by Philip R. Bryan
[The following article, used by permission, first appeared in a publication of ©Baptist Publishing House, P. O. Box 7270, Texarkana, TX 75505-7270]
Two "Southern" Baptist scholars several years ago made independent observations about Septuagintal usage of ekklesia. Frank Stagg, former Professor of New Testament Interpretation at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, has argued that Septuagintal usage clearly indicates that ekklesia could be used to refer also to "the people of God in their totality."(1) Fred Fisher, late Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, Mill Valley, California, has taken an alternative view. He has concluded that the Septuagint always uses ekklesia to refer to some kind of "convened assembly."(2)
In the following paragraphs the arguments of those men are set forth. Occasionally, relevant comments made by other scholars are inserted. Hopefully, the reader will be able to see the relevancy of the problem and make an intelligent decision about its resolution from the evidence presented.
the church cannot do as it pleases and remain the "church." It is truly the church when it is a fellowship of persons brought together under the kingdom or lordship of God. If "church" is actually from kuriakos then it is a happy designation, stressing whose we are. This is the first fact belonging to the idea of the church.(3)
Although the term ekklesia was widely known in the first century, its meaning should not be sought in pagan Greek usage. Indeed, "the term is based upon a root meaning 'to call,' and ekklesia was used in Greek cities to designate town assemblies," but "the primary background to New Testament . . . usage is the Old Testament."(4) Emphasis upon local assembly is true to the etymology of ekklesia and pagan Greek usage, but not biblical usage. Admittedly, "the idea of local assembly is not ruled out and sometimes it is affirmed; but local assembly does not belong to the essence of the New Testament idea."(5) Analysis of the Hebrew words translated into Greek demonstrates that God's ekklesia is His own people. The New Testament emphasis is ownership, denoting whose people. Emphasis on local assembly would be concerned with where and whether assembled.
The expression, "the church of God" (he ekklesia tou theou), appears first in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. That Old Testament expression can be "used to describe God's people when assembled locally and also with no reference to assembly."(6) Usually ekklesia is a translation of qahal (assembly), but ekklesia is not the only word used to translate qahal. In earlier Old Testament usage, God's assembled people was called a qahal. The term edhah (congregation) was used to refer to the people whether assembled or not. According to F. J. A. Hort, after the Exile, the usage of qahal paralleled the earlier usage of edhah.(7) First century Jewish Christians, therefore, upon hearing the expression he ekklesia tou theou, "would think of the people of God with no necessary reference to localization and certainly not to organization."(8)
Several Old Testament passages are cited by Stagg in proof of the assertion that edhah can be used to describe the people, assembled or not: Numbers 31:16 (edhah, sunagoge, synagogue) and Exodus 12:6 (qahal describes the assembly of the people of Israel, edhah).(9) A comparison of Numbers 27:21 with I Chronicles 28:8 is next used to prove a shift in meaning in qahal. The former uses edhah for congregation -- for Israel. In the latter "all Israel, the assembly of Yahweh" (i.e., qahal) is mentioned (ekklesia in LXX).(10) Other examples include Deuteronomy 31:30 and Micah 2:5 (qahal, ekklesia, "apparently all Israel"), Nehemiah 7:66 (qahal, ekklesia). "All those returning from Babylon were considered one qahal or ekklesia."(11) In short, qahal and edhah came to be used alike, similar to sunagoge and ekklesia (compare Numbers 20:4 with Deuteronomy 31:30; Micah 2:5). Yahweh's qahal became in the Septuagint he ekklesia tou theou. "This is the necessary background to understanding the New Testament term, the ekklesia (church) of God."(12) Summarizing the Hebrew terms, Stagg said,
Edhah in the Hebrew Bible describes the Israel of God. Before the Exile, qahal was employed to describe Israel assembled, but after the Exile it could describe Israel either assembled or not. In the Septuagint, sunagoge usually translated edhah, but it also translated qahal in the Pentateuch. The usual translation for qahal was ekklesia. Ekklesia takes on fuller meaning in Septuagint books referring to the postexilic period. It still translates qahal, which itself now included the fuller meaning of edhah. Thus, in the Septuagint, the Bible of the earliest Christians, the ekklesia of God meant the people of God. It had no necessary reference to localization and certainly none to organization.(13)
Concerning the usage of sunagoge and ekklesia, Stagg asserted that "strange developments" transpired. In earliest Old Testament texts, "sunagoge represented all Israel, whereas ekklesia described the assembly." Then, like qahal and edhah, both terms apparently were used interchangeably. In latest Old Testament texts, sunagoge came to refer almost entirely to the local Jewish assembly, and ekklesia "came to describe the body of Christ as a whole, the people of God."(14)
On the basis of these arguments, therefore, Stagg deduced that "ekklesia in the New Testament designates the people of God in their totality and any local congregation of His people."(15)
cannot be overestimated . . . . There can be no doubt that the usage of words in this translation to express the religious ideas of Israel formed the closest background for the usage of words by Christian writers to express the ideas of Christianity.(16)
F. J. A. Hort, however, apparently made too strong a statement when he wrote that "the Ecclesia of the New Testament takes its name and primary idea from the Ecclesia of the Old Testament."(17) The Septuagint marked a new development in the usage of ekklesia. Unlike the secular Greek which almost always used the word politically, the Septuagint predominantly used it in a religious sense.
If there is any important variation in the Septuagint from secular Greek usage [Fisher continues], we might expect to find that variation in the New Testament. If there is none, we must expect to find that the New Testament makes none."(18)
Fisher conceded that Moulton and Milligan, Hort, and Dana and Sipes have insisted in their word studies that there is indeed an important variation in the Septuagint. These men have affirmed that ekklesia is the Septuagintal term for Israel, assembled or not.(19) He quoted Hort: "This ekklesia as the primary Greek representative of qahal would naturally for the Greek-speaking Jews mean the congregation of Israel quite as much as an assembly of the congregation."(20) If those scholars have made a valid conclusion, then the early Christians were familiar with two established meanings of the word. Conversely,
if they were wrong, we would still have only one established meaning. This would not rule out the possibility that New Testament writers departed from this established meaning, but it would constitute a very strong presumption against their having done so.(21)
Fisher confessed that a survey of the evidence has compelled him to disagree with these scholars. He stated, moreover, that the European theologian, Eduard Schweizer agreed with his conclusions about ekklesia in the Septuagint. He gave the following quotation from Schweizer:
The Septuagint uses the word "church" (ekklesia) over eighty times. Apart from the wholly unimportant exceptions, it always means a specific assembly of the people where they gathered for a definite purpose and dispersed again when the business at hand was completed . . . . Greek usage knows no other possibilities. The meaning is simply an assembly of the people as they come together as a public gathering to pass a resolution, or as they spontaneously congregated, for example, when there was a riot.(22)
One must note, however, that Schweizer did not come to the ultimate conclusions about New Testament usage of ekklesia that Fisher reached. That does not materially affect Fisher's case, but Schweizer subsequently said:
The thing that distinguishes the Church from other gatherings is the fact that it is the assembly "of God," qahal Jahwe, ekklesia theou . . . . The Church of Jesus is nothing other than the Israel of God, the chosen people of the 0.T. who in the N.T. are chosen out of the world. One can belong to the Church only as an inheritor of the hope of Israel, only as a "true Israelite."(23)
As a result of his research into the Septuagintal usage of ekklesia, Fisher determined that "ekklesia is always used to translate the Hebrew term, qahal, or one of its compounds."(24) Other Greek words, however are used at times to translate qahal. Fisher made the following conclusions about the passages In which ekklesia is used for a form of qahal: (1) The context of most of those passages requires a reference to "some kind of convened assembly"; (2) The context of a few passages could be interpreted either way, but each probably refers to a convened assembly; and (3) The context of not "a single passage . . . forces us to suppose that the word is used to indicate Israel as a nation unassembled."(25) These passages fall into at least three groups. In five passages, ekklesia is used "to designate the congregation of Israel in the wilderness . . . obviously an assembled congregation."(26) On twenty-eight occasions, the word refers to "an assembly of some of the people or all of them for some special purpose as in Judges 20:2."(27) On those occasions, business was transacted by the assembly. In sixty-four passages, the word is used in reference to "a meeting of the congregation for worship."(28) Of the sixty-four times, thirty-nine marked "the regular and periodic meetings for worship, usually at the temple (cf. Psalm 22:22, 25)."(29) Fisher, therefore, stated:
In these passages, the context always makes it clear that the ekklesia is an assembly of people at a specific place and for a specific purpose. From a careful study of all of these passages we are forced to conclude that the ekklesia is always used in the Septuagint to refer to some kind of convened assembly.(30)
Usage of the Hebrew word qahal, however, was not so rigid as ekklesia. "It could be used in a general sense to refer to Israel unassembled or to a number of nations related to each other by a federation (cf. Jeremiah 50:9)."(31) In all of those instances, however; "some Greek word other than ekklesia is used to translate qahal."(32) In II Chronicles 29 and 30 "qahal is used eleven times for the 'convened assembly' of Israel . . . and is uniformly translated by ekklesia."(33) In 31:18 qahal appears again. This time, however the Septuagint has plethos (multitude), not ekklesia. In this verse the nation is unassembled; it is dispersed. "If it were possible to use ekklesia in this sense . . . it would certainly have been used here . . . "; for in this portion of Scripture (i.e, II Chronicles 29-31), ekklesia had already translated qahal eleven times."(34) That observation, therefore, corroborates and substantiates the hypothesis that Septuagintal usage of ekklesia always refers to some kind of convened assembly. That analysis led Fisher to emphasize:
It cannot be too strongly emphasized that this study of the use of ekklesia in the Septuagint brings us to the New Testament with only one established meaning for the word. This should lead us to expect to find the word used in the New Testament in the sense of an assembly of people, and only in this sense. While it does not prove that this is true, it does establish a strong presupposition that it is true. It should take very convincing evidence to lead anyone to suppose that anything else is true. Our study of the use of the word in the New Testament will confirm the thesis of this chapter: ekklesia is used in the New Testament only to designate the local assembly of Christians in some phase of their existence."(35)
it is probable that the significance of ekklesia as used in the Septuagint exacted the stronger influence upon the earlier understanding of the term by the disciples of Christ, but as the kingdom was extended into the Gentile world . . . there can be no doubt that the classical meaning became potent in shaping the final conception [emphasis is mine].(36)
Dana's conclusion is corroborated by the fact that almost all of the early Christian literature discussing and referring to ekklesia was written to Gentile Christians, people who would have been more cognizant of the classical usage than the Septuagintal usage of the word.(37)
Suffice it to say that final conclusions about the nature of the church must be based on considerations other than Septuagintal usage of ekklesia. Analysis does not resolve the problem, but it does add further data to the total evidence to be considered.
1. Frank Stagg, New Testament Theology (Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman Press, 1962), p. 183.
2. Fred Fisher, The Church: A New Testament Study (Mill Valley, California: Golden Gate Theological Seminary, n.d.), p. 19.
3. Stagg, pp. 181-82.
4. Ibid., p. 182.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., citing F. J. A. Hort, The Christian Ecclesia (London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1897), pp. 3-7.
8. Stagg, pp. 181-82.
9. Ibid., p. 182.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., pp. 182-83.
13. Ibid., p. 183.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Fisher, p. 17.
17. Ibid., quoting Hort, p. 3. H. E. Dana and L. M. Sipes, A Manual of Ecclesiology (2nd ed. Rev.; Kansas City, Kansas: Central Seminary Press, 1944), p. 31, however, make a more reasonable appraisal. See the conclusion of this essay for their appraisal.
18. Fisher, p. 17.
19. Dana, p. 29, says, however, that "the Old Testament and Jewish literature nowhere use ekklesia where it may justly be construed as 'spiritual Israel.' That idea is purely a Christian conception, having doubtless originated with Paul."
20. Fisher, p. 18, quoting Hort, p. 7.
21. Fisher, p. 18.
22. Ibid., quoting Schweizer, "Unity and Diversity in the New Testament Teaching Regarding the Church," Theology Today, XIII (January 1957), 471. Fisher's footnote incorrectly shows Interpretation as the journal from which he quotes.
23. Schweizer, pp. 472-73.
24. Fisher, p. 18.
25. Ibid., p. 19.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid. So, Dana, p. 29; see above, n. 19, where he is quoted to this effect.
31. Fisher, p. 19.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Dana, p. 31.
37. For other studies advocating views similar to Fisher's, see. B. H. Carroll, Ecclesia -- The Church (Louisville, Ky.: Baptist Book Concern, 1903); and Bob L. Ross, "Ekklesia": The Church (Ashland, Ky.: The Baptist Examiner Book Shop).
Fred Fisher has also written an informative article maintaining the local usage of ekklesia in Paul's epistle to the Ephesians, "The Doctrine of the Church in Ephesians," Southwestern Journal of Theology, VI (Oct. 1963), 33-45.