"Gender Accurate?" Oh, Please.
This from the TNIV site:
Let's be honest. The issue here has nothing to do with making the text "understandable," as if the 18-34-year-olds in Zondervan's target market are so stupid that they cannot comprehend that "man" can have both an individual and a collective sense. This debate is political and cultural. It happens that our cuture is in rebellion against God and has decided to reject the idea of male headship. And so in the last 40 years we have seen a clear and purposed determination to deny the historical fact that Hebrew, Greek, English, and lots of other languages have always used "man" in both an individual and a collective sense. But that is offensive to one of the characteristic sinful dispositions of our age. And that's why the publishers who are in the market to make money have made the business decision to change the words God gave us into words that don't bother us.
Here is my larger, stranger point: Bible language ought to train our language. Here my philosophy of translation is at sharp odds with the likes of TNIV and NRSV. In a simple case like "what is man", English needs to be discipled by Bible and submit to God's way of talking and thinking. We need to submit to the fact that "what is man" is a proper way to express the thought "what are mortals" every bit as much as it is a proper way to express the thought "what is that singular male human." If we *don't* let English be schooled by Bible, then in this case especially, we damage our ability to think in categories of representative headship, and that strikes at the heart of God's reality.
Q: Is the TNIV gender neutral?Well, here the front office is fudging the facts. Their claim that their "gender accurate" choices reflect a more precise rending of the Greek and Hebrew words is embarassingly thin. It's a tesimony to how fogged our thinking has become that we have these sober Christians sitting around a table somewhere and telling one another with unblinking sincerity that "what are mortals" is truly a more precise rendering than "what is man" of the simple Hebrew "Ma-Anosh" in Psalm 8:4. Any first-year Hebrew student can tell you that "Anosh" is a singular masculine noun that means "man," either as an individual or in a collective sense. What's especially instructive in this case is that we have the testimony of Hebrews 2 that God meant both the individual and collective senses in Psalm 8:4. If the TNIV translators were really concerned with the "meaning of the text" as they claim, then why in Psalm 8:4, where we *know* the meaning of the text needs to be "man" and not "humanity," do they avoid the obvious?
A: The TNIV is not gender neutral; it is in fact “gender accurate.” Gender neutrality suggests the removal of specific male or female attributes. The TNIV does not remove these attributes or “neuter” any passages of Scripture. The TNIV uses generic language only where the meaning of the text was intended to include both men and women. These changes reflect a more precise rendering of Greek and Hebrew words.
Let's be honest. The issue here has nothing to do with making the text "understandable," as if the 18-34-year-olds in Zondervan's target market are so stupid that they cannot comprehend that "man" can have both an individual and a collective sense. This debate is political and cultural. It happens that our cuture is in rebellion against God and has decided to reject the idea of male headship. And so in the last 40 years we have seen a clear and purposed determination to deny the historical fact that Hebrew, Greek, English, and lots of other languages have always used "man" in both an individual and a collective sense. But that is offensive to one of the characteristic sinful dispositions of our age. And that's why the publishers who are in the market to make money have made the business decision to change the words God gave us into words that don't bother us.
Here is my larger, stranger point: Bible language ought to train our language. Here my philosophy of translation is at sharp odds with the likes of TNIV and NRSV. In a simple case like "what is man", English needs to be discipled by Bible and submit to God's way of talking and thinking. We need to submit to the fact that "what is man" is a proper way to express the thought "what are mortals" every bit as much as it is a proper way to express the thought "what is that singular male human." If we *don't* let English be schooled by Bible, then in this case especially, we damage our ability to think in categories of representative headship, and that strikes at the heart of God's reality.
Labels: Bible, translation
posted by The Presbyteer | Monday, October 09, 2006
5 Comments:
Respectfully, Presbyteer, I would disagree with your conclusion that "Bible language should train our language." From a merely practical standpoint, I would have to ask, which Bible and from which era?
The English language where it stands today or in 1950 or in 1611 is never inerrant--only the Word of God is in the original manuscripts. The role of any Bible translator, regardless of whether the translation is in English, French, Spanish or Swahili, is to translate the biblical message in a way that best communicates God's message to the receptor culture and language.
The use of "man" in English for all of humanity is not more sacred than any other word. And the reality is that our language is changing. Let me share an example with you.
I do have one main reason for finding value in the use of a "gender-accurate" translation and it came from my five years experience teaching high school students. From 2000 to 2005 I served as chaplain and Bible teacher at a private Christian prep school. Three, maybe four years ago, I was teaching a sophomore class (15-year-olds) an Old Testament survey. While studying creation, one day we read Genesis 1:27, probably in the NIV.
"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." [The TNIV incidentally reads "So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."]
A female student in the back of the class raised her hand and made the comment, "Mr. Mansfield, I didn't know women were made in God's image!" I stared at her incredulously.
"What?" I asked.
"I didn't know that women were made in God's image until I saw the second half of this verse. All I've ever heard is that 'MAN is made in God's image.'"
I still couldn't believe what I was hearing. Was she kidding or serious? Was she just not the sharpest tack in the box? So I asked the rest of the class, "How many of you thought only men were made in God's image?" At least a third of the class (of probably around 24 or so students) raised their hands, and most of them were young ladies.
You should also know regarding this school that in general, these were very smart kids. They always ranked in the top five schools of the county in regard to their test scores, including the public schools. I was amazed that these sharp kids wouldn't realize that when they heard "Man is made in God's image" that it referred to both males and females. Unfortunately, our language has changed. We can't take for granted anymore that everyone--especially those in younger generations--understands masculine universals. Can you imagine what it did to these young ladies' concept of self to think that their male peers were made in God's image, but they were not? Such misunderstandings are extremely disturbing to me.
And that's the issue--this is a misunderstanding based on language. We already have the task of bridging God's Word across language and culture. My greatest concern is that we can communicate the Bible clearly and effectively. It doesn't matter if personally I would tend to be a bit conservative in my use of language. It doesn't matter if my preference in Bibles is a formal equivalent version. What's important is that my audience with whom I'm trying to teach God's Word doesn't have any extra impediment to their hearing the Gospel message. They need to hear it clearly and effectively in language, words, and terms that they understand.
I teach writing and grammar at the college level. The English language, like any living language, is fluid and always changing. I don't think we can take any translation, whether that be the KJV or the NASB or even the NIV and say to our culture, "Wait, you must progress no further than the words found in this book." That just want happen. But any good translator, like any good missionary knows how to take the timeless truths of the Bible and communicate them in a way that an audience can understand.
You seem to think that I have some particular English version in mind; I don't. Language changes. Of course. But I'm not persuaded at all that people today are so stupid today that they can't be taught that "man", as God uses it, is both individual and collective.
The problem is glaring in Psalm 8: "mortals" is a much narrower word than "man", and "human beings" or "human kind" likewise fails completely to say what "son of man" says. Hebrews 2 should make that obvious to anyone.
So to my eye, claims of "improved accuracy" are transparently ridiculous.
And I'm not surprised that your students never understood that "man" included "male and female." That's why we have teachers. The church's job is to train people to think God's thoughts after him. In every culture, the starting place and the challenges are different. But the the solution is not to change God's words.
I allow it's very difficult, and some cases are much harder than others. But the translator must handle the word of God with fear and trembling, not daring to say either more or less than the word he is given to translate. And in Psalm 8, who can pretend that "mortals" doesn't say a whole lot less than "man."
Presbyteer, have you read the response to this from the IBS?
"Critics of the TNIV allege that to render 'enosh as "mere mortals" and ben 'adam as "human beings" in v. 4 (1) obscures "the sense of the unity of the human race," (2) removes "masculine meaning," and (3) removes "the title 'son of man,' which Jesus often used of Himself."
The first allegation is without any warrant. 'Enosh and ben 'adam are both generic singulars and as generics have no direct bearing on the "unity" of the human race—that's not the function of generics, whether the singular generic or the plural generic
The second allegation is addressed in the comments on Gen. 1:26-27).
As for the third allegation. It is clear that Psalm 8 is not speaking about one particular "man" but about humanity in general, about humanity's place in the scheme of things, in the order of creation. When the psalmist asks "What is 'enosh? [traditionally rendered "What is man?"], he uses a generic word for humanity that hints at human frailty. When he follows this in a conventional poetic parallel construction with ben 'adam [traditionally "son of man"], he employs a conventional Hebrew generic phrase for human being(s)/humanity/humankind that serves here as a close synonym of 'enosh. One should compare Ps. 144:3, where the psalmist also speaks of humanity generically. There the psalmist begins by asking "What is 'adam?" and follows that in poetic parallel with "son of 'enosh," again intending these to be virtual synonyms. And there is also Job 17:17, where the author presents Job asking "What is 'enosh?" and raising the same question with reference to human beings in general as the author of Psalm 8 (but in a different context). See also Job 25:6, where one finds 'enosh and ben 'adam in similar synonymous parallelism and similarly referring to generic humanity.
When the author of Ps. 8 speaks of "the son of 'adam" [traditionally "son of man"], he does not use it as a title; it is purely a conventional generic reference to human beings. When Jesus took to himself the title "Son of Man," he attached his identity to the one spoken of in Dan. 7:13, not to the phrase "son of 'adam / 'enosh" as it occurs in Psalm 8 and many times elsewhere (for example, Ps. 144:3; Job 25:6; Dan. 8:17; and often in Ezekiel).
Nevertheless, the author of Hebrews does establish a link between Psalm 8 and Jesus. He declares the wondrous truth that in Jesus what Psalm 8 affirms about humanity's royal status in God's creation is coming to complete realization in and through the incarnate and glorified Jesus."
the counter claim comes:
"When the author of Ps. 8 speaks of "the son of 'adam" [traditionally "son of man"], he does not use it as a title; it is
purely a conventional generic reference to human beings. When Jesus took to himself the title "Son of Man," he attached his identity to the one spoken of in Dan. 7:13, not to the phrase "son of 'adam / 'enosh"
as it occurs in Psalm 8 and many times elsewhere (for example, Ps.
144:3; Job 25:6; Dan. 8:17; and often in Ezekiel)."
Well, these claims are are in no way beyond dispute. (How do you *know* that Jesus took "son of man" only from Daniel, etc.). It is disturbing that the bible translator are taking it upon themselves to make such preemptive judgments. These issues belong in commentaries and sermons, not translations.
Keith, I was so glad to stumble onto your blog recently.
r. mansfield--
you said, "The English language...is fluid and always changing." I agree with you. That is why most of the contemporary translations, ESV, NASB, NIV, are usually preferable to the KJV. But I would still argue that the TNIV, and other translations of that ilk, are faulty.
The job of a translator is to transmit the source language into the receptor language. While a translator cannot eliminate interpretation from the job, it should be limited. The way to do that is to leave as many options open to the reader of the receptor language as the reader of the source language had.
So, to use the example from Genesis 1, we cannot definitively say that readers of the original Hebrew text would have read "God created human beings in his own image..." In fact, that reading is highly unlikely. We can be confident, however, that from the context of the text that follows they would have understood that when Moses wrote "God created man..." he meant for "man" to be representative of human beings (male and female) as a group. That is the same conclusion that any intelligent reader of the English translation "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female He created them" would also make. The context guides the understanding of the reader, but only the text should guide the work of the translator.
On a technical note, I don't see how it can possibly be justifiable to translate singular nouns, pronouns, and verbs as plurals, which the gender-consious folks regularly have to do to in order to maintain their agenda. Not only is this sloppy grammatically and stylistically (which you as a teacher of writing and grammar must admit), but it wreaks havoc with much of the biblical symbolism that is consistently maintained throughout Scripture. It's common for people using spoken English to say something like, "In order for someone to be president, they have to be 35 years old." The pronoun "they" is used in order to avoid using "he", which would agree with its antecedent in number and therefore be grammatically preferable.
In his last comment, the Presbyteer made a point that I was going to make. The jobs of interpretation, explication, and application are for commentators and preachers--primarily preachers. If your students didn't have an understanding that both men and women were created in God's image, I don't just blame big, bad culture. I blame preachers who fail to preach the whole Bible and all its implications. It is of course sad if young women have a faulty view of themselves. But it's not the Bible's fault, for the Bible clearly teaches the value of women as creatures made in God's image, even without the help of politically sensitive translators.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home