Gender and Bible translation

My former student Rick Hale compared how different Bible translations rendered the word "anthropos" in passages that (a) could reasonably have both men and women in view and (b) are translated with gender inclusive language in the NET Bible. The table provides interpretation of ‘anthropos’ in the specified Bible translations for each passage listed. Click on the link to download the entire PDF. (Works best in Chrome.)

On the ESV's New Rendering of Genesis 3:16 ("Contrary Wives")

In light of the volumes written about recent changes in the ESV, I thought I’d offer a few reflections on the interpretation of this text (Gen. 3:16), especially because the verse is foundational to many people’s understanding of gender roles. First, the change:Previous ESV translation of Genesis 3:16: Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.New text of Genesis 3:16: Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.First, an underlying reason for some of the mistrust: The ESV committee had pretty conservative complementarians on it. I’ve identified about five different kinds of complementarians, and many on this committee are at the traditionalist end. And here’s the rub: They included no women translators. And no egalitarians. In a world growing more aware of the blindness inherent in homogenous groups, this seems odd—especially coming from people who acknowledge in their very label, “complementarian,” that God designed men and women to, well, complement each other.Here’s a key question: Is the new translation exegetically justifiable? The word in question is the Hebrew preposition el. And the standard biblical Hebrew lexicon (abbreviated as HALOT) includes “against” as a possible translation of el. Because in English “contrary to” can serve as a synonym for “against,” the translators have determined that "contrary to" is an appropriate possibility.What’s of special interest is that, as Susan Foh observed long ago, we find in the next chapter (Gen. 4) the same combination of the nouns rule and desire present in this oracle, and in that context the writer is describing a power struggle. Also in Genesis 4, the NASB translators rendered v. 8 this way: “And it came about when [Cain and Abel] were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.” Also relevant.I can see how the translators got where they did on Genesis 3:16. But I’m frankly uncomfortable with translating el as “contrary to” when “for” will do. Elsewhere in translation, or even in teaching, when we morph words like “head” into “headship” and then substitute headship with the synonym leadership, we suddenly have an org chart, and we miss the beautiful picture of oneness. “Leadership” looks more like a husband as president and the wife as his assistant than a head connected to a body as two become one.Or when we translate “flesh” as “sin nature . . . ” We quit thinking of our flesh, our entire selves, as sinful and instead we picture a “sin nature” as being a part of ourselves, as a subset of ourselves—something we possess. The text actually says “flesh, ” not “sin nature.” Why not just translate it that way?These are just a couple of examples where I wish we’d stop using synonyms and use the actual words the biblical authors used. Because such synonyms do introduce subtle changes to the meanings.Now, let’s assume for a moment that the ESV translators got it right and that the curse oracle in Genesis 3 is, in fact, a prediction (not a prescription, but a prediction/description) of what will happen to the husband/wife relationship as a consequence of sin—the wife’s part being contrary to her husband and the husband going patriarchal. The text is not saying that the counterpart of the wife’s response is that her husband must rule her. The text is suggesting a new incongruence in the relationship as a consequence of sin destroying what was intended to be beautiful. Something is wrecked. If so, God via the author of Genesis is not saying they (and by extension, we) should just give up and accept that marriage will stink. We can and should fight the effects of the Fall!A seminary student (thankfully not from the school where I teach) told his wife’s ob-gyn that she could not use pain-killers when she gave birth because one of the effects of the Fall was that she needed to endure pain in childbirth. That ob-gyn called the then pastor of Dallas’s First Baptist Church for advice on how to answer this young man. The pastor requested a few days’ time to come up with a pithy answer. When the pastor called back, he told the doctor, “You tell that young man he has to quit his cushy desk job in an air-conditioned office and earn his bread by the sweat of his brow.”The reality: We can have epidurals. We can use weed-killer. And we can challenge controlling wives and controlling husbands.Maybe some old-time fundamentalists thought the curse oracle included God’s new “grand design” for how things should be, with ruler husbands keeping in line their resisting wives. But most interpreters who hold a high view of the Bible think God is saying something horrible has happened to both.In the Piper/Grudem text that is the hallmark of complementarian thinking, Dr. Ray Ortlund says he understands the man’s “rule” as described in Genesis 3:15 not as benevolent, agape-love service but as “ungodly domination.” Whereas the woman and man were made to rule the earth together, the man’s rule is now sinfully directed toward his wife.There is not one strictly egalitarian nor one strictly complementarian “view” of how to interpret this verse. Both camps have scholars who are “all over the map” in terms of interpretation. Some egalitarians think the woman will romantically desire the man (as the word is used in Song of Songs) but that he will instead love his work—or something less relational than her. Some complementarians think the same thing. Many, including apparently the ESV translators, think both husband and wife have a bad thing going after the Fall. Complementarians George and Dora Winston point out that the curse affects marriage, but they warn readers to avoid extrapolating “all women” and “all men” from marriage sections of Genesis.One thing we must make sure we include in the recent discussion is this: Jesus changes everything. The veil that was ripped when he died made the all-male priesthood’s limited access obsolete. Instead he changed the priesthood into a kingdom of priests comprised of male, female, Jew, Gentile, slave and free—in which all who believe are priests. And the Holy Spirit gives us the power as new creatures to live in transformed relationships.The Christian wife, Paul warns in his letter to the Corinthians, “is busy with things of the world, as to how she can please her husband” (1 Cor 7:34). The apostle says the same of the Christian husband toward his wife. And this, Paul says, is a reason to remain single—because singles can live undistracted lives focused on pleasing only the Lord. Can we rightfully say Scripture teaches that wives are contrary to their husbands while also saying it teaches these same women seek to please their husbands? Aren’t the two views mutually exclusive? It would seem the clearest understanding, when taking into account the whole counsel of God, is that the former consequence of a power struggle is mostly overturned through yielding to the Spirit when a person becomes a new creation in Christ.

On Gender and Bible Translation

The following is an excerpt from a speech given by Douglas Moo at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in San Diego last November. Title: We Still Don’t Get It: Evangelicals and Bible Translation Fifty Years after James Barr. Dr. Moo has graciously granted permission to reprint it.Knowing that the decisions we would make about translating biblical gender forms into English would be critical, CBT [Committee on Bible translation for the NIV] commissioned Collins dictionaries to pose some key questions to its database of English—the largest in the world, with over 4.4 billion words, gathered from several English-speaking countries and including both spoken and written English.We CBT members had our own ideas about whether, for instance, “man” was still good English for the human race or whether “he” still carried clear generic significance. But we did not agree on every point; and standard resources gave conflicting opinions. So we asked the Collins computational linguists to query their database on these points and others.The results revealed that the most popular words to describe the human race in modern U.S. English were “humanity,” “man,” and “mankind.” CBT then used this data in the updated NIV, choosing from among these three words (and occasionally others also) depending on the context. We also asked the Collins experts to determine which singular pronouns referring to human beings were most often used in a variety of constructions.Consider, for example, Mark 8:36, which reads in the KJV “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” The Greek, using anthrôpos, clearly refers to a human being without regard to gender. How to say that in modern English? Moving to plural forms is one option, as does the CEB. Shifting to the second person, whose pronouns are not gender specific is another: the NLT goes this route.Another option is to retain the words “man,” “he,” and “his” of the KJV, as do the ESV and HCSB. But do these words continue to function as true generics in modern English? On CBT, we did not think they did. We were pretty sure that “man” no longer had a true generic sense, a conclusion borne out by modern style guides and indirectly attested by other modern translations: the ESV, for instance, replaces hundreds of occurrences of “man” in the RSV with other locutions.But we were uncertain about the pronoun to use as the follow-up. We also wanted to see if there might be some way to retain the third-person singular form of the original. In brief, we needed data about the current state of English pronouns to guide our translation decisions. And so we requested the Collins linguists to search their database to determine what pronouns were being used in modern English to refer back to indefinite pronouns (such as “each,” “one,” and “someone”) and to non-gender specific nouns (such as “person”). They constructed what they call an “anaphora resolution grammar” to resolve the matter. To return to Mark 8:36, then, CBT tentatively decided to render anthrôpos as “someone.”The Collins data revealed that over 90% of English speakers and writers were using plural or neutral pronouns to refer back to “someone”: mainly the pronoun “they.” Based on these data, then, CBT translated Mark 8:36 as “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” Now at this point some of you are hearing the voice of your seventh-grade English teacher, insisting that one cannot use an apparently plural pronoun such as “their” to refer to the singular pronoun “someone.” But here is where we need to invoke again the fundamental linguistic principle of descriptiveness. What determines “correct” English is not some nineteenth or twentieth-century style manual or the English we were taught in grade school, but the English that people are actually speaking and writing today.And the data are very clear: modern English has latched on to the so-called “singular they,” which has been part of English for a long time, as the preferred way to follow up generic nouns and pronouns. *   *   *Dr. Moo refers to the Collins Research Report, and the specifics in that report relating to male pronouns have profound implications for those of us who seek to lose “Christianese” in our speech. We now have solid data that tells us how unique our speech is to our subculture when it comes to male pronouns. Note references below to “Evangelical English”:The committee initiated a relationship with Collins Dictionaries to use the Collins Bank of English, one of the world’s foremost English language research tools, to conduct a major new study of changes in gender language. The Bank of English is a database of more than 4.4 billion words drawn from text publications and spoken-word recordings from all over the world.The study examined gender language in English concentrating on three specific areas of usage over a 20-year period from 1990 to 2009.

1. Generic pronouns and determiners

This part of the study considered the types of pronouns and determiners that are used to refer to indefinite pronouns (such as someone, everybody and one) and non-gender specific nouns (such as a person, each child and any teacher):

• masculine (he, his, himself, etc.);
• feminine (she, her, herself, etc.);
• plural/gender-neutral (they, them, one, themselves, etc.);
• alternative forms (s/he, him or her, his/her, etc.)In all the varieties of English analyzed, plural/neutral pronouns and determiners account for the majority of usages.  Between 1990 and 2009, instances of masculine generic pronouns and determiners, expressed as a percentage of total generic pronoun usage in general written English, fell from 22% to 8%.

In all the varieties of English analyzed, plural/neutral pronouns and determiners account for the majority of usages.  Between 1990 and 2009, instances of masculine generic pronouns and determiners, expressed as a percentage of total generic pronoun usage in general written English, fell from 22% to 8%. e.g. ‘…when a person accepts unconditional responsibility, he denies himself the privilege of “complaining” and “finding faults.”’Instances of ‘alternative’ generic pronouns and determiners fell from 12% to 8%. e.g. ‘Any citizen who wants to educate himself or herself has plenty of sources from which to do so.’Instances of plural/neutral generic pronouns and determiners rose from 65% to 84%. e.g. ‘If you can identify an individual who metabolizes nicotine faster you can treat them more effectively.’Figures for the other corpora analyzed in the study are broadly comparable with figures from the general written English corpus both in overall magnitude and in the general trend over time.

2. Mankind, man and synonyms

This part of the study considered the use of the terms man, mankind, humankind, humanity, humans, human beings, the human race and people when used to refer either to all humans or to smaller subsets of humanity.  In all the corpora analyzed except Evangelical English, when all instances are considered, “people” is by far the most frequent synonym, followed by “humans.” People and humans, however, are much looser synonyms when the focus narrows to references to the human species as a whole. In these instances, man, mankind, humankind, humanity, the human race and human beings are more precise.Of these more precise alternatives, man, humanity and mankind are the most frequent synonyms in the general written English, general spoken English, US written English and US spoken English corpora. Man accounts for between 22.8% and 30.3% of relevant citations, humanity accounts for between 21.8% and 32.7% of relevant citations, and mankind accounts for between 15.9% and 17.8% of relevant citations Humankind, Human beings and the human race are comparatively infrequent.In Evangelical English, “man” is the synonym that occurs most frequently, accounting for more than half of all genuinely collective occurrences. Mankind accounts for 14.2% of genuinely collective occurrences and humanity accounts for 11.3% of genuinely collective occurrences. Humankind, human beings and the human race are, as in the other corpora, relatively infrequent.In all the corpora except Evangelical English, man and mankind have become steadily less frequent (with some fluctuations) over the 20-year course of the study, tapering off to very similar levels in current usage (approximately 3 citations per million words for man, and approximately 2 citations per million words for mankind.)In the Evangelical corpus, the frequency with which all of the synonyms tracked in this part of the study occur is markedly higher than it is in the other corpora, most likely due to the nature of the subject matter addressed in Evangelical books and sermons.When man, mankind and their synonyms occur with follow-on pronouns (e.g. ‘Clinical ecology shows us how to restore the balance between man and his environment’, ‘When the Almighty himself condescends to address mankind in their own language…’), man is almost invariably followed by the pronoun he, humanity is typically followed by the pronoun it, and mankind — on the rare occasions where it is used with a follow-on pronoun — is generally followed by the pronouns it or they.

3. Forefather, ancestor and father

This part of the study considered the use of the terms forefather(s), ancestor(s) and father(s) in the sense ‘a person/people from whom one is descended’ or ‘the founder(s) of a movement/nation etc.’  Frequencies have fluctuated, but it is evident that ancestor is significantly more frequent than forefather in each corpus and each period. The frequency of forefather is higher in Evangelical English than in the other corpora, but still much less frequent than ancestor. 

When "He" Also Means "She"

One night I was reading the Bible to my daughter. As I read an applicational verse from an older translation that began, “The men who…,” I noticed she tuned me out. Knowing the author intended to include both males and females, I re-read the verse to her as “The person who…” She sat up straight up in bed and exclaimed, “Finally! Something to me!”I explained to her, as I had done previously, that “he” or “his” can refer to male and female (which is actually sort of confusing gender-wise), and she insisted, “I know….” Yet despite what she knew, she perceived the author as excluding her.Recently, a godly friend sent me a link to an article to which she attached the curiosity-invoking disclaimer, “I don’t agree whatevs.” Intrigued, I followed the URL and read an article in which a professor at a Christian college outlined what he considered the causes of Bible-believing Christians “embracing . . . the eventual legalization of marriage between people of the same sex.” He gave as one of his reasons the acceptance of “language that its proponents call ‘gender-inclusive’ or ‘gender-accurate,’ but which is really ‘gender-neutral.’”I disagreed with much of his argument. But for now, I will consider only whether such language is, indeed, gender-neutral, as he says.He outlined what he saw as the three-fold strategy to confuse readers:

• “Never use he or him as the gender-inclusive pronoun…
• “Never use the word man or mankind to signify the human race (use instead human, person, humanity, or humankind)…
• “Replace ‘sexist’ words like fireman, policeman, chairman … with gender-neutral ones like firefighter, police officer, chair….”

Each of these, he viewed as bad.So just to reiterate, he basically said that those who want precise, gender-specific language are being “gender-neutral” and embracing practices that lead to the acceptance of same-sex marriage. Does this not seem backwards? Because gender-neutrality is what those following the above three rules of translation are seeking to change.The same author argued that those who want distinctions in Bible translations (which reflect the authors’ intent, I might add) are the same people accepting the watering down of distinctions in marriage. That’s just illogical. And sadly ironic.If he were the only person to argue that making male/female distinctions in biblical translations = a feminist and same-sex marriage agenda, I’d ignore him. But he has plenty of company.Some slap labels on any team that creates a translation in which my daughter can see when the biblical authors intended to include someone like her. Some opponents even try to add credibility to their camp by saying it’s a complementarian vs. egalitarian issue. The author certainly did in his accusation: “Not content with simply silencing the Bible’s complementarian vision of the sexes, such proponents have forced the Bible into the role of linguistic accomplice.”I would argue that such translators have usually done quite the contrary. Most seek to take earlier translators’ work and clarify it in order to reveal the complementary vision of the sexes—the presence and partnership of both male and female when the original authors implied it.Do we believe the Scriptures distinguish between male and female? Absolutely. Does the Bible teach that such distinctions are good? Absolutely. So why would we want to continue confusing today’s readers by describing groups of men and woman as “men”?Those inclined to disagree are quick to slap on a "homosexuality" label—perhaps because nothing seems to silence an evangelical faster than being associated with feminism and the LGBT agenda. But that dynamic is another issue for another time.

The Bible Translated into "Texan"

Want a Bible app that distinguishes between the second-person singular and second-person plural? Thanks to DTS’s executive director of Communications and Educational Technology, John Dyer, you can access the “Texan” version of the Bible (“Y'all are the light of the world"), which comes with the option for additional dialects ("you guys," "yinz," and "you lot”).

As it turns out, in “Texan,” “y’all” appears 2,698 times in the Old Testament and 2,022 times in the New. The plugin or extension can be used only in Google Chrome for popular Bible reading websites such as youversion.com, biblegateway.com and biblewebapp.com (Dyer’s own web site), where readers can use the plugin on any browser without downloading.

In addition to choosing the vernacular, you guys can opt to have verses that include the name of God (commonly appearing as "LORD" in English translations) rendered as "Yahweh."