Koinonia
Koinonia (/ˌkɔɪnoʊˈniːə/)[1] is a transliterated form of the Greek word κοινωνία, which refers to concepts such as fellowship, joint participation, partnership, the share which one has in anything, a gift jointly contributed, a collection, a contribution. In the Politics of Aristotle it is used to mean a community of any size from a single family to a polis. As a polis, it is the Greek for republic or commonwealth. In later Christianity it identifies the idealized state of fellowship and unity that should exist within the Christian church, the Body of Christ. This usage may have been borrowed from the early Epicureans—as it is used by Epicurus' Principal Doctrines 37–38.[2]
"Christian communion" redirects here. For other uses, see Koinonia (disambiguation) and Communion (disambiguation).
The essential meaning of the koinonia embraces concepts conveyed in the English terms community, communion, joint participation, sharing and intimacy. Koinonia can therefore refer in some contexts to a jointly contributed gift.[4] The word appears 19 times in most editions of the Greek New Testament. In the New American Standard Bible, it is translated "fellowship" twelve times, "sharing" three times, and "participation" and "contribution" twice each.[5]
Koinonia appears once in the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint, in Leviticus 6:2 [6]
It is found in 43 verses of the New Testament as a noun (koinōnia 17x, koinōnos 10x, sugkoinōnos 4x), in its adjectival (koinōnikos 1x), or verbal forms (koinōneō 8x, sugkoinōneō 3x) . The word is applied, according to the context, to sharing or fellowship, or people in such relation, with:
Of these usages, Bromiley's International Standard Bible Encyclopedia selects as especially significant the following meanings: