However, there are also particular features of Dionysius’s usage. First, he distinguishes between the centuriate assembly256 and the tribal assembly.257 The assembly is also described as being divided by curiae.258 He talks of the assembly of the people,259 of a general or common assembly,260 and often specifically states that the assembly is of the army/soldiers, rather than it being inferred from the context.261
There is also an occasion where he records rival assemblies being called, by Appius at the sanctuary of the Vulcan, and by Valerius at the Forum.262 This is the only example of concurrent assemblies in the same city recorded in the literature I have surveyed.
The plural is used a number of times.263 Often there are comments on the makeup of these assemblies: the inclusion of the baser elements, or their fractious nature.264 Assemblies are involved in the overthrow of the Senate,265and the distinction between centuriate and tribal assemblies also applies here.266 The plural can also be used for assemblies in general.267
Dionysius’s extensive and varied use of ἐκκλησία follows the general pattern and contours established here, from Thucydides onwards. However, the widening of the scope of assembly to include the history of the Roman Republic, and the tendency to be more explicit on what kind of assembly is meeting, show how usage in the first century BC was in some ways different from that in the fifth and fourth century BC. If Dionysius and Diodorus are included in the literature survey, it is no longer the Greek city-state that is primarily in view, and ἐκκλησία can be used for bodies which would not have been recognizable as assemblies by the Athenians and others.
Implications of Greek Literary Usage
In looking back over all the authors sampled here, several things can be noted. First, the broad contours of the standard definition of ἐκκλησία still stand: it is a temporary gathering of appropriate men called to decide on a variety of topics pertaining to the wellbeing of the city-state or area. It is a local body, although there are a few occasions noted above where a more representative body is in view.
Second, it is a political body.268 That is, the ἐκκλησία is concerned with decisions about war, taxes, and making decisions. It can be influenced, corrupted, misused, and manipulated. Even when it is the army that assembles, the decisions remain political: whether and when to attack or withdraw. This is a common thread throughout the literature and is significant for this investigation because it raises the question of how Paul can use such a clearly political word and apply it to a group which does not represent all, in fact which normally represents very few, of the eligible voters in any city, and which includes women.
Third, as the review above has shown, different authors have different emphases. These emphases can be related to genre; compare the austere decision-making of Thucydides’s assembly with the frivolous mockery of Aristophanes. However, the variety also lies in subject matter, so Dionysius and Diodorus’s inclusion of Roman history changes how they discuss ἐκκλησία and what can be included in the term. Similarly, Plato’s more philosophical discussion of the nature of the assembly introduces the term assemblymen, and Aristotle hints at the conception of the ἐκκλησία as a corporate body; the same may be true in Aristophanes’s idea of the assembly having a child. When considering Paul’s usage, it must be recognized that both the genre and subject matter of his writing are different. The literature I have surveyed does not include many epistles, tends to be for general consumption by an elite audience rather than to a particular community or communities, and has a high-political bias, the doings of great men.
Fourth, and critically for this study, it is legitimate to ask what role the use of the term ἐκκλησία between the fifth and first centuries BC has had in determining how Paul can use the term. Whilst the general contours are clear, there is enough variety here to suggest that the term can have a wider application, such as to a gathering of soldiers, and that the term can be applied in new ways, as noted above in the usage of Dionysius and Diodorus. The general contours of the term are as frequently described in the scholarly literature; however, there is significant flexibility in how ἐκκλησία is used. I would argue that this leaves scope for Paul, not writing about city politics, and writing in a different genre and with a different subject matter, to use the word differently. It is true that ἐκκλησία is generally used for an assembly in a city, but arguably the Greek background provides one semantic range for understanding ἐκκλησία which may or may not be followed and expanded by Paul.269
Ἐκκλησία in the Septuagint and Philo
In this section, I will examine the occurrences of ἐκκλησία in the Septuagint and Philo.270 In doing so, I will examine three issues. The first arises from the foregoing discussion of Greek literature, and from the discussion of whether Septuagint or Greek literary usage was most influential on NT authors: how the Septuagint related to Greek usage elsewhere. For example, Schmidt argues strongly that, whilst there is an analogy between NT and Greek usage of ἐκκλησία, the significance of the term comes from the Septuagint;271 in reexamining Septuagint usage, I will examine the relationship to the wider Greek literary tradition.
Second, there is a need to consider the arguments made about Septuagint usage by O’Brien, Robinson and others. There is the contention that the assembly is always assembled. So, Robinson states that ἐκκλησία was used “for the congregation of Israel. It did not apply to the members of the society of Israel whether assembled or not assembled, but to their actual meeting together.”272 There is the argument that certain assemblies have special significance for understanding the NT usage of ἐκκλησία; O’Brien states, “Of particular significance, however, are those instances of ekklēsia (rendering qāhāl) which denote the congregation of Israel when it assembled to hear the work of God on Mt. Sinai, or later on Mt. Zion where all Israel was required to assemble three times a year.”273 There is also the question of who is involved in the assembly; whether it is an assembly of the whole nation, or a representative assembly.274