Ecclesia

Ecclesia (Gr., 'convocation'), a popular assembly, especially that of Athens (q.v.), where the people exercised full sovereignty, and at which every citizen of twenty years of age was entitled to vote. The Athenian ecclesia held originally four, ultimately forty, ordinary meetings in the year (see SOLON). The term was applied by the Septuagint translators to the Jewish commonwealth, and so was naturally adopted by New Testament writers to designate the church (compare Fr. église; cf. Welsh eglwys).