Gerlinda,

             That vast majority of the times that church/churches is mentioned in the scriptures is in the epistles & Acts.

It would seem that the bulk of the teaching on the church comes from Paul’s writings, which were written in Greek, to a mostly Gentile audience.

Why would it matter what the Hebrew word for that would have been, those people to who those epistles were written, were no Hebrew scholars, anyway.

It even looks like possibly over three-fourths of the time that church/churches is used, that it is not speaking in terms of universal of all the believers collectively.

To me, at least, it would seem that the best way to study the church and what it means,

.      is from studying everything about “church”, or using “church/churches”, in the new testament collectively, relating to each other, and in context to where it’s used.

On the other hand, if someone wanted to learn the doctrine about “hell”, they do it one of two ways:

1)     they study the scriptures collectively, and in context where used, to develop their understanding of the doctrine

2)     or simply look up what the word was in Greek

#2) does not work.

In ancient Greek, they used Hades, which was defined by its used in Greek mythology.

That is not the way to learn about Bible doctrine.

#1) let the scriptures themselves teach the doctrine

                          Gino