Should “Ekklēsia” Really Be Translated as “Church” in the Bible?

First of all, those behind the Geneva Bible all came out of the Catholic Church system and the word “church” was so ingrained in their minds that the use of the word was accepted and normal. What most don’t realize was that the big names of the Reformation: Tyndall, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, and Brucer, were all originally priests in the Catholic church. At the beginning, all of these men wanted to reform the Catholic church and get rid of the abusive and oppressive practices and false teaching used by the Catholic church. They never wanted to start a “Protestant” “church,” or to break away from the Catholic church. They were originally “protesting” against the Catholic church. But, after Tyndall was executed and they saw how the Catholic church wanted to kill Luther, they figured out they had no alternative as the Catholic church was not going to change.

The second biggest concern of the reformers was that the common people of the different countries should have a translation in their native tongue so that anyone who was literate could read the Bible for themselves, and others could be taught in their own language and understand what was being spoken. The Catholic church at that time still only used and taught from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, insisting on the services be spoke in Latin, which was already a dead language and which none of the common people in any country knew how to speak or write. The Catholic church wanted total control over what the people were taught, which included Penance, Sacraments, Liturgy, confessing to a priest, saying the rosary, and that what the Pope taught was infallible.

Luther did a German translation which led to the Geneva Bible being produced for English speakers.

What needs to be understood is that all of Scripture, Old and New Testament, has a Jewish context. In fact, there is no Old and New Testament. It should read the original covenant and the renewed covenant. Jehovah set up everything through His chosen people, the Jews.
Deut 4:32-40
Ps 147:19-20
Neh 9:13-14
Rom 3:1-2, 9:3-4

Yeshua was 100% Jewish. He lived in a Jewish culture as a Jewish man with a Jewish mindset concerning the things of Jehovah. He learned the Torah. In no way shape or form did he ever think like a Gentile, in any manner or concerning the Torah.

When he said, “Do not think that I have come to destroy the law and the prophets. I have come not to destroy, but to fulfill, people think that he was saying was that he had come to “fulfill prophecy” (Mat 5:17), this is incorrect. He was using a Jewish idiom that meant he had come to correctly teach Scripture. If a rabbi was thought to be teaching something wrong, he would be said to be “destroying the law and the prophets.” If people thought he was teaching correctly, he would have been said to be “fulfilling the law.”

Yeshua didn’t bring any “new” teaching or doctrine. Every thing he taught came straight out of the Old Testament. Even salvation. When Yeshua is having a conversation with Nicodemus in John 3, Yeshua teaches about how the spirit works in salvation.

Verse 7: Do not be astonished that I say to you that it is necessary to be born from above. (Sorry, but this is how the original text reads. It does not mean ‘born again.”)
Verse 8: The wind blows where it wishes and you can hear the wind, but you don’t know from where it came or where it is going, thus it is with everyone who has been born of the spirit.
Verse 9: Nicodemus said,” How can these things happen?
Verse 10: Yeshua said to him,” You are a teacher of Israel and you do not know these things?

Now, since Nicodemus was a teacher, what would have been the source of his teaching? Obviously the Old Testament! Which means how salvation worked was already laid out in the Old Testament! Yeshua did not introduce a “new way” to “get saved,” or a different way for Gentiles to “get saved!”

Here is the gist of the renewed covenant, Deut 30:6, Jer 31:33, 32:39, Eze 11:19-20, 36:26-27, Heb 8:10. These verses also apply to the Gentile sheep, in that the Gentile believers are spiritual Jews, Rom 2:13-16, 9:24-26. Rom chp 11 speaks of how the Gentile sheep are grafted into the kingdom.

Nowhere in the Old Testament or Jewish theology is there any concept of “a church.” It doesn’t exist. So Yeshua never used any Hebrew word that can be translated as “church!” In Mat 16:18 the Greek word incorrectly translated as “build” is Oikodomeo, which also means “to build up,” or “restore.” What Yeshua said was, “I am going to restore the congregation.” Or “rebuild the congregation.”

After Paul and all of the Apostles were dead, a movement began among some of the more influential Gentile leaders. While they did attract a number of Gentiles into their folds, the majority of Gentile believers were going to synagogues to be taught Scripture and the true faith. Remember, what we call the New Testament didn’t have its final form or start to be considered ‘canon’ until the 3rd or 4th century. Of course, the Gentile leaders were not happy with this. These Gentile leaders were already introducing a little false teaching and with Paul and the Apostles “out of the way,” there was no one to contradict them.

So a smear campaign was begun against the Jews and the Old Testament. While it took centuries to develop, Anti-Semetism finally reached its apex in the Holocaust. This was started by jealous Gentile leaders and included many well known people, including Justin Martyr, John Chrysostom, Tertullian, Origen, Ignatius and Martin Luther. Yes, that Martin Luther. In fact he wrote a 65,000 word book called, The Jews and their Lies. This was one of Hitler’s and the Nazi Party’s favorite books.

Because of Anti-Semetism, the Gentiles started turning the New Testament from a strictly Jewish book into a forged narrative that would appeal to Gentile pagans. A New Testament that had nothing to do with it’s Jewish roots. The ground work was laid for the word “church” in the Septuagint. Since there was no Greek word for “congregation” and the meaning of congregation, they chose a Greek word which was kinda close in only one aspect, ‘ekklesia.’ Which was not a Scripture word and the only resemblance to congregation was that it included a group of people coming together. But, in the Greek sense, it only meant a gathering to discuss political or social issues. It never meant or referred to a religious gathering.

While there is a lot more history I could relate, the fact is that every major English translation of Scripture up until the KJV, except for the Geneva, always translated ecclesia as “congregation.” The main reason James wanted the word “church” used was to enforce the hierarchy of the organized church in place. In other words, to entrench the “authority” of the church. Because while James was not only King, he was also the head of the Anglican church, the Church of England. James believed in the “Divine Right of Kings” which taught that not only were the kings and queens of Europe in their positions because God had chosen them, but that no ruler was subject to any law of the land. Additionally, the word “church” adds to the separation between Jewish people and Gentiles, and it was widely accepted as a legitimate “biblical” word.