There are three implications for understanding ecclesial solidarity in Paul from my examination of Greek literature and the Septuagint, about what might be expected from the Pauline corpus.
First, it is to be expected that ἐκκλησία will be used for a local church in a given city or other similar geographical area. If Greek usage is followed, then the plural might be used to refer to a series of consecutive assemblies or churches; it would be unusual for it to be used for different assemblies in the same location. Septuagint usage might suggest that sometimes representative assemblies are in view, and that there would be an ongoing concern for the comprehensive assembly.
Second, a certain level of flexibility might be expected from the Pauline corpus, as a political term is applied to a group which functions in a different way. Whilst the Septuagint usage might be instructive here, the comprehensive assembly seen above was an assembly of Israel, and when other assemblies are in view, such as at Bethulia, they are often political in nature and owe much to Greek literature. There needs to be a recognition that the context into which Paul writes, to groups in various geographical locations around the Mediterranean which nevertheless have some form of commonality, would impact his use of ἐκκλησία in ways similar to, but not necessarily restricted to, Septuagint usage, or that of Dionysius and Diodorus, as compared to Thucydides.
Third, these two observations underline the importance of context in understanding Pauline usage. Therefore, in examining occurrences of ἐκκλησία in the Pauline corpus, I will seek meaning first from the context of the letter and Paul’s use elsewhere, neither ignoring nor prioritizing usage in Greek literature and the Septuagint.
In coming to Paul, we come with a term used for an assembly assembled, but which is also capable of related but different usage.
Contextualizing ἐκκλησία in the First-century World
In the final section of this chapter, I will seek to summarize some of the findings of recent studies of the first-century world as they relate to how ἐκκλησία should be understood, to ensure that the exegetical examination of the Pauline context takes account of relevant historical and social information.
For the purposes of this study, there are two key questions to be answered. First a question of location: where did early Christians meet? Second, the question of size: how large were these gatherings?
It is generally assumed that ἐκκλησίαι in the mid-first century met in houses, or domestic spaces. Edward Adams has challenged this consensus, arguing that early Christian meetings were not almost exclusively in houses365 by casting doubt on the certainty with which the NT evidence is normally approached,366 before providing evidence for the possible usage of other places such as shops, workshops, warehouse cells, barns,367 hotels and inns, rented dining rooms and bathhouses,368and gardens, watersides, urban open space, and tomb sides.369 He wants a wider perspective “which acknowledges the importance of houses as Christian meeting places during this period, but insists that Christian groups could plausibly have met in a variety of other available places too.”370 As I noted in chapter 1, this is a necessary observation and corrective. However, most of the settings outlined by Adams would still present the same challenges of size and possible patronage; the church would be meeting in a shop or a warehouse with an owner, and someone would need to be responsible for renting the dining room or bathhouse. Even in the Mediterranean climate, none of the outdoor settings suggested by Adams would be suitable as a permanent meeting place. Granted that the meeting places for the early church were not almost exclusively houses, the fact remains that a room where size restrictions and ownership were potentially relevant remain the overwhelmingly picture.
Gehring has traced the importance of houses for Christians from the ministry of Jesus based in Peter’s house in Capernaum,371 through the “upper room church” of early Christianity in Acts 1–5,372 to the extensive evidence for ἐκκλησίαι meeting in houses in the Pauline mission,373 noting the likely size and shape of a number of the houses that may have been used by early Christians for gathering and worship.374 Other studies show that to talk of a “house” as the location for the ἐκκλησία means recognizing the variety of houses in the first-century world. Jewett argues that the appropriate setting for at least some of the ἐκκλησίαι that met in houses in Rome is the blocks of insulae: small rented apartments where the poor lived a precarious existence.375 In his study of houses in Pompeii, Oakes demonstrates a variety of different housing types within one block,376 and then indicates how a “craftworker” house in Pompeii may indicate the kind of houses that people would have met in in Rome.377 Horrell examines some buildings east of the theatre in Roman Corinth, suggesting that they might, with the judicious use of a “disciplined imagination” provide a context for understanding the kind of dwellings that Christians could have met in in first-century Corinth.378 As noted, Adams adds further spaces. The precise location of the ἐκκλησίαι to which Paul wrote is almost certainly beyond us; however, these studies indicate both that Christians generally met in domestic spaces in the Greco-Roman world, defining domestic as a privately-owned space which was not just used for church meetings.379
The variety of domestic spaces leads naturally into the second question: that of size. How big were Christian ἐκκλησίαι in the first century? A variety of answers have been given to this question, but the element they share is that the size of the ἐκκλησία was sometimes limited by the size of the space in which it met. Oakes estimates that his “craftworker church” from Pompeii could accommodate around forty individuals,380 and that the same ἐκκλησία in Romans, where property was generally smaller, would have accommodated around thirty.381 It is likely that in many situations, this size of meeting space may well have accommodated everybody, and was not therefore a limitation. De Vos estimates the Christian community in Thessalonica at around twenty-five members, who would have met in an insula,382 and thirty members in Philippi who met in an insula.383 However, it appears that in some situations, the size of meeting space limited or adversely affected the ἐκκλησία. Thus, Murphy-O’Connor argues, based on his analysis of the space in a villa at Anaploga that some of the problems in the ἐκκλησία in Corinth stemmed from the fact that there was not a building available that could hold the forty to fifty (or more) people that made up the ἐκκλησία there.384 Other authors have noted that there appear to have been a variety of “house churches” in Rome, and that this appears to have contributed to some of the issues Paul addresses in his letter.385 On the other hand, Gehring argues that there would have been wealthy Christians able to rent an upper room in Jerusalem able to contain