Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJames Hastings Dictionary of the NT: Congregation
Subjects in this Topic:
In Tindale’s Version (1534) and in Cranmer’s (1539) ‘congregation’ was used instead of ‘church’ to translate both ἐêêëçóßá and óõíáãùãÞ . But Wyclif had used ‘church,’ and the Geneva Version, followed by Authorized Version , reverted to it. Revised Version , with one exception, has ‘church’ exclusively in the text, though in several places ‘congregation’ appears in the margin. The exception is Heb_2:12, where in the quotation from Psa_22:25 ‘congregation’ is in the text and ‘church’ in the margin. F. J. A. Hort (The Christian Ecclesia, London, 1897) chose ‘Ecclesia’ as a word free from the disturbing associations of ‘church’ and ‘congregation,’ though the latter has not only historical standing (as above) but also the advantage of suggesting some of these elements of meaning which are least forcibly brought out by the word ‘church’ according to our present use (cf. Expository Times viii. [1896-97] 386). So far, however, as there is any substantive difference between the two words as found in the English Bible, the ‘congregation’ of Revised Version margin points to an actual church assembled in one place.
In the NT ἐêêëçóßá naturally designates the Christian Church. The associations of óõíáãùãÞ were against its Christian use, though it is retained in Jam_2:2 to describe an assembly of Jewish-Christians; but this is explained by the destination of the letter-‘to the twelve tribes which are of the Dispersion.’
In St. Paul’s address to the elders of Miletus (Act_20:17) we see the old Jewish óõíáãùãÞ in the process of passing into the more distinctively Christian ἑêêëçóßá . He quotes Psa_74:2 ‘Remember thy congregation which thou didst purchase of old’; but for the Septuagint óõíáãùãÞ he puts ἐêêëçóßá . Thus in the Apostle’s hands this passage becomes ‘one of the channels through which the word “ecclesia” came to denote God’s people of the future’ (Expository Times viii. 387). Cf. also article Assembly; and, for the Heb. and Gr. terms in the OT, article ‘Congregation’ in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) .
W. M. Grant.