Featured Gender-Sensitive Bible Translation

The translators of the KJV certainly did an admirable job but more than four hundred years have passed since they first printed their work.

The English language has changed.

Sentence structure has changed
Our vocabulary has evolved: words have been added, discarded, and even changed meanings (a previous post mentioned Psalm 1 using the word "wicked", that word can now mean 'great')
There have been changes in singular and plural words (the singular 'they")
Punctuation has changed
The use of footnotes has changed
​

It is a different language than what we speak today.
Those that use the KJV have, in a way, become bilingual.

Newer translations attempt to transcend the language barrier and speak to a modern person in a way that they understand with better clarity.

Rob

​

 

Sure nuff!

RJPSgs
what are human beings that You have been mindful of them,
mortals that You have taken note of them,
that You have made them little less than divine,
and adorned them with glory and majesty?

COMPARE:

Robert Alter (2019)
"What is man that You should note him,

and the human creature, that you pay him heed,​

and You make him little less that the gods,

with glory and grandeur You crown him?
​

NASB 2020
What is man that You think of him,
And a son of man that You are concerned about him?
Yet You have made him a little lower than God,
And You crown him with glory and majesty!

ESV
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.

AV 1873
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man, that thou visitest him?
For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels,
And hast crowned him with glory and honour.

Rob

 

Yes, one has to be aware that this version comes from a modern Jewish perspective.

Rob

 

My wife and I moved recently and have begun the process of choosing a new place to worship. For the past two weeks we worshiped in the service and attended the Bible class afterwords. After the service we attended a class studying James. As way of introduction to the lesson on James 4, the instructor mentioned that the church had some times where they encountered some disharmony. He mentioned forms of music and differing Bible versions among a few other topics. Regarding Bible versions, the church leadership choose the ESV as the pew Bible, primarily because they did not like the gender-inclusiveness of recent versions.
I had to smile when near the end of the Bible lesson the teacher read the last passage of the NT Bible lesson he was teaching (James 4:11f), the passage included the phrase "men" and then offhandedly he said, that means "men... and women". lol

~~~~~~~~~

I've been reading through Psalm 37 (a chiastic psalm) and noticed that in the Revised JPS - Gender Sensitive Edition has often simply reduced their use of pronouns.

Psalm 37:34–36 (ESV)
Wait for the LORD and keep his way,
and he will exalt you to inherit the land;
you will look on when the wicked are cut off.
I have seen a wicked, ruthless man,
spreading himself like a green laurel tree.
But he passed away, and behold, he was no more;
though I sought him, he could not be found.
Mark the blameless and behold the upright,
for there is a future for the man of peace.

Psalm 37:34-36 RJPS
Look to GOD and keep to the godly way,
and you will be raised high that you may inherit the land;
when the wicked are cut off, you shall see it.
I saw the wicked, powerful,
well-rooted like a robust native tree.
Suddenly they vanished and were gone;
I sought them, but they were not to be found.
Mark the blameless, note the upright,
for there is a future for the person of integrity.​

Rob

 

Proverbs 4:5-9 RJPS - Gender Sensitive
Acquire wisdom, acquire discernment;
Do not forget and do not swerve from my words.
Do not for sake her and she will guard you;
Love her and she will protect you.
The beginning of wisdom is--acquire wisdom;
With all your acquisitions, acquire discernment.
Hug her to you and she will exult you;
She will adorn your head with a graceful wreath;
Crown you with a glorious diadem.​

The impression that a gender sensitive translation removes gender from a passage isn't always correct.

In this passage (and and a vast many others), gender is important because "In Proverbs, wisdom is personified as a woman." (RJPS footnote from Proverbs 1.20).

Much of the book of Proverbs is gender specific -- wisdom given by a father to his son and warnings about forbidden women.
Therefore there are fewer places where the translation differs from previous versions.

Compare translations of Proverbs 27:8

NASB 1971, 1995
Like a bird that wanders from her nest,
So is a man who wanders from his home.​

NASB 2020
Like a bird that wanders from its nest,
So is a person who wanders from his home.

Proverbs 27.8 RJPS (2023)
Like a sparrow wandering from its nest
Is a man who wanders from his home.
​

The bird/sparrow is unnecessarily gendered, whereas the RJPS has included the gender of the man in the second stanza of the passage (probably) because much of Proverbs includes warning to a son about wandering astray.

Rob

 

The fact is Gender-Sensitive translations have been around for quite some time.
Many of the changes have been unnoticed because they occur our spoke language changes.
One of the chief complaints about Gender-Neutral translations is the mechanical replacement of man by other non-gendered words.
Mechanical adjustments simply do not properly translate the text into our modern spoken language.

In Grudem and Poythress' book, "The Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy", in Chapter 12 titled, "Unacceptable Changes That Eliminate References to Men", they list 3 unacceptable changes:

1. Removing references to males in historical passages
2. Removing references to males in parables
3. Removing references to males who are examples of principles

They list quite a few examples from the book of Proverbs (Proverbs 3:12; 5:1; 7:1; 13:1; 28:7).

I thought I'd look particularly at Proverbs 3:12 and 13 since both verses have places where gender changes might be observed.

Proverbs 3:12–13 (AV 1873)
For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; Even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.
Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, And the man that getteth understanding.

Proverbs 3:12–13 (NASB 2020)
For whom the LORD loves He disciplines, Just as a father disciplines the son in whom he delights.
Blessed is a person who finds wisdom, And one who obtains understanding.

Proverbs 3:12–13 (ESV)
for the LORD reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.
Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who gets understanding,

Proverbs 3:12-13 (RJPS)
For whom GOD loves, [God] rebukes, As a father the son whom he favors.
Happy is the one who finds wisdom, The one who attains understanding.​

In Hebrew the word used for "the one" is אָדָם (adam).
The same word is used in Genesis 1 for "mankind" (Genesis 1) and later in Genesis 2 for "the man, Adam".

אָדָם (only abs.; ca. 540 ×):—1. coll. people, a) w. pl.: Je 47:2; but b) mostly w. sg. 1 S 25:1; c) benê ʾādām (38 ×) Dt 8:3, benê hāʾādām Gn 11:5, (single) men; ben-ʾādām single man, esp. in Ez, ϝ bēn 4; d) in cs.-constr.: lēb ʾādām Gn 8:21 &c.; e) appositional: ʾādām beliyyaʿal men that are ruiners = ruinous Pr 6:12; f) w. negation: lōʾ … ʾādām Ps 105:14, ʾādām lōʾ Lv 16:7 no one;—2. single person (late; coll. meaning usually possible): beʾādām (in) someone Lv 22:5;—3. Gn 1–5: 1:26, 31 coll. people, men; coll. also in chh 2f; 5:1b, 2:: 4:25; 5:1a, 3, 5, ϝ III אָדָם.
William Lee Holladay and Ludwig Köhler, A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 4.​

The differences in translation is simply an adjustment to modern language usage.

Rob

 

Ah, the gender-sensitive KJV...

This morning I was reading in Proverbs 7
A chapter devoted to a father's warning to a son about cavorting with "strange women", "adulterous", "the foreigner who flatters" (v.5).

The chapter reminded me of Dostoevsky's book, Crime and Punishment.
It was almost hard to read because the story continued long after you knew how it was going to end.

And I saw among the simple,
Noticed among the youths,
A young man devoid of sense.
He was crossing the street near her corner,
Walking toward her house
In the dusk of evening,
In the dark hours of night.
Pr. 7.7-9 RJPS​

As the chapter ends, the father provides his teaching:

Now, sons, listen to me;
Pay attention to my words;
Let your mind not wander down her ways;
Do not stray onto her paths.
For many are those she has struck dead,
And numerous are her victims.
Pr. 7.24-26 RJPS Gender-Sensitive Edition
​

GOOD ADVISE!

but the KJV translated the passage in a Gender Neutral manner:

Hearken unto me now therefore, O ye children,
And attend to the words of my mouth.
Proverbs 7:24 (AV 1873)​

The KJV is technically not wrong.... but it's not right!

בָ֭נִים [benim]; plural of ben [son]; often correctly translated as children,.
Note Strongs Concordance with the occurrences of how this is often translated in the KJV

1121 בֵּן, בְּנׄו, לַבֵּן [ben /bane/] n m. From 1129; TWOT 254; GK 1201 and 1217 and 4240; 4906 occurrences;
AV translates as “son” 2978 times, “children” 1568 times, ...
James Strong, Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon​

But in this passage, the father's advise is gender specific!

Compare:
And now, O sons, listen to me, (ESV)
Now therefore, my sons, listen to me, (NASB 2020)
So now, my sons, listen to me, (LSB)
Now then, my sons, listen to me; (NIV)
Now, sons, listen to me, (CSB)
So now, sons, listen to me, (NET)
And now, O sons, listen to me, (RSV)
So listen to me, my sons, (NLT)

Rob

 

I value your response. Feel free to disagree. I've been pondering this for the past few weeks.

Perhaps I was exposed to more of it as a health care provider working along the I95 corridor in the northeast.
Our Electronic Medical Records (EMR) were designed without gendered pronouns years ago.
For example, instead of "husband" or "wife", it's "spouse".

When you read any official government sponsored data generally you will find that gendered pronouns are quite limited or even absent.
As I've been studying the issue lately I became aware that over the years even my speech patterns have changed.
I really don't consider it a "woke" form of speech, it's more of an avoidance of unnecessarily gendered speech. I hope my previous posts demonstrated that translators have sporadicly done this in the past.

German, Spanish, French and Hebrew are among the gendered languages. What about Japanese?
What does a translator do when Scripture assigns a gender to a word that is opposite of the gender assigned to it in the native language?
For example, a word meaning one thing in German [bridge] is feminine; the same word meaning "bridge" in Spanish is masculine.

English is relatively un-gendered. There are some, particularly the familial nouns (husband, wife, man, woman, uncle, aunt, etc.) Then there are some odd ones like ships, king, queen, cow, bull, gelding, wizard, witch, etc. Most English words are unburdened by gender association. (I'll get into an important biblical gendered English noun some time in a later post, [that being "Lord"].)

The question is: Are the gendered pronouns something that is inherent in God's message or is the gendering simply an accommodation by God to the people he delivered his message to?

As I read through the RJPS, I'm seeing that quite a few of the gendered biblical words appear to be an accommodation - nothing is gained or lost by translating without the gender.
Does the RJPS get it right all the time? Well not exactly but it is a big step towards a gender-sensitive translation. The translation relies upon abundant footnotes to indicate where most of these changes occur.

One of the advantages that the translators of the RJPS had over Christian translators is that they only had to deal with a single language and people. Once a cultural shift occurred (Greek, Roman and Middle-Eastern culture co-mingling) the project would become exponentially more difficult.

Rob

 

Complicated indeed:

“Linguistics has a way of taking simple ideas and making them complicated.”

John W. Hilber, Old Testament Cosmology and Divine Accommodation: A Relevance Theory Approach (2020)​

 

REGARDING THE TRANSLATION OF YHWH AS LORD
Snippets from the preface of the Revised Jewish Publication Society - Gender Sensitive Edition (2023)

...when the epithet Lord is used in place of the divine name, it implicitly treats God’s persona as male, compared to a baseline non-gendered synonym such as Sovereign. ...

The Treatment of References to Israel’s God
The God-language in this edition presupposes that most readers will identify its main protagonist with the non-gendered God that is the norm in much of present-day religious Judaism. It also respects the fact that the Hebrew text does not allow us to determine exactly what ancient communities themselves believed about the gender of God’s persona. Indeed, whether the Bible’s language is intended to depict a Deity whose persona is beyond gender categories is a matter of longstanding debate in academic circles. Such indeterminacy is best preserved via a gender-neutral presentation, for it allows either a nongendered or gendered reading.
In order to refer to God as a persona in a manner that does not ascribe manly gender, the present edition’s translation team carefully considered a variety of options before undertaking adaptations in three areas: third-person references, the divine name, and metaphors used as epithets. ...

The Divine Name. As noted above, NJPS generally translated God’s ineffable four-letter name, the tetragrammaton, as “the LORD” (using small capital letters). To avoid the male connotations of that rendering, the translators weighed various approaches, ...
...this edition adopts an approach rooted in NJPS itself by representing the divine name with the word “God” in small capitals: GOD. Maintaining the typographic treatment that NJPS used for rendering God’s name as “the LORD,” this approach addresses the following three issues that the editorial team deemed to be crucial.

1. Accessibility. The term GOD is immediately recognizable as a reference to the Deity and readily pronounceable by English-speakers. Since one goal of JPS Tanakh translations is to open up the biblical text to readers and communities from a wide range of backgrounds, the translators chose an accessible, familiar, and easy-to-pronounce term.

2. Clarity. Upon reading the text and seeing the small capitals, readers will know that the original Hebrew is God’s name, rather than some other label.

3. Authenticity. The term GOD provides access to the ancient experience of the divine name primarily as a name (rather than as a description or a theological claim). In the Hebrew, this name is distinct from, but exists alongside of, other ways of referring to the Deity. Using two versions of the same word (GOD and God) for this name and for certain other Hebrew terms underscores that the Deity is being invoked in all of these cases, while (as noted above) enabling readers to know which type of expression appears in the biblical text.
​

While representing the tetragrammaton as “God” works well in most cases, there are instances where it would produce confusion, especially if the translation were read aloud. Particularly in passages where God’s name is followed by the term ’elohim with a possessive pronoun, the result would be awkward: a sequence previously rendered as “the LORD your God” would become “GOD your God.” In such cases, the present edition employs a substitute for the tetragrammaton coined in the 1780s by the German-Jewish philosopher and translator Moses Mendelssohn: “the ETERNAL” (in his German: der Ewige). Such substitutions yield more felicitous-sounding phrases. ...​