. Sellers, “More about Ekklesia,” Seed and Bread, No. 141, ND, but early 1980s. Quotation of Sellers in this post are from this study.
[3] See our 2020 series of posts “The ‘divine interchange’ principle of Bible interpretation,” Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. “The Hebrew word as used in the Old Testament is the primary word and the Greek word used in its place in New Testament quotations means exactly the same, no matter what nuances of meaning it may have had among the Greeks. The Greek word must conform to the Hebrew, and not the other way around.” Otis Q. Sellers, “The Divine Interchange Principle,” Seed & Bread, 125.
[4] The Greek verb ἐκκλησίαξō (ekklēsiazō) occurs, not in the New Testament, but in the non-inspired Septuagint (LXX) of Deuteronomy 4:10: “. . . when the Lord said unto me, Gather (ἐκκλησίασον, ekklēsiason) me the people together . . . .” The verb ekklēsiazō was used to translate the inspired Hebrew הַקְהֶל (haqhel), whose root is קהל (qahal), to which the inspired Greek ἐκκλησία (ekklēsia) corresponds.
[5] Sellers does not cite his source, and I have not been able to track it do
wn with certainty. It might be Schmidt’s “The Church,” Theology Today, 1952;9(1):39-54. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/004057365200900105 To this journal, however, I have no free institutional access, and I’m not willing to spend $37.50 to download it. If anyone with such access would share the pdf with me, I’d be grateful.