This article engages with two recent monographs and three shorter publications to offer a fresh approach to the origin and some aspects of the use of the word ἐκκλησία in the Christ-movement of the first century ce. It argues that the word was first used as a collective designation by mixed groups of Greek-speaking Judean and non-Judean Christ-followers who were persecuted by Paul. Their intimate table-fellowship (especially of the one loaf and one cup of the Lord’s Supper) was regarded as involving or risking idolatry and thus imperilling the ethnic integrity of the Judean people. These Christ-followers adopted the word ἐκκλησία from instances in the Septuagint where it meant not ‘assembly’ but ‘multitude’ or ‘group’, most importantly of all in 1 Sam. 19.20. As Paul founded new communities in the cities of the Eastern Mediterranean that were recognisably similar to Greco-Roman voluntary associations, the word acquired new connotations that reverberated with the role of ἐκκλησίαι as civic voting assemblies in the Greek cities. Paul’s groups were not anti-Roman, nor did he believe that the Christ-movement would replace ethnic Israel, but rather that the two would co-exist until the End. The Pauline view on this matter finds theological endorsement in a 2015 document from the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with Jews.

本文以最近两本专着和三个较短的出版物啮合，以提供一种新方法到原点，并在第一世纪的基督教运动中使用这个词ἐκκλησία的某些方面CE。它辩称，这个词最初是由受保罗迫害的讲希腊语的犹太人和非犹太人的跟随基督的人混合使用的。他们亲密的团契（尤其是一面包一杯的圣餐）被认为牵涉或冒着崇拜偶像的行为，从而危及犹太人民的民族完整性。这些跟随基督的人在七十士译本中的实例中采用了“ἐκκλησία”这个词，它的意思不是“集合”，而是“众多”或“群体”，最重要的是在萨姆一世。19.20。保罗在东地中海城市建立了与希腊罗马自愿协会相似的新社区时，这个词获得了新的含义，与希腊文化中的公民投票大会ἐκκλησίαι的作用相呼应。保罗的团体不是反罗马的，他也不相信基督运动会取代以色列民族，而是两者将共存直到最后。宝琳关于此事的观点在梵蒂冈与犹太人的宗教关系委员会的2015年文件中得到了神学的认可。