Semantic Voids, New Testament Translation, and Anachronism

This essay addresses the problem of theologically-inflected English translation choices of the New Testament, and how those translations come to bear in theologically disinterested scholarship on Christian beginnings. As a case study I examine the ubiquitous rendering of ekklesia as “church” in Paul’s letters. I argue that Paul was not referring to Christian churches, but to the “day of the ekklesia ” in the Septuagint, when God’s people gathered at Sinai/Horeb. Paul is not making Christians out of pagans; he is making quasi-Judeans out of gentiles. Rendering ekklesia as “church” inscribes Christian essentialism into Paul’s letters, and masks what Paul is actually doing with this word. The bridging of Greek-to-English semantic voids on the part of translators and New Testament scholars is a consistent problem that frustrates advancements in Pauline studies, and in studies of the religions of the Roman Empire more generally.