There are words whose history it is peculiarly interesting to watch, as they obtain a deeper meaning, and receive a new consecration, in the Christian Church; words which the Church did not invent, but has assumed into its service, and employed in a far loftier sense than any to which the world has ever put them before. The very word by which the Church is named is itself an example—a more illustrious one could scarcely be found—of this progressive ennobling of a word.1 For we have ἐκκλησία in three distinct stages of meaning—the heathen, the Jewish, and the Christian. In respect of the first, ἡ ἐκκλησία (== ἔκκλητοι, Euripides, Orestes, 939) was the lawful assembly in a free Greek city of all those possessed of the rights of citizenship, for the transaction of public affairs. That they were summoned is expressed in the latter part of the word; that they were summoned out of the whole population, a select portion of it, including neither the populace, nor strangers, nor yet those who had forfeited their civic rights, this is expressed in the first. Both the calling (the κλῆσις,
Before, however, more fully considering that word, it will need to consider a little the anterior history of another with which I am about to compare it. Συναγωγή occurs two or three times in Plato (thus Theoet. 150 a), out is by no means an old word in classical Greek, and in it altogether wants that technical signification which already in the Septuagint, and still more plainly in the Apocrypha, it gives promise of acquiring, and which it is found in the N. T. to have fully acquired. But συναγωγή, while travelling in this direction, did not leave behind it the meaning which is the only one that in classical Greek it knew; and often denotes, as it would there, any gathering or bringing together of persons or things; thus we have there συναγωγὴ ἐθνῶν (
But to return to ἐκκλησία. This did not, like some other words, pass immediately and at a single step from the heathen world to the Christian Church: but here, as so often, the Septuagint supplies the link of connexion, the point of transition, the word being there prepared for its highest meaning of all. When the Alexandrian translators undertook the rendering of the Hebrew Scriptures, they found in them two constantly recurring words, namely, עֵדָה and קָהָל. For these they employed generally, and as their most adequate Greek equivalents, συναγωγή and ἐκκλησία. The rule which they seem to have prescribed to themselves is as follows—to render עדה for the most part by συναγωγή (
There is an interesting discussion by Vitringa (De Synag. Vet. pp. 77–89) on the distinction between these two Hebrew synonyms; the result of which is summed up in the following statements: ‘Notat proprie קהל universam alicujus populi multitudinem, vinculis societatis unitam et rempublicam sive civitatem quandam constituentem, cum vocabulum עדה ex indole et vi significationis suae tantum dicat quemcunque hominum coetum et conventum, sive minorem sive majorem’ (p. 80). And again: ‘Συναγωγή, ut et עדה, semper significat coetum conjunctum et congregatum, etiamsi nullo forte vinculo ligatum, sed ἡ ἐκκλησία [==קהל] designat multitudinem aliquam, quae populum constituit, per leges et vincula inter se junctam, etsi saepe fiat non sit coacta vel cogi possit’ (p. 88). Accepting this as a true distinction, we shall see that it was not without due reason that our Lord (
Yet for all this we do not find the title ἐκκλησία wholly withdrawn from the Jewish congregation; that too was “the Church in the wilderness” (
It will be perceived from what has been said, that Augustine, by a piece of good fortune which he had no right to expect, was only half in the wrong, when transferring his Latin etymologies to the Greek and Hebrew, and not pausing to enquire whether they would hold good there, as was improbable enough, he finds the reason for attributing συναγωγή to the Jewish, and ἐκκλησία to the Christian Church, in the fact that ‘convocatio’ (== ἐκκλησία) is a nobler term than ‘congregatio’ (== συναγωγή), the first being properly the calling together of men, the second the gathering together (‘congregatio,’ from ‘congrego,’ and that from ‘grex’) of cattle.3 See Field, On, the Church, i. 5.
The πανήγυρις differs from the ἐκκλησία in this, that in the ἐκκλησία, as has been noted already, there lay ever the sense of an assembly coming together for the transaction of business. The πανήγυρις, on the other hand, was a solemn assembly for purposes of festal rejoicing; and on this account it is found joined continually with ἑορτή, as by Philo, Vit. Mos. ii. 7;
1 Zezschwitz, in his very interesting Lecture, Profangräcität und Biblischer Sprachgeist, Leipzig, 1859, p. 5, has said excellently well, ‘Das Christenthum wäre nicht als was es siegend über Griechenthum und Römerthum sich ausgewiesen, hätte es zu reden vermocht, oder zu reden sich zwingen lassen müssen, nach den Grundbegriffen griechischen Geisteslebens, griechischer Weltanschauung. Nur sprachumbildend, ausstossend was entweiht war, hervorziehend was griechische Geistesrichtung ungebührlich zurückgestellt hatte, verklärend endlich womit das ächtmenschliche, von Anfang an so sittlich gerichtete Griechenthum die Vorstufen der göttlichen Wahrheit erreicht hatte: nur so ein in seinen Grundbegriffen christianisirtes Griechisch sich anbildend konnten die Apostel Christi der Welt, die damals der allgemeinen Bildung nach eine griechische war, die Sprache des Geistes, der durch sie zeugte, vermitteln.’
2 Both those points are well made by Flacius Illyricus, in his Clavis Scripturoe, s. v. Ecclesia: ‘Quia Ecclesia a verbo καλεῖν venit, hoc observetur primum; ideo conversionem hominum vocationem vocari, non tantum quia Deus eos per se suumque Verbum, quasi clamore, vocat; sed etiam quia sicut herus ex turbâ famulorum certos aliquos ad aliqua singularia munia evocat, sic Deus quoque tum totum populum suum vocat ad cultum suum (
3 Enarr. in Ps. lxxxi. 1: ‘In synagogâ populum Israël accipimus, quia et ipsorum proprie synagoga dici solet, quamvis et Ecclesia dicta sit. Nostri vero Ecclesiam nunquam synagogam dixerunt, sed semper Ecclesiam: sive discernendi caussâ, sive quod inter congregationem, unde synagoga, et convocationem, unde Ecclesia nomen accepit, distet aliquid; quod scilicet congregari et pecora solent, atque ipsa proprie, quorum et greges proprie dicimus; convocari autem magis est utentium ratione, sicut sunt homines.’ So also the author of a Commentary on the Book of Proverbs formerly ascribed to Jerome (Opp. vol. v. p. 533); and by Vitringa (p. 91) cited as his.
[The following Strong's numbers apply to this section:G1577,G3831,G4864.]
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