The word "Church" is not in scripture.

[Willtor]

The word "Assembly and Congregation" are INTERPRETATED as Church. Now what do you think of that?

If you will take notice, the word Church is not used in the Old Testament. The word Ekklesia is used 114 times, and mostly as an INTERPRETATION for Church and a few times as Assembly or Congregation. The word Church is an INTERPRETATION were as Assembly or Congregation would be a TRANSLATION.

The ecclesia or ekklesia was the principal assembly of the democracy of ancient Athens during its Golden Age (480-404 BCE). It was a gathering place for politicians and voters. This is the word used in most English versions as a rendering of the New Testament's Greek word ekklesia. Ekklesia really means "a calling out", a meeting or a gathering. Ekklesia is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew qahal, which means an assembly or a congregation. Neither ekklesia nor qahal means a building.

Tyndale, in his translation, uniformly translated ekklesia as "congregation" and only used the word "'churches" to translate Acts 19:37 for heathen temples! Where then did the word "church", come from?
Ecclesiastical sources give the origin as kuriakon or kyriakon in Greek. However to accept this, one has to stretch your imagination in an attempt to see any resemblance. Also, because kuriakon means a building (the house of Kurios=Lords), and not a gathering or meeting of people, as the words ekklesia and qahal imply, therefore this explanation can only be regarded as distorted, even if it is true.

Our common dictionaries, however, are honest in revealing to us the true origin. They all trace the word back to its Old English or Anglo-Saxon root, namely circe. And what is the origin of circe? Any encyclopedia, or dictionary of mythology, will reveal who Circe was. She was the goddess daughter of Helios, the Sun deity! Again, another form of Sun worship, this time the daughter of the Sun deity had become mixed with the Christian Faith.

Some interesting facts emerge from the study of the word circe. The word is related to "circus", "circle", "circuit", "Circean", "circulate", and the various words starting with circum". The Latin pronunciation could have been "sirke" or "sirse". The Old English word circe may have been pronounced similarly to "kirke", or even "sirse".
However, Circe was in fact originally a Greek goddess where her name was written as: Kirke, and pronounced as such. The word "church" is known in Scotland as kirk, and in German as Kirche and in Netherlands as kerk. These words show their direct derivation from the Greek Kirke even better than the English "church". However, even the Old English circe for "church", reveals its origin.
Let us rather use the Scriptural "Assembly" or "Congregation", and renounce the word that is derived from Circe, the daughter of the Sun deity which is worshiped even today on the day of the Sun, Sunday!

This is what the point of this subject is: Many Christians place the importance of a "Church" as the only means of salvation, when in fact it is the believers themselves that are The Body of Christ.

Salvation is obtained by your keeping of God's precepts and Commandments in addition to the testimony of Yahshua. And that is what scripture says. That is The New Covenant.
The True Church is the "congregation" of believers.
A Church is a building for public gatherings of various sorts. Where ever the true believers assemble, that is the congregation.

And again like I have said before, the word church is an interpretation for the words Assembly and Congregation. For example, the Catholic Church has said that salvation can only be found through the Catholic Church.
And that is why you see the interpretation church given in the bible.

Even if you're right and the word "church" came from pagan sources... so what? Lots of our language comes from pagan sources. It doesn't mean we mean pagan things when we use the words.

El was a Canaanite god. But the patriarchs and prophets weren't referring to the Canaanite religion when they said "El" (as in "El Shaddai" or "Elohim"). They were referring to God of Heaven. "El" was just a useful word they adopted.

 

[JudaicChristian]

"Church" from the Oxford English Dictionary, definitions 4 and 5.

4. a. The community or whole body of Christ's faithful people collectively; all who are spiritually united to Christ as ‘Head of the Church’. More fully described as the Church Universal or Catholic.
(Sometimes its external organization, sometimes its spiritual nature, is chiefly considered.)
b. Church militant: the Church on earth considered as warring against the powers of evil. (Sometimes used jocularly in reference to actual warfare or polemics.) Church triumphant: the portion of the church which has overcome the world, and entered into glory.
c. Visible Church: the church as visibly consisting of its professed members upon earth; contrasted with the Church Invisible, or Mystical.
d. The church as a spiritual society ‘separated from the world’ is often opposed to the world.

5. a. A particular organized Christian society, considered either as the only true representative, or as a distinct branch, of the Church universal, separated by peculiarities of doctrine, worship, or organization, or confined to limits territorial or historical: e.g. the primitive church, the Latin Ch., Greek Ch., Orthodox Ch., Gallican Ch., Nestorian Ch., Ancient British Ch., Anglo-Saxon Ch., Lutheran Ch., Reformed Ch., Waldensian Ch., Ch. of England (see b.), of Scotland, Free Ch. of Scotland, United Presbyterian Ch., American Episcopal Ch., Methodist Episcopal Ch., etc.
Which part of this are you objecting to?


This is what the OED has to say about the etymology of the word "church".

Church, earlier churche, cherche, is a phonetically-spelt normal representative of Middle English chirche, the regular representation of Old English circe; the fuller Old English cirice, cirice gave the early ME. variant chereche, chiriche... Old English cirice, circe, corresponds. to West Germanic kîrika, Old Saxon kirika, kerika (Middle Low German and Middle Dutch kerke, Dutch kerk, Low German kerke, karke, kark, with ar:-er:-ir); Old Frisian szereke, szurke, tzierka, tziurk; Old High German. chirihha...; also Old Norse kirkia, kyrkja, Swedish kyrka, Danish kirke (thence Finnish. kirkko, Esthonian. kirrik, kirk, kerk; also Old Prussian. kîrkis). Cf. also the Slavonic forms: Old Slavonic criky, 10th c., cruky fem., later crukuve, cirkovi...

The ulterior derivation has been keenly disputed. The Latin circus, and a Gothic word kêlikn ‘tower, upper chamber’ (app. originally Gaulish) have both been proposed (the latter suggested by the Alemannic chîlihha), but are set aside as untenable; and there is now a general agreement among scholars in referring it to the Greek word κυριακον, properly adj. ‘of the Lord, dominicum, dominical’ (from κυριος lord), which occurs, from the 3rd century at least, used substantively (sc. δωμα, or the like) = ‘house of the Lord’, as a name of the Christian house of worship. Of this the earliest cited instances are in the Apostolical Constitutions (II. 59)
The emphasis is mine. Would you mind producing your sources so I may look at them?

I think your source is just fine. All a person has to do is search a few words.

 

[JudaicChristian]

Even if you're right and the word "church" came from pagan sources... so what? Lots of our language comes from pagan sources. It doesn't mean we mean pagan things when we use the words.

El was a Canaanite god. But the patriarchs and prophets weren't referring to the Canaanite religion when they said "El" (as in "El Shaddai" or "Elohim"). They were referring to God of Heaven. "El" was just a useful word they adopted.

Joining Paganism to Christianity gives people the wrong idea.

 

[Willtor]

Joining Paganism to Christianity gives people the wrong idea.

Borrowing words? Who actually knew the etymology of the word? And even then, your etymology may be wrong! If people get the wrong idea from this, they're trying to get the wrong idea.

 

[ebia]

Besides the Jewish Christians, you know who else knew Greek? Jesus. He used the word "church":

Matthe 16:18

18 κἀγὼ δέ σοι λέγω ὅτι σὺ εἶ Πέτρος, καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτῃ τῇ πέτρᾳ οἰκοδομήσω μου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, καὶ πύλαι ᾅδου οὐ κατισχύσουσιν αὐτῆς.

18 Et ego dico tibi, quia tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram ædificabo Ecclesiam meam, et portæ inferi non prævalebunt adversus eam.

18 And I say to you: That you are Peter; and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

You seem to be missing his point, such as it is and poorly phrased as it is, that "church" is not a strict translation of "ecclesia". Ecclesia means literally "assembly [of the people of God]". Church is derived from "[house] of the Lord". The connotations end up being much the same, mind.

That said, I do find it cute the way certain Vatican documents like to talk about the rest of us as Ecclesial Communities.

 

[lighthouse_hope]

And let's wait for the boring discussion of Easter in a few weeks

 

[wayseer]

Joining Paganism to Christianity gives people the wrong idea.

The OT is shot through with pagan influence. What Willtor says concerning El is perfectly correct.

The important thing to recognise is not how similar the OT stories are with the pagan cultures but how they have reworked by the OT authors to create a very different set of meanings.

 

[ebia]

Joining Paganism to Christianity gives people the wrong idea.

Paul (and any other N.T. author for that matter) co-opts all sorts of Pagan ideas to talk about the one true Lord and the one true Gospel. Including those two words (Kyrios and Evangelion) and their connotations. So does the Old Testament for that matter. As you said yourself in the OP, Ecclesia is greek word with connotations in the pagan world, that is then co-opted by the LXX translators and then the New Testament authors.

It cannot be otherwise - to communicate one has to take the language and thought patterns that exist and co-opt them for one's purposes.

 

[Eucharisted]

And let's wait for the boring discussion of Easter in a few weeks

Don't forget the so-called "scientific" discoveries that disprove Jesus' Resurrection.

 

[Eucharisted]

You seem to be missing his point, such as it is and poorly phrased as it is, that "church" is not a strict translation of "ecclesia". Ecclesia means literally "assembly [of the people of God]". Church is derived from "[house] of the Lord". The connotations end up being much the same, mind.

That said, I do find it cute the way certain Vatican documents like to talk about the rest of us as Ecclesial Communities.

You seem to be missing the point, such as it is, that "ecclesia" is a strict translation of "church". Church means literally "assembly [of the people of God]". Church is derived from "[house] of the Lord". The translation ends up being much the same, mind.

That said, I do find it cute the way you try to show Greek-speaking Jews - Jesus, the Evangelicals, the Apostles, Stephan, the whole early community of Christians - are wrong and don't know what the word ἐκκλησίᾳ means.

 

[Eucharisted]

Why don't we take this issue of the word "church" not being in Scriptures to its logical conclusion and therefore show its fallacious nature? "Jesus" is not in Scripture, so we can't worship Jesus. "Gospel" is not in Scripture, so we can't use the Gospels. "Christian" is not in Scripture, so we can't be Christians. "God" is not in Scripture, so we can't believe in God. Ergo, we must become atheists: the Scripture says so! Such is the fallacy of the argument that the word "church" isn't in Scripture, when in fact it plainly is!

 

[ebia]

You seem to be missing the point, such as it is, that "ecclesia" is a strict translation of "church". Church means literally "assembly [of the people of God]". Church is derived from "[house] of the Lord". The translation ends up being much the same, mind.

It would be more accurate to say church literally means "[house] of the Lord" and connotes "assembly [of the people of God]". His objection seems to rest on using a word that only connotes the same thing, rather than meaning the same thing at its root.

That said, I do find it cute the way you try to show Greek-speaking Jews - Jesus, the Evangelicals, the Apostles, Stephan, the whole early community of Christians - are wrong and don't know what the word ἐκκλησίᾳ means.

It's not me saying there is anything wrong with using the word church (though I think there is something to be said for being a bit clearer about the exact words when we are looking at scripture since 'church' carries a heap of other connotations in the 21st century that would not have been in the mind of Jesus, Paul or Luke.

Of course no-one is saying Jesus, the Evangelists, Apostles, Stephen or anyone else is wrong about what Ecclessia means - the question, if there is one, is whether we are using the best possible word to translate that. Jesus and Paul didn't think in English and then translate that into Greek. The question isn't "is ecclesia the right word" but "is church an adequate translation of that word". To some extent the answer to that is "it depends".

 

[Eucharisted]

Main Entry: 1church
Pronunciation: \ˈchərch\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English chirche, from Old English cirice, ultimately from Late Greek kyriakon, from Greek, neuter of kyriakos of the lord, from kyrios lord, master; akin to Sanskrit śūra hero, warrior

Church - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

church (Greek kyriakon (κυριακό&#957, "thing belonging to the Lord"; also ekklesia (ἐκκλησί&#945 (Latinized as ecclesia, "assembly")

Christian Church - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

church (chûrch)

[Middle English chirche, from Old English cirice, ultimately from Medieval Greek k

rikon, from Late Greek k

riakon (d

ma), the Lord's (house), neuter of Greek k

riakos, of the lord, from k

rios, lord; see keu

- in Indo-European roots.]

Church - definition of Church by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.

Church and ecclesia and ἐκκλησίᾳ mean the same thing.

 

[CreedIsChrist]

You seem to be missing his point, such as it is and poorly phrased as it is, that "church" is not a strict translation of "ecclesia". Ecclesia means literally "assembly [of the people of God]". Church is derived from "[house] of the Lord". The connotations end up being much the same, mind.

That said, I do find it cute the way certain Vatican documents like to talk about the rest of us as Ecclesial Communities.

It doesn't "simply" mean one thing, as ecclesia has many different meanings related to a group of believers. For instance, there may be an ecclesia of 'believers' who could be manifest heretics. Hence there has to be a distinction made between such.. That is why the 4 marks of the Church(or congregation) were promulgated. One, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic..

Secondly, the KJV, which many protestants consider to be THE bible renders the word as 'Church' also. Not assembly or congregation.

 

[ebia]

Church and ecclesia and ἐκκλησίᾳ mean the same thing.

There's a good deal of overlap in meaning, but also some differences in connotation. Presumably whoever was responsible for using the Vatican documents that distinguish between churches and ecclesial communities sees a distinction between the two and isn't just playing word games.