Synagogue vs. Church Word Games

I became curious about the word “church.” Why would the Jewish men who wrote the Bible from Genesis to Revelation use the word church? (Greek term: ekklesia) It starts to look like another replacement-theology translation habit that can quietly feed anti-Jewish assumptions because nobody questions it.

Here’s the plain meaning first. Ekklesia most literally means an assembly, a gathering convened for a meeting. In the wider Greek world, it could even mean a civic citizens’ assembly (a public governing meeting). The word itself does not automatically mean “a sacred institution called a church or the name for members of a certain Gentile religious belief who often refer to themselves collectively as "the church.”

Now add one more fact that’s almost never taught in a Christian teaching. The English word “church” points readers toward a religious place or institution or to members of a certain religious belief even when the original word is actually “assembly.”

Take a look at this mushugas of how an older English "supposed" translation handled Israel gathered under Moshe:

• Acts 7:38 (KJV) calls Israel in the wilderness “the church (ekklesia).”

Israel in the wilderness is the church??? Be still my Jewish laughing while shaking my head self! That’s Israel gathered before Hashem, an assembly, not a Gentile institution, not a denomination, not a building, not members of a certain religious belief ! Meanwhile, other English translations in the same verse use “assembly” instead of “church,” which tells you the issue is vocabulary choice, not a different text.

Erroneous translations have (Psalm 22:22) mistranslated and misquoted in

Hebrews 2:12 (KJV) “in the midst of the church (ekklesia) will I sing praise…” ! The correct Hebrew translation designates the word which means assembly, company, congregation, convocation, etc. I am kvelling that they used "church". Another Christian replacement-theology translation habit that can quietly feed Christian assumptions because nobody questions it.

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Watch what often happens in the other direction. In James 2:2, the underlying word is synagogue (synagoge), but many English versions translate it as “assembly” or “meeting” rather than “synagogue.”

So readers can walk away trained into a double illusion:

• ekklesia (assembly) gets mistranslated to church,

• while synagogue gets mistranslated into assembly/meeting.

  
  

That swap doesn’t just blur vocabulary, it reshapes the story in the reader’s mind.

When you turn a normal word for “assembly” into a single sacred label, you can get a strange result: people start treating church like a holy club—membership equals salvation—while anything “synagogue-shaped” gets mentally pushed aside and much of the time is demonized.  

So, my point is simple, ekklesia is a gathered people-word. “Church” is a later English Christian tradition-word with institutional and membership gravity. And once you see the swap upgrading ekklesia to “church” while downgrading synagogue to “assembly”, I hope you can’t unsee it so you won't be a victim of an allusion of another replacement-theology translation habit that can quietly feed anti-Jewish assumptions. Why? Because now you know what you know.