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Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah
All of that said, you have to understand you are pulling all of that meaning out of the history of Greek democracy and not directly from the NT.
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Acts 19 says, "He dismissed the ekklesia" and the meaning was clear to Luke and his readers that it was a civic assembly. Acts, obviously, is a NT book written after Jesus had resurrected. But centuries latter, when the text was translated into English, they had to translate it into something else because it couldn't mean 'church'. I'm simply pointing out that the way out is to translate the word in all cases as 'meeting' or 'assembly'.
Now, eventually the word took on strong association as usage changed. But don't be to quick to read that later meaning back onto a gospel passage.