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 the whole ἐκκλησία, around 120 individuals,386 whilst De Vos argues that the whole ἐκκλησία of around one hundred met in Corinth perhaps once per month in a “club room” provided by Gaius.387
For the purposes of this study, it is not necessary to decide between these alternatives; rather, to recognize the issue that this discussion of size raises, the distribution of the early ἐκκλησίαι within particular geographical locations. We also see here a clarification as to what is meant by a domestic church: a domestic church is likely to be a gathering where size is ultimately restricted by space, and where a size of forty to fifty was probably much more common than spaces that could accommodate a hundred or more.
Although provisional and somewhat speculative, this understanding of local and/or domestic ἐκκλησία will help inform the investigation of ἐκκλησία in later chapters.
140. That the universal church exists is a theological commonplace. See for example Calvin, Institutes of the Christian, 1012–13.
141. See also here Hoehner, Ephesians, 287, who states that the word is always used for an assembly in secular Greek, citing Aristotle, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Polybius. Winter, “The Problem,” 205–7, argues that the word is transliterated into Latin and used in the semantic field of politeia.
142. O’Brien, “The Church,” 89. See also Knox, Selected Works Volume II, 19; Campbell, “The Origin and Meaning,” 132; Ward, “Ekklesia,” 165.
143. O’Brien, “The Church,” 89; Knox, Selected Works Volume II, 20–1; Robinson, Selected Works Volume 1, 231.
144. O’Brien, “Church,” 90. See also Robinson, Selected Works, 222, 231; Banks, Paul’s Idea, 27–28, (supported by four references to Thucydides and two to Philo).
145. See for example Schnelle, Apostle Paul, 560; Becker, Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles, 427.
146. Schmidt, “ἐκκλησία,” 513, citing Acts 19:32 and 19:39f.
147. Roloff, “ἐκκλησία,” 411. See also Coenen, “Church,” 291
148. Roloff, “ἐκκλησία,” 411.
149. Trebilco, Self-designations, 165–66; also Ward, “Ekklesia,” 165; Campbell, “Origin and Meaning,” 132. See also Clarke, Serve the Community, 15–16 for general distinctions between ἐκκλησία and βουλή.
150. Schmidt, “ἐκκλησία,” 513. See also Knox, Selected Works, 10, who makes the calling of God a link between the church in the New and Old Testaments.
151. Coenen, “Church,” 291.
152. Roloff, “ἐκκλησία,” 411.
153. Campbell, “Origin and Meaning,” 131. See also Ward, “Ekklesia,” 165.
154. Johnston, Doctrine, 35–36.
155. I have used Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) as the basis for this survey. TLG lists 1,074 occurrences of ἐκκλησία before the first century AD. By excluding spurious and fragmentary works, and treating the Septuagint and Philo separately in this discussion, I am left with a sample of approximately eight hundred occurrences in Greek literature across more than a dozen authors ranging from the fifth to the first century BC. I take this to be a sufficient sample for this investigation.
156. For a recent brief discussion of this, see Rusten, “Thucydides and His Readers,” 3–4.
157. See Denniston, “Thucydides,” 1516–17 for likely dating.
158. See for example Dover, “Thucydides,” 44–59, for recognition of the literary character of the work, and Dihle, History of Greek Literature, 164–69, for Thucydides as historian.
159. See Thucydides, History 2.13; 3.41; 4.29; 4.118; 5.46; 5.77; 6.72; 8.69; for examples of assemblies being called and passing resolutions. “Political” here is taken to be that which concerns the city, the polis, or wider political entity.
160. See also Thucydides, History 1.44 where a second assembly is called to decide on what they had heard at assembly of 1.31, or 6.88 where the assembly is a place of appeal for envoys from other places, similarly 6.8.2.
161. Thucydides, History 1.87, where an assembly of the Lacedaemonians
