συναλίζω

From the study of Acts 1:4

Range of meaning

There are two possible origins for the word, and they give different meanings. (1) From halēs, 'crowded together': 'to gather, assemble'. In the middle voice it means 'to come together, be assembled'. (2) From hals, 'salt': 'to eat salt with', and so 'to share a meal with'. A third option, (3), is that it is a variant spelling of synaulizomai, 'to camp or lodge together', since the two words sounded almost the same in later Greek pronunciation.

Against the English

KJV, WEB and YLT have 'being assembled together (with them)'. BSB has 'while they were gathered together'. NIV and NLT have 'eating with them'. ESV and NRSV have 'staying with them', ESV with a footnote 'eating with them'. NASB has 'Gathering them together'. Each English choice settles a question the Greek leaves open.

Used elsewhere in the period

Sense (1) is well attested in classical and later Greek, for example Herodotus and Xenophon, for gathering people together. Sense (2) is hard to document outside Christian writers, but it was the reading of the earliest interpreters: the Latin Vulgate (convescens, 'eating together'), the Syriac versions, and Greek fathers such as John Chrysostom. Within Luke-Acts it is backed by Luke 24:41–43, where the risen Jesus eats fish in front of them, and Acts 10:41, 'who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead'. Behind it lies the ancient idea that sharing salt binds people together (Num 18:19 'covenant of salt'; Ezra 4:14 'we eat the salt of the palace'). Sense (3) occurs as a variant in some manuscripts. H. J. Cadbury's lexical studies and the commentaries of Bruce and Barrett set out all three options.