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Bible Dictionaries
Congregation
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or In Tindale’s Version (1534) and in Cranmer’s (1539) ‘congregation’ was used instead of ‘church’ to translate both ἐκκλησία and συναγωγή. 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 Hebrews 2:12, where in the quotation from Psalms 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 ἐκκλησία naturally designates the Christian Church. The associations of συναγωγή were against its Christian use, though it is retained in James 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 (Acts 20:17) we see the old Jewish συναγωγή in the process of passing into the more distinctively Christian ἑκκλησία. He quotes Psalms 74:2 ‘Remember thy congregation which thou didst purchase of old’; but for the Septuagint συναγωγή he puts ἐκκλησία. 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.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Congregation'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/c/congregation.html. 1906-1918.
