Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

The 2017 issue of Journal of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting is available:
http://www.jjmjs.org/
There is also an online forum ("We hope that you will find these studies thought provoking and engaging and encourage you to get involved by posting responses and questions for further discussion in our online Forum."):
http://www.jjmjs.org/forum.html
http://www.jjmjs.org/ongoing-discussion-threads

StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Fri Oct 20, 2017 3:11 am The 2017 issue of Journal of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting is available:
http://www.jjmjs.org/
There is also an online forum ("We hope that you will find these studies thought provoking and engaging and encourage you to get involved by posting responses and questions for further discussion in our online Forum."):
http://www.jjmjs.org/forum.html
http://www.jjmjs.org/ongoing-discussion-threads

Thank you StephenGoranson

Are you inviting questions about the pdfs you have included in your post? . If you are only intending to open another door for the inquisitive , then, please ignore my post .


If you are inviting questions I have the following question:

Does Mark’s Jesus Abrogate Torah? Jesus’ Purity
Logion and its Illustration in Mark 7:15–23
John van Maaren
McMaster University | vanmaajr@mcmaster.ca
JJMJS No.4 (2017): 21-41

The clear problem this reading creates is that Jesus does the very thing of which he accuses his interlocutors, “you reject the commandment of God.”3

Question :Which commandments of God was Jesus rejecting?

In passing, in the latest edition of the Journal of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting there are further advances in the discussion about the significance of ekklhsia (translated as "church" in most places) in relation to the vocabulary of assemblies such as Jewish synagogues, important in understanding Paul's use of the term.

I think it is inappropriate to translate ekklhsia as "church" in Paul's letters. The notion is anachronous and generally confusing.

This journal from what I've seen is a great resource.

I agree its a great resource but I am not quite sure I understand what the author is suggesting an ekklesia was exactly. Maybe my mind just isn't very focused at the end of the day.

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Fri Oct 20, 2017 3:38 pm I agree its a great resource but I am not quite sure I understand what the author is suggesting an ekklesia was exactly. Maybe my mind just isn't very focused at the end of the day.

Any ol' group of people who come together with common purpose. Congregation. Assembly.

I think the author was trying to remind folks that Christians were not the only folks to use the term for their own purposes. It had a long history of use by non-christians and Judeans for all sorts of things, but the one I think he has most in mind is its use by "voluntary associations" (clubs, burial and memorial associations for the dead, sometimes dedicated to some god or goddess, often with influential local patrons, but mainly excuses for drinking once a month) as found all throughout the Roman world. The Romans frowned upon them ever since they were used for political purposes in the Roman civil war but the local officials tended to look the other way if they seemed harmless enough. John Kloppenborg et. al. eds. Voluntary Associations in the Greco-Roman World comes to mind.

DCH

Tyndale translated ekklesia as congregation because he thought church to be misleading in context.
Later translators reverted to church.

Andrew Criddle

But isn't it implicit that at the start of Christianity 'ekklesia' meant association and that only later it meant distinctive kind of association of Christ-believers? I am not getting the significance of the discussion. I know that the term was used in the ancient Greek polis. I am not connecting the dots here unless it is because I was never a Christian and I don't have to 'correct' an unconscious mind that Christian believers have. It seems self-evident that at the beginning of Christianity, Paul took over a Greek technical term. I am still getting the significance of this discussion.

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2017 6:47 am But isn't it implicit that at the start of Christianity 'ekklesia' meant association and that only later it meant distinctive kind of association of Christ-believers? I am not getting the significance of the discussion. I know that the term was used in the ancient Greek polis. I am not connecting the dots here unless it is because I was never a Christian and I don't have to 'correct' an unconscious mind that Christian believers have. It seems self-evident that at the beginning of Christianity, Paul took over a Greek technical term. I am still getting the significance of this discussion.

I experience the same sort of disconnect, but for a different reason. The Christian groups I grew up in often took great pains to define exactly what they meant by "church" — and they sometimes even used the anglicized term ecclesia in parentheses or whatnot to make clear that they were not referring to the Roman Catholic mass or other forms of worship they felt did not represent true Christian practice in the first century. I would not go so far as to say that they were completely accurate in their reconstruction of how gatherings operated in early Christianity, but that was their overt goal, and the results of that kind of inquiry were the only thing allowed to be called "church" in those circles. The upshot is that, for me, the term "church" does not sound at all anachronistic; to the contrary, included in the very word itself is the sense that it applies only to the very period of history in which I am interested, so far as how it comes across to me is concerned.

That said, of course I tend to modify my language when dealing with people whose concept of church differs from what I am trying to convey. If all someone can think of when they hear that word is going to mass twice a year (Christmas and Easter), then I will have to adjust my discourse a bit. Same goes if they cannot imagine that kind of gathering being done by anyone other than early Christians.

In the context of this forum, however, I am not sure how necessary such an adjustment is. It seems crystal clear to me that the word "church" is intended as the usual English translation of the Greek ekklesia, and that inferring meaning from any English translation (congregation, assembly, church, synagogue) in such a context is a mistake. We always go back to the original language if possible.

Tyndale 1525/ I cor 1 : 1-2