Five or ten years ago, I never would have imagined some of the ways our culture has changed, more accurately, declined. The acceptance by our society of sexual orientation is something we could see coming for some time, but the world of gender identity is shockingly sad. Interestingly, gender has been an issue in translation for quite some time. Fortunately, it is not an issue of orientation or identity. The gender issue in translation is how to translate masculine terms, which are being used for both male and female persons. An easy example is the Hebrew word adam and the Greek word anthropos. These both mean “man” or “men.” Both these words can be used for a male person or for male and female persons. The traditional translations in English, since the fifteen hundreds, have been “man” or “men.” Most modern translation usually translates it now—when not clearly speaking of male persons—as “person,” “one,” “people,” or “humans.” If it were all that easy, there would not be an issue. It does get more contested from here.
All translations desire—and claim—to be an accurate rendering of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek text. Included in the notion of accuracy is the issue of the correct use of gender. In English, the male pronouns “he, him, and his” refer to a male person, but they also refer to a person of either gender, such as in “the doctor will talk to his patient, Ralph; he has a serious condition. Let’s look at the second pronoun first: “he.” The antecedent of “he” is Ralph, therefore “he” points to a male, here the gender is clear. But the first pronoun is not so clear. The antecedent of “his” is “doctor.” But this is not to say that the doctor is male. In this limited context, we do not know the gender of the doctor. We use “he, him or his” since there are no neutral personal pronouns in English. We use these rather than the more cumbersome “he or she,” “him or her,” and “his or hers.”
Attempts have been made to solve the issue of using masculine pronouns in generic situations. “He or she,” “him or her,” and “his or hers” were tried for a short time but failed to gain support as it was tiresome to read and lacked style. Some tried to create new third-person generic pronouns such as “xe/xem” or “ze/zim,”; but as of yet, these have not gained significant popularity. There are even times one would see “she” used as a generic rather than “he.” Again, it did not catch on. Personally, I would be fine with a new set of pronouns to clarify our language. Clarity is always better. Even the “she” didn’t bother me as I was able to do what we have always done with “he” and get the meaning from context.
What we have in use today are four main options for dealing with the issue of a third person singular pronoun used for an antecedent which is clearly not limited to a male person. First, is to use the generic male singular third person pronouns “he, him, and his” and assume the reader is able to understand gender from the antecedent and context as we have been able to do for centuries. The lack of a neutral third-person pronoun is not an issue in English alone. It is also true in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and most other languages. Like English, they used their third-person singular pronouns for centuries without it being an issue.
The second option is to keep the pronoun a third person while changing the number from singular to plural thereby using “they, them, or their.” To facilitate this change, some are now calling this use “non-plural” pronouns. The question is, have we replaced the confusion over gender for confusion over number? The use of a third-person plural pronoun to replace a singular pronoun makes it sound like there are multiple persons involved. When done extensively, there is a danger of leading readers of the Bible to not see a personal, one-on-one relationship with God. Take John 14:23 “Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.“ (emphasis added). What happens to our understanding when third-person singular pronouns are changed to plural? The impression given is the Church or some group who is loved by God and in communion with Him rather than the individual.
One side note on the second option. While I do not think we are there yet, considering our gender identity issues of the day, will we get to the point where some will read “them and they” as references to non-gender persons or non-binary persons? Are we seeking to solve a perceived problem to create more problems in the future?
The third and fourth are similar to each other in that instead of replacing number, they replace person and at times number also. The third option would use first person pronouns “I, me, or mine/my.” Sometimes the plural first person pronoun “we, us, or ours” is used. This adds both the person and number confusion to the mix. The fourth option used the second person pronoun “you, your, or yours.” Since in English there is no difference between the second singular and the plural, we again have confusion of both number and person.
The goal of accuracy in gender translation is to express the correct gender of the original. If the original text has a word that is ambiguous in reference to gender, then—as in all things—context is king. When the intent in the text is not to be limited to just a male person(s), terms such as “one,” “person” or “human” should be used.
The gender concern goes beyond the use of pronouns or “man/men.” Questions arise over words like “father/fathers” when used to point to ancestors rather than a male parent. But this is not always easy as the passage may indeed be referencing only male ancestors. “Brother/brothers” also is an issue when referring to both sexes as it often does. No one seems to care for the use of “siblings” and “brothers and sisters” is inelegant, especially when repeatedly used in a passage.
Even words such as “fishermen,” “workman,” “craftsmen” or even “men of war” are rejected as too restrictive or anti-female. The last term is a bit silly. For example, I Sam 18:5 tells us that Saul set David over the men of war. The Hebrew word used here, ish, is not the more general word for men (adam), which many times refers to male and female individuals, but a more restrictive term usually limited to male persons. Yet, some translations will use “soldiers” (CSB, NCV) or “army” (NIV2011). What makes this move to a more inclusive term unexpected and unnecessary is that in the eleventh century BC there were no female fighters. Even if one were to find a story or an account of a woman who did fight, it would be so unusual as to make it bizarre to use “men and women of war.” Surprisingly, the NLT—which tends to be more gender-neutral—kept “men of war.”
There are a number of approaches translators have taken in dealing with the gender accuracy issue. While definitions are not universally accepted, the following do have general agreement. It should also be noted most translations will generally fit one of the terms below, but they will have passages that are inconsistent with its main approach.
Non-Gender: These translations are not concerned with the gender issue. While they may have made a more gender “accurate” choice at times, this was a translation choice, not a gender-centric decision. These translations will leave terms such as “men” when male people are clearly not the only ones being referenced. An example would be Rom 3:28, “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law” (emphasis added). The KJV, HSCB, and the NASB1995 retained “man” even though this is clearly a reference to all people, not only male persons. Most modern translations will have “one” or “person.” The updates to the HCSB—the CSB—and to the NASU—NASB2020—both changed to “person.” Yet it should be noted that the non-gender KJV will usually use “children of Israel” rather than the more strictly literal “sons of Israel.”
Gender-Accurate: These translations seek to render male terms (he, his, him, man, son, father) when used with a generic meaning (speaking of both men and women) with the appropriate English term as the context clearly calls for without affecting other elements of the translation such as number (single to plural) or person (3rd person to 2nd or 1st person). Thus, when Anthropoi (men, people, humans) is used, and the context clearly points to both men and women, then a more general term such as “people” is used, but when it is unclear or is most likely speaking of only male persons, then “men” is used. This emphasis will clarify meaning, not change it. “Father” may be rendered as “ancestor” or “son” as “child.” Even though God does not have gender, these translations would never use anything but a male pronoun or other terms for Him or the other members of the Trinity.
Gender-Neutral: These translations are similar to the “Gender-Accurate” but go further seeking to remove ambiguity in gender by removing references to male terms even if it requires changes to person or number. Thus, “he” becomes “they,” “you” or even “we.” These changes can affect the meaning of a passage. The abundance of use can see the relationship of God as being with a group (the nation of Israel or the Church) rather than a personal one-on-one connection. “A computer analysis can show us the extent of other word changes, at least for the NRSV. The word “father” (including the plural and possessive forms) occurs 601 fewer times in the NRSV than in the RSV. The word “son” occurs 181 fewer times (including the loss of “son of man” 106 times in the Old Testament). The word “brother” occurs 71 fewer times. Coupled with the loss of “he, him, his” (3,408 times where it is dropped or changed to “you” or “we” or “they”), and the loss of “man” (over 300 times where it is changed to “human” or “mortal, mortals”), this drive for gender-neutral language has resulted in unnecessary introductions of inaccuracy in over 4,500 places in the Bible.” 1 Some of these translations have a goal of removing most male terms where possible, such as the stated purpose of the NRSV.
Gender-Inclusive: These few translations seek to eliminate all references to male gender terms, even when a male is referred to. Even in the case of God. “God the Father” becomes “God the Parent.” Jesus is not the “Son of God” but “the Child of God.” These would be translations such as The Inclusive New Testament by the Priest for Equality or Good as New: A Radical Retelling of the Scriptures by John Henson. Even the NIV: Inclusive Language Edition (produced for the British) does not go so far as to fit into this group.
To be clear: there is NOTHING in the Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic that requires these changes to the English translation to make the Bible clear and accurate. This is not a scholarly issue. Translations that hold to the gender-inclusive philosophy are driven by political correctness and social agendas. This is a social movement dictating translation for ulterior motives.
Unfortunately, we have covered this issue of gender translation in an all too brief a manner. It would have taken many posts to do the subject justice. I would encourage you to read the Colorado Springs Guidelines for Translation of Gender-Related Language in Scripture. One subtopics we will cover under our main topic, Translations will be Translation Evaluation. In this series, we will have a number of posts on each translation evaluating the methods, style, and philosophy used, including how they deal with gender. In these evaluations, we will give more details on the issue along with examples. The hope is this post has been a helpful introduction to the issue.
Until the next time we see you here at CultivatingFaith.org, God Bless! #CultivatingFaithOrg