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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/11375/13971
Title: BEFORE ‘CHURCH’: POLITICAL, ETHNO-RELIGIOUS, AND THEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE COLLECTIVE DESIGNATION OF PAULINE CHRIST-FOLLOWERS AS EKKLĒSIAI
Authors: Korner, Ralph J.
Advisor: Runesson, Anders
Westerholm, Stephen
Schuller, Eileen
Department: Religious Studies
Keywords: ekklēsia;synagogue;New Testament;voluntary associations;Greco-Roman politics;Apocrypha;Philo;Josephus;patristic;Other Social and Behavioral Sciences;Other Social and Behavioral Sciences
Publication Date: Apr-2014
Abstract: <p>In this study I situate socio-historically the adoption of the term <em>ekklēsia</em> as a permanent collective identity by early Christ-followers, particularly Pauline ones. I contribute to at least four areas of <em>ekklēsia</em> research. First, my examination of almost 1900 inscriptional occurrences of the word <em>ekklēsia</em> indicates a lack of evidence for a non-civic association self-identifying collectively as an <em>ekklēsia</em>. Second, I develop the preliminary observation by Runesson, Binder, and Olsson (2008) that <em>ekklēsia</em> can refer either to a gathering of Jews or to the self-designation of a Jewish community, i.e., that <em>ekklēsia</em> is one among several terms that can be translated into English as “synagogue.” This problematizes, from an institutional perspective, suggestions common in scholarship that Paul was “parting ways” with Judaism(s), ‘Jewishness,’ or Jewish organizational forms. Third, given both that non-Jewish Christ-followers could not be designated using the ethno-religious term “Israel” and that <em>ekklēsia</em> is a Jewish synagogue term, Paul’s designation of his multi-ethnic communities as <em>ekklēsiai</em> allowed gentiles qua gentiles to share with Torah observant Jews qua Jews in God’s salvation history with Israel. <em>Ekklēsia</em>, thus, does not indicate an inherently supersessionist identity for communities designated by this term. Fourth, Paul’s adoption of a political identity (civic <em>ekklēsia</em>) for his communities need not imply his promotion of counter-imperial civic ideology. Greek literary (e.g., Plutarch) and inscriptional evidence suggests that if an Imperial period non-civic group (e.g., voluntary association) self-designated as an <em>ekklēsia</em>, it could have been perceived as a positive, rather than as an anti-Roman, participant in society.</p>
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/11375/13971
Identifier: opendissertations/8802
9881
5148373
Appears in Collections:Open Access Dissertations and Theses

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