[B-Greek] Acts 16:5
Polycarp66 at aol.com
Polycarp66 at aol.com
Sat Apr 3 20:33:40 EST 2004
In a message dated 4/1/2004 4:01:49 PM Eastern Standard Time,
Bart.Torbert at ihsenergy.com writes:
I have always understood the roots of EKKLESIAH had more to do with a
collection of people, not a physical building. Considering the irregular
and informal nature of the organization of the early believers and the fact
it took quite a while before specific physcial buildings, set aside for
only worship, came into being, I would think that the default when reading
the New Testament should be to the idea of a group of people not really
tied to the place they happened to worship.
So in the example given for
Acts 16:5 And so were the churches established in the faith, and increased
in number daily
The increase would refer to the number of individual in the group, not more
groups.
Waldo--- What in Acts do you think refers to an actual building?
Does anyone know of the use of EKKLESIAH outside of the Bible?
_________
One could cite the Church Fathers, e.g. Ignatius, who uses it to reference
each of the local congregations to whom he wrote. Then (if I recall correctly)
Hermas uses the singular to reference what we would refer to as the "one holy,
catholic and apostolic Church" -- i.e., the body of Christ in its entirety.
Outside of the Bible and Christian literature it was used of assemblies of
cities. Swete in his commentary on Revelation states (p. lv)
"Local affairs were in the hands of three assemblies, a council (BOULH),
which in A.D. 104 consisted of 430 members probably elected in equal numbers from
each of the cities; a senate (GEROUSIA), which seems to have been charged with
the finance of public worship or perhaps with municipal finance in general,
and the care of public monuments; and the popular assembly which bore the
familiar name of ECCLESIA." I'm sure that, if you looked up the word in LSJ or in
TLG, you would find similar "secular" usages of he word.
gfsomsel
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