Shame, Philomela, you unbiblical liberal bird

"When we say 'built on common ground,' we mean that the Common English Bible is the result of collaboration between opposites: scholars working with average readers; conservatives working with liberals; teens working with retirees; men working with women; many denominations and many ethnicities coming together around the common goal of creating a vibrant and clear translation for 21st century readers, with the ultimate objective of mutually accomplishing God's overall work in the world."
-- Paul Franklyn, PhD, associate publisher for the Common English Bible

"All these are unpersuasive for the reasons given.  Yet Gorgias' exclamation to the swallow when she flew down and let go her droppings on him is in the best tragic manner:  he said, 'Shame on you, Philomela'; for if a bird did it there was no shame, but [it would have been] shameful for a maiden.  He thus rebuked the bird well by calling it what it once had been rather than what it now was."
-- Aristotle

If you know the story of Philomela in Greek mythology, then you know how she was raped and how her rapist cut her tongue out because she yelled out exclamations of protest and how tragically in the end the gods translated her into a swallow.  If you know the Greek language of Aristotle here in his Rhetoric (Bekker page 1406b line 18), then you know how he's calling Philomela a παρθενον /parthenon/ but how he's praising Gorgias for calling her a bird, or rather for calling this swallow a shameful Philomela, because she's pooped on him.  That's right. Aristotle himself is saying that Philomela is still a "parthenon" who [read between the lines here] pooped on the man who desired her ['Shame on you, Philomela, because you did this to a man before you were a bird and while you were still a virgin, conservatively speaking, before he transformed you into something else, you maiden.  How inappropriate of you.  How shameful of you'].  Yes, this can be subtle stuff.  And in our status quo world, so conservative and so man first, we should not read too much into these things.  And if you do, then shame on you for your protests.

If you know how male English translators care about this word, parthenon, especially when it's sacred, then you know that "conservatives" translate it "virgin" while their opposites, the "liberals," translate it "maiden."  If you pay attention to how the man Paul Franklyn divides the world, then you see his polar opposite binaries as follows:

"scholars" / "average readers"
"conservatives" / "liberals"
"teens" / "retirees"
"men" / "women"
"denominations" / "ethnicities"

Opposites, in this way of thinking, are distinct even if there can be something in common between them, some common ground below them.

"a bird pooping" / "a maiden dropping protests of No! No! No! No!"

In these binaries, very subtly, not all is equal between the opposites.  Notice, if you will, how the men ordering the opposites put the better one on the left of / the lesser one. 

"men" / "women"
"denominations" / "ethnicities"
"virgin as translation of παρθενος" / "maiden or young lady or young woman or (unmarried) girl as translation of παρθενος"

Now listen to the language, the ordering of pairs, from BBB blogger Wayne Leman in his recent post on the question of whether Franklyn's Common English Bible translation is "liberal" or not.  Leman is attempting to deconstruct the "conservative" / "liberal" binary.  Ironically, however, he re-constructs his own binary, with "liberal" as the still-botched category:

"Some conservatives consider translation of Hebrew almah in this verse [i.e., Isaiah 7:14] as 'young woman' instead of 'virgin' to be liberal. But is it, or does it actually reflect accurate biblical scholarship?"

"What you think might be a liberal translation of some verse may be shown to be an accurate translation, especially when you find other verses in the translation which continue to support whatever is your own theological viewpoint."

Did you see it?  Here it is:

"accurate biblical scholarship" / "liberal"

"an accurate translation" / "a liberal translation"

Of course, Leman is arguing that "young woman" (as the best English for "almah" in Isaiah 7:14) is an actual reflection of biblical scholarship that is accurate.  In opposition to that, for Leman, is the very same translation that is motivated by what would be liberal.

Commenter Joel Hoffman says something similar, quoting and with some nuance correcting Leman:

"I think everyone agrees that changing 'virgin' to 'young woman' for alma in Isaiah 7:14 is 'accurate biblical scholarship,' but the decision to prefer that scholarship over tradition is liberal."

Here, as a variation, Hoffman's binary pits what is good against what is (not "liberal" exactly but what is, rather, instead) botched "tradition":

"accurate biblical scholarship" / "tradition"

The point for both Leman and Hoffman is that which opposes "accurate biblical scholarship" is botched, is lesser, is "in-accurate" and "un-biblical" and "not scholarly."

The binary (i.e., that "either / or" division) is what allows men who know things to know them op-positionally.  And what comes first (i.e., on the left side of the pair in a left-to-right listing) is determined, actually pre-determined by them, to be naturally what's best.

---

So let's now look at how this works out in Bible translation.   Franklyn lists these binaries as opposites that must find common ground for his Common English Bible translation:

"men" / "women"
"denominations" / "ethnicities" 

When you look at the CEB team of translators (i.e., individuals on either side of his oppositions), what's interesting is how somebody like Adele Berlin on the team can neither be one of the men nor is actually able to be person of a Christian denomination.  Must Berlin, a woman, be the opposite of the men?  Is she, as not a member of a denomination, a person of some specific marked ethnicity?  Which one?  Is this a Christian / Jewish binary?

It's no secret that the problem in Bible translation with the words almah (עלמה) and pathenos (παρθενος) is the problem over whether the girl Mary (the mother of Jesus) was a virgin, or not, when these words are used.

How this seems to mirror Gorgias' and Aristotle's own tragic problem of whether Philomela is an ὄρνιθι /ornithi/ or a παρθένος /parthenos/.  One is appropriate and not shameful; the other is inappropriate, and shameful.


The Hebrew alma is in Isaiah 7:14.  So is the Greek pathenos in the earliest translation of Isaiah 7:14.  Whoever the maiden is that this scripture and that these words refer to might have been a virgin.  And the "young woman," as the common denominator CEB translation team has translated the Hebrew, might she be the prophesied Mary, the mother of Immanuel as Jesus, or not? 

The binary way of knowing the answer will not tolerate ambiguity.  Either she is, or not.  Either this is accurate, or not.  Either it is respectable, or it's shameful.

When we get to the New Testament, then we leave the Hebrew and have only the Greek.  Moreover, both in the gospel of Matthew and in the gospel of Luke, we have the story of the pregnant Mary not being "known" or "impregnated" by her man, her fiancé, her husband, Joseph.  In both stories, she is a virgin with child by the Holy Spirit.  So now, in these contexts, is the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) any less ambiguous than the Hebrew almah (עלמה) and its Greek translation the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) in Isaiah 7:14?  Do the stories of the virgin Mary require the Greek word to be translated unambiguously in Matthew 1:23 and in Luke 1:27?

Is one translation accurate, biblical, scholarly, respectable, and the other not?

I'll let you answer.  And to help, it may be interesting to see how various translators have translated the words:

the Hebrew almah (עלמה) as "young woman" in Isaiah 7:14 - JPS, JPCT, RSV, NET, NEB, NABRE 2011, NAB 2011, The Inclusive Bible

the Hebrew almah (עלמה) as "the young woman is with child" and "a young woman who is pregnant" and "A girl who is presently a virgin" and "a young woman is now with child" and "young woman is pregnant" in Isaiah 7:14 - NRSV and Good News Translation and The Message and The Bible in Basic English and the Common English Bible

the Hebrew almah (עלמה) as "virgin" in Isaiah 7:14 - pretty much all the other translations

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "virgin" in LXX Isaiah 7:14 - Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton, NETS by Moisés Silva

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "maiden" in Matthew 1:23 - Weymouth, Richmond Lattimore

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "the unmarried girl" in Matthew 1:23 - Ann Nyland

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "young woman" in Matthew 1:23 - Willis Barnstone

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "virgin" in Matthew 1:23 - pretty much all the other translations

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "young woman" in Luke 1:27 - The Inclusive Bible

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "the unmarried girl" in Luke 1:27 - Ann Nyland

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "virgin" in Luke 1:27 - pretty much all the other translations

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "girl" in Aristotle's Rhetoric - W. Rhys Roberts

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "young lady" in Aristotle's Rhetoric - J. H. Freese

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "maiden" in Aristotle's Rhetoric - George A. Kennedy

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "virgin" in Aristotle's Rhetoric - anon, 1683

Is one translation accurate, biblical, scholarly, respectable, and the other not?

Jesus: "The Help" and the "Helpmeet"

INTRO

In this post, I'm just going to follow the logic of the "biblically" sexist doctrine of men such as Denny Burk, Wayne Grudem, and Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr. to conclude that Jesus is functionally equal with an African American maid for whites and that Jesus is, likewise, functionally equal with a wife who must help her husband while following her husband's leadership.

HOMEWORK

Here's a little homework you may want to do first, before you read my blogpost.  Read Kathryn Stockett's The Help (or go see the film based on her book); and read Suzanne McCarthy's brilliant and important post, "The Help"; and read Genesis chapters 1, 2, and 3 in the Hebrew; and read the book of Hebrews in the Greek.  If you really want to go crazy with preliminary research, then also read Autumn Sandeen's essay that might have you asking what sign Jesus surely had to follow before drinking water in public or when entering the public bathrooms.

Maybe read how Jesus spoke about sex (but do know that you may have to read the Bible some here then).

All done?  Okay.  Here we go.

REVIEW

Let's review the logic of the "biblically" sexist doctrine:

Helping speaks to difference. The text says that God created her to be a “helper”–a role that involves aiding and supporting the leadership of her husband. God did not assign this role to the man. He assigned it only to the woman. Thus before there is any sin in the world, God creates man and woman to be equal with respect to their humanity (being created in the image of God) but to be different with respect to their roles. The woman is to be the helper.
-- Denny Burk, in a blogpost

Whenever someone helps someone else the person who is helping is occupying a subordinate or inferior position with regard to the person being helped.
-- Wayne Grudem, in a book of systematic theology introducing "biblical" doctrine

The paradox is this: God created male and female in His image equally, but He also made the male the head and the female the helper....

What will now emerge clearly from Genesis 2 is that male-female equality does not constitute an undifferentiated sameness. Male and female are equal as God’s image-bearers. They are spiritually equal, which is quite sufficient a basis for mutual respect between the sexes. But the very fact that God created human beings in the dual modality of male and female cautions us against an unqualified equation of the two sexes. This profound and beautiful distinction, which some belittle “as a matter of mere anatomy,” is not a biological triviality or accident. It is God who wants men to be men and women to be women; and He can teach us the meaning of each, if we want to be taught. We ourselves can feel intuitively the importance of distinct sexual identity when we see, for example, a transvestite. A man trying to be a woman repulses us, and rightly so. We know that this is perverse. Sexual confusion is a significant, not a slight, personal problem, because our distinct sexual identity defines who we are and why we are here and how God calls us to serve Him....

On the other side of the paradox, the woman is the man’s helper. The man was not created to help the woman, but the reverse. Doesn’t this striking fact suggest that manhood and womanhood are distinct and non-reversible? Doesn’t this make sense if we allow that, while the man and the woman are to love each other as equals, they are not to love each other in the same way? The man is to love his wife by accepting the primary responsibility for making their partnership a platform displaying God’s glory, and the woman is to love her husband by supporting him in that godly undertaking.

So, was Eve Adam’s equal? Yes and no. She was his spiritual equal and, unlike the animals, “suitable for him.” But she was not his equal in that she was his helper. God did not create man and woman in an undifferentiated way, and their mere maleness and femaleness identify their respective roles. A man, just by virtue of his manhood, is called to lead for God. A woman, just by virtue of her womanhood, is called to help for God.
-- Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr., in a chapter in a book written to recover "biblical" manhood and womanhood

Do we need a summary?  The "biblical" sexist logic of Burk, Grudem, and Orlund is this:

Women may well be created equal with men ontologically, 
But women are designed functionally even biologically to help men;
Therefore: men are over women functionally and biologically.

This is exactly the separationist sort of logic that Aristotle used in his Politics and in his biological treatises to separate the sexes naturally.  It's the differentiating logic that Nancy Mairs calls the binary or the fundamental structure of the patriarchy.  It's the logic not only of sexists but also of racists:  of the European and American owners of African people as their slaves; of Adolf Hitler and his Nazis rounding up and mass murdering Jewish people; of the defenders of apartheid in South Africa and of the apologists for the Jim Crow laws in the southern states of the United States of America.  It's the logic that appeals to marked bodily difference in order to order society in such a way that the marked ones are lower than the default ones.  "Separate but equal" - is that phrase, that old mantra, which orders the separateness of bodies first, but then "equality."  And now the words of power, the wedge of separation of the "equals", are purportedly "biblical."  Notice, if you can, how the sexist, separational logic of Burk, Grudem, and Orlund drives their interpretation of the Bible and its words.  It drove the interpretation of Warren Jeffs, who said:

“I can see more clearly why John Taylor went into hiding as the government and the courts would demand he betray the Lord’s trust and also to take his life as they did Joseph Smith, as the world did against Joseph Smith, and the Lord has shown me this, that my enemies don’t just want me to be taken prisoner, but they want me dead. But the Lord has directed that I go into deeper hiding, and continue to gather the faithful, develop the lands of refuge and keep the redemption of Zion mission progressing. I have been instructed of the Lord to have my scribe and helpmate Naomie, get better disguise clothes. And we are working on whatever the Lord directs.” (Priesthood Record, July 30, 2004)

 and

"A good wife is trained for her husband and follows the spirit of peace,"

JESUS: "THE HELP"

In the Intro of this post, I said we'd follow the logic of the "biblically" sexist doctrine of men such as Burk, Grudem, and Ortlund to conclude that Jesus is an African American maid for whites and that Jesus is a wife who must help her husband while following his leadership.  Let's do this.

For homework, I suggested you read Genesis 1, 2, and 3 in the Hebrew.  I probably should have suggested you read all of the Hebrew references to God as "the help," references made by just a single word, עזר `ezer.  There are the two references to the first woman as "the help" of the first man.  There are sixteen references to God as "the help" of his people.  By Wayne Grudem's system of theology, by his doctrine, "Whenever someone helps someone else the person who is helping is occupying a subordinate or inferior position with regard to the person being helped."  This is certainly true logic in the USA during the Jim Crow era, when women who were of African descent were "the help" of white families.  My own family, for example, "hired" Nancy in Corsicana, Texas as "the help"; my siblings and I were young children and just babies, and Nancy took care us of when my white father and mother needed her help.  She was not paid what a white nanny and cook and janitor was paid.  And she occupied a subordinate and an inferior position in our household.  But does the "position" of helper necessarily mean that that person must submit to the one being helped?  If you read all of the Hebrew "help" references in the Bible, then just two apply to the woman and sixteen apply to God.

So now we can follow on to the book of Hebrews and then to Jesus.  As you noticed in doing your homework, the writer of the book of Hebrews (in chapter 13, verse 6) quotes Psalms 118:6, which has a phrase, now in Greek translation, that goes like this:

Κύριος ἐμοὶ βοηθός

In the most accurate English translation available to Burk, Grudem, and Orlund, that goes like this:

"The Lord is my helper" (ESV)

Well, this isn't exactly referring to Jesus.  "The Lord" or Κύριος refers to the unspoken name of God, or as the psalmist writes it, to יהוה.  But what we should notice is that Greek word for "helper"; it's βοηθος.  When other Jewish writers were using Greek to translate the Hebrew of the Bible, then they frequently used βοηθός to mean "the help."  For example, Genesis 2:18 and Genesis 2:20, the references to the woman as "the help" are both translated with βοηθος.  And Psalms 33:20, which uses the same Hebrew word for "the help" as do the Genesis verses for the woman, is also translated with βοηθος.  Of course, for Psalms 33:20, "the help" refers to God again in that position of helping humans, the psalmist and his people.  In the most accurate English translation Burk, Grudem, and Orlund can find, that Psalm goes like this:

"Our soul waits for the LORD;
   he is our help and our shield."(ESV)

So what?  Well, as you noticed when you did your homework, the writer of the book of Hebrews uses the same Greek word for "the help" for Jesus as was used.  Hebrews 4:16, as you recall, goes something like this:

"¹⁴Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. ¹⁵For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. ¹⁶ Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."  (ESV)

In Greek, that last bit goes like this:

Προσερχώμεθα οὖν μετὰ παρρησίας τῷ θρόνῳ τῆς χάριτος, ἵνα λάβωμεν  ἔλεον [or ἔλεος], καὶ χάριν εὕρωμεν εἰς εὔκαιρον βοήθειαν.

And from whom do the readers find this "grace to help"?  Jesus.  Jesus is "the help" here.

Just like God, equally "the help," ontologically and functionally and biblically.

JESUS: "THE HELPMEET"

Again we look at Hebrews, and again we read about Jesus there.  Again, the original biblical language for this man is functionally equal to the original biblical language used functionally for Eve, for the wife of Adam, for woman, to separate her from man.  Just as the woman is designed to be the helpmeet of the man, so Jesus is naturally born according to the writer of Hebrews to be the helpmeet of the offspring of Abraham, the people, those who are tempted.  Here it is:

¹⁶For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. ¹⁷Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. ¹⁸For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help [βοηθῆσαι] those who are being tempted. (Hebrews 2, ESV)

THE TWIST

The twist on all this sexist, masculinist logic is not that there's a slippery slope where nobody can distinguish any body else's body.  It's not that bathroom labels are going to be ever so more confusing or that wives cannot help their husbands from time to time.  It's not that Jesus really is a black woman or a submissive wife.  Rather, it's just that the language that's actually biblical makes Jesus functionally what Denny Burk, Wayne Grudem, and Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr.say he, as a man, cannot be.  Jesus functionally and ontologically is a human being like any woman.  According to the Bible and its language, he is the help and is a helpmeet.

My Dad and my several blogging incarnations

Today, a year ago, my father was diagnosed with deadly cancer.  His oncologists call it "inoperable and uncurable Stage IV Adenocarcinoma."  In lay terms, it's lung cancer, crazy-mutated cells of large tumors that don't stop growing, in his lungs, and in him also on his spine, and in him also present as 6 additional tumors inside his skull, right in his brain.  When I heard the doctor speak, much for me stopped.  I wanted to stop blogging, to start giving as much attention as I could to my father and my mother.  And my blogging did halt.  However.


A big surprise for me is that Dad has been so healthy in his year-long battle against the disease.  Last month, he wrote, "To this point I have not been confined to bed—nor spent one day in the hospital. This is God’s doing and we praise Him!"   

And it's true.  For the past 365 days, I've either been with Dad in person or have talked with him by phone, nearly daily.  The early radiation on his head, to battle the brain tumors, caused a few little lapses in his short term memory.  The chemotherapies have taken their toll on his hair and his strength.  He prefers to walk now with a cane.  But he's sharp as a tack.  And he's taken time to receive hundreds of visitors into his home with my mother.  Mom has been his chauffeur, since he no longer can drive a vehicle, and they've been to visit my little family's home, and one of my sibling's family's home, in cities some distance from their own home.  In May, he went to his granddaughter's graduation from high school, a long ceremony in another city, and a party afterwards at our home.


A bigger surprise for me is how much healthier this man I call Dad has become spiritually.  I think I've blogged some about his emotional maturity, his repentance of his past abuses, his attempts at reconciliations of all sorts with so many especially those of his household, his kindnesses to Mom and to his children and to his grandchildren.  He no longer treats her as his helpmeet.  He now calls her his soulmate.  He now is writing about her as his best friend.  He considers her his equal.  He knows with his head (riddled with tumors), deeply breathes with his lungs (so full of final-stage cancer), and has resolved with his backbone (dis-eased by a mass) how wonderful she is.  She is created by God in God's image.  Today, on this very anniversary of his deadly cancer diagnosis, here's what he wrote:  "I truly am grateful for all she does to make our lives full and meaningful. But as I pondered my thoughts, I realized that my “thank you” meant more than a word of appreciation. I was feeling gratitude for our shared life—for the person she is, for sharing the challenges and walking faithfully with me in this climb to overcome cancer, for the encouragement she gives (sometimes pushing me along)."  This is, for my father, a huge change.  Can we call it a conversion?  Meta-Noia?


Yesterday, one of his granddaughters, my eldest daughter, was with a boyfriend.  This young man was expressing to our family how he cannot read the Bible.  He'd been to church.  He'd heard the preacher preaching.  He'd listened to this man reading the Bible.  He'd drawn sharp conclusions.  "The Bible says, 'Women can't preach.'"  "The Bible says, 'Women have to be quiet in church.'"  "The Bible says, 'Females can't wear beautiful clothes or their beauty on the outside.'"  I won't have any part of that stupidity.  My daughter stood up for the Bible but didn't back down for women.  This is a strong young woman, one who's had a few disagreements with her grandfathers, especially with my Dad, over the biblical strengths of a woman, the biblical voices of women.  My daughter has an eyebrow ring, a new ring in her nose, a couple of tattoos.  This also has dismayed her grandfathers, both preachers.  Both men are SBC ministers.  Both are "complementarians" who have also interpreted their Bible for today as meaning that women, because they are born into bodies sexed female, cannot have any of the leadership roles above men in their homes or in their church.  


Well, this granddaughter of my father knows a thing or two herself about cancer survivorship.  She once had a deadly case of the disease.  It had infected her liver.  Long story short, she needed an organ transplant, and I was selected to be her organ donor.  So there's this incarnation of me in her, which is pretty remarkable for both of us.  I've found myself saying these past 15 years, "This is God’s doing and we praise Him!"  

But the physical health and transformations are hardly the half of it.  It's the deep spiritual and relational changes that count most for me.  And my daughter, her mother, her grandmothers, have continued to be equal with her grandfathers and her father, equal in the image of God, equally created, equally capable and called in leadership roles of various sorts.  My daughter did not have to be silent to her boyfriend yesterday.  He didn't like what he'd heard from a complementarian preacher; and so he'd given up on the Bible and its messages of creation and re-creation and the beauty of God's image in women and in men.  But my daughter didn't shut up.  She's encouraging him to listen to her, to listen to other ways to listen to the scriptures.  There's an incarnation there, which stresses humanity and humanness and not one sex exclusive of or in complement to or over the other.


Jane Stranz, blogger, yesterday writes of ways three bloggers have inspired and intrigued her.  She kindly included me among two of my favorite bloggers, Suzanne, and David.  And Jane also said of me that I have "had several blogging incarnations but despite a bit of time offline is still very much on form these days."  Indeed, around a year ago I noticed, "I’ve blogged at four different blogs, saying many different things."  And then Dad got sick, was facing the worst, and I was pretty sure for a good while that I didn't want to say anything anymore.  Sitting with Mom, waiting, I was sure it was good to be with them much more as much as I was able.  But then Dad started modeling health to me in new and fresh ways, the health of a biblical man, coming into biblical manhood.  As long as I could, I wanted to blog more about that.  Some days, there's an inspiration from the incarnations.  Some days there's not.  Today there is!

Getting Ambiguities

And he said to them, 

“You don't get this parable?”

“Then how are you going to get all the parables?”
--Jesus to the disciples
(translated into Greek
by Mark
translated into English
by me) 

In English, the word “ambiguities” gets a bad (w)rap.  The “good” grammar teacher or “good” grammar book told us long ago:  “Using ambiguities is bad.”  And we believe this.  We want one and only one meaning for every one word.  We want to wrap up our phrases into a singular package.  We desire no slippery slope.  And this is why I also say too that, “in English, the word 'ambiguities' gets a bum rap.”  We forget that we humans are the ones who assign meaningS to our wordS, whether we're the ones saying them or writing them or listening to them or are reading them.  We may really want to avoid ambiguities, but even if we were successful in such avoidances, then would we really be getting success in communication?

Here's a true story.  You might think of it also as a parable of ambiguities:

Once upon a time, I wrote a blogpost.  In the blogpost, I quoted Aristotle teaching his male only, Greek only, disciples to use “only good Greek.”  One of his commandments, which all of these boys believed, was “avoid ambiguities.”  Then a professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley commented at my post to correct me to say this:  

“Linguists have long distinguished between between vagueness and ambiguity. Vagueness is when you give too little information....  Ambiguity is when there are two distinct interpretations....  [T]here's a small middle ground between vagueness and ambiguity, but the distinction is clear most of the time, and is quite useful.  Aristotle [in this quotation of him that you give] rails against vagueness, not ambiguity.”

So we looked together at the actual Greek word that Aristotle used for “ambiguities” or “vaguenesses,” and we had to agree.  Aristotle's word was both vague and ambiguous.  To be very sure and absolutely sure, Aristotle's Greek word, then, was ambiguous.  Oh, and it was also a tad vague.  Therefore, if you've followed the syllogism here, or the enthymeme presumed here, to it's necessary and logical and singular conclusion, then you get this:  Aristotle had inadvertently, hypocritically, failed to avoid using vagueness and ambiguity.  “Do what I say, fellas, not as I do,” he surely whispered to himself.  (Here's that post where you can almost hear Aristotle whispering and can almost see his face, pink from private professorial embarrassment.)

Now, let's go back to Jesus.  Or are we going forward to him?  When he was talking to his fellows, he'd say and do what Aristotle said to avoid in good language.  That is, Jesus spoke in many parables that few could understand.  His words, his phrases, his sentences, and even his stories were ambiguous, and vague.  Sometimes they were vaguely ambiguous.  Other times they were ambiguously vague.  So his disciples got to question him.  He was all about the Socratic dialectic.  So his rhetoric and his hyperbole and his hyperphysia and his poetry and his feminisms and his parables just weren't all that dangerous, because he let people ask questions and form, and re-form, and trans-form.

(This is a parenthetical paragraph.  It's an aside.  It may make one of the main points of the blogpost.  You be the judge, won't you?  Do get this:  Aristotle belittled Socrates's dialectic, calling it an anti-strophe of rhetoric, which he warned was exaggeration.  Aristotle was about Nature, which he called physics, or if you had to then meta-physics, out of which he invented his log-ike to shut down ambiguous logos and all manner of pluralistic dissoi logoi.  Sappho was a poet, he acknowledged, but the Mytilenean men, he conceded, honored her “although she was a woman.”  Then Aristotle said such men were like the fable-telling parabowling Aesop and those bar-bar-barian fellows of Libya before Muammar Gaddafi came in like he was Alexander the Great.  Aristotle would warn his disciples of such:  “Get this, fellas.  There are dark, woman-like, pluralistic, ambiguous slippery-slope stories [λόγοι logoi] thrown violently alongside your own:  the fables of Aesop and the parables of the Libyans.”)

At first, the disciples of Jesus were sort of like the disciples of Aristotle.  And they were all exactly like we want to be, sometimes.  They wanted to avoid ambiguities.  Fables of the sort Jesus told in public, and so many of them too, were all too vague far too often.  “Please say what you mean, teacher.  Please give us the one and only meaning of what you mean, Rabbi.”  And then Mark comes along, and he translates the words of Jesus into Greek.  All of the metaphors go flying in all these different semantic directions, even when Jesus gives his clear explanation.  All of the metaphors go flying in all these different semantic directions, especially when Jesus gives his clear explanation, in Mark's Greek.  Which makes us think also that translation too can be ambiguous.  It's now a parable of translation.  But that's another story all together.

(In his Greek translation, his own version of this story, Mark makes the parable of Jesus that would unlock all of the parables sound like Gorgias Praising a Woman, the woman of all women, Helen.  I mean, really.  Did you ever read what Gorgias wrote next to what Mark translated, and how?  Notice how they both depend on the reader to get the meaning.  Not just one meaning either.  At least four.  But then there's their twists at the end.  In both accounts.  Oh, this is another parenthetical, fairly unimportant paragraph, depending on how you read it.)

I've been silly here.  But now I want also to be more serious.  I want to talk a little now about how we people want to contain the meaning of our words.  I want to talk some about trying to contain, to dis-ambiguate.  We might look at Chinese (as Victor Mair does here, showing how letters for sound can restrict meanings of 便 ).  But we might as well just look at our English.

Here are some words and phrases:

fellow

feminist

gender neutral

Here now are some posts that get to the ambiguities of those words.  Or they're posts that sometimes would dis-ambiguate these words of ours as we might use them.

Doesn't fellow avoid ambiguities?  Isn't it male only, and not female at all?

Suzanne has written on fellow as also feminine in “Broadly Evangelical?” and in “The death of the masculine generic.”  Look, ladies and gentlemen, she did not make this stuff up.  It's in Shakespeare and in the English Bible and in all sorts of places before men who wanted the word all to themselves said different.

Doesn't feminist avoid ambiguities?  Isn't it only bad female and not good male at all?

Notice how one of the commenters (“roguephysicist”) at the second post linked above says this:  “The blowback from 'gender-neutral' translations sponsored by feminists and homosexuals has hardly started.”

It sounds a little like “feminists” are real bad women here.  They can't be good, can they?  And they wouldn't be men either, would feminists?  

And then there's the statement by the COMMITTEE ON BIBLE TRANSLATION:

“Second, we object to the 'guilt-by-association' labeling of some of our translations. The review [by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood] notes some renderings in the updated NIV that are adopted also by 'feminist' interpreters. Yet they fail to note that many of these same renderings are also adopted by complementarian interpreters. (For instance, 'assume authority' in 1 Tim. 2:12 is Calvin's rendering.) The fact that egalitarians and complementarians alike adopt many of these translations suggests that, in fact, there is broad scholarly support in favor of these conclusions. It is the scholarship that has influenced the decisions of CBT in these texts – not a modern agenda of any kind.”

Notice how the COMMITTEE does not dispute or correct the Council, at least not on the would-be un-ambiguous view that “feminist” is a position not desirable.  Again, real bad women (and not real good men) are those who would hold that “feminist” position.

Jesus would not be one of those, nor would he listen to them either.  This is the thinking that would be “not a modern agenda of any kind.”

Well then.  Would Jesus listen to Mollie?  She's a feminist, a young modern one, perhaps with a bad reputation as one, she says.  And she also asks:

“Where are the religious people that are accepting, loving, and kind? They are probably the ones who are humble, quiet, and non judgmental. It’s a shame that a few extreme feminists can make a bad name for all. Is it the same deal religious people, with some groups and religions representing everyone? Certainly, they are not interchangeable, but I cannot help but wonder.”

But weren't some of the first feminists ever Christians?  Weren't some religious, good people with good names too?  Come to think of it, I think so.  Here are some of those fellows, men and women.  So who has the “a modern agenda”? 

Doesn't gender neutral avoid ambiguities?  

Doesn't that phrase mean that  

“The male-oriented meaning has been neutralized” 

and that 

“The emphasis on Jesus as a male has been neutralized” 

and that 

“'Man,' 'father,' 'brother,' 'son,' and 'he/him/his' are ... are removed or neutralized”?

Yes, if you believe Wayne Grudem.  This is how Wayne for the Council (the CBMW) has avoided ambiguities.  With the above sentences, he makes “gender neutral” mean one thing and one thing only:  males are getting hurt!  Notice that “gender neutral” cannot now mean anything nice.  It's hurting males, even Jesus as a male, and it's hurting a whole bunch of male nouns and pronouns in English too.  Wayne writes these sentences in his essay, “The 'Gender-Neutral' NIV: What Is The Controversy About?”  

Wayne has built on what David Kotter, executive director of the Council (CBMW), has said.  David has been concerned about “gender neutral” bathrooms and college dorms.  He says:

“There is a direct path between a departure from biblical truth to confusion over gender and finally to concrete examples such as gender-neutral bathrooms. The work of CBMW affects the every day life of every believer.”

Notice how David's “gender neutral” is unambiguously “confusion over gender.”  The executive director of the work of the CBMW is making sure every believer every day won't be confused when a bathroom can be used by men and by women or when a dorm is like an apartment complex with men and women both rooming there.  Biblical truth won't allow such.  And the Jesus of "biblical manhood" only only used bathrooms clearly marked "MEN" and also condemned all Ruths for sleeping on those floors for Boazes only.  And that same Jesus of "biblical manhood" would never give “gender neutral” money advice to yuppy women and men like that confused probably-feminist probably-not-believing Kimberly Palmer has.

And God said,

“Let us make a human

in our image,

by our likeness....”

And God created the human

in his image,

in the image of God

He created him,

male

and

female

He created them.

--Genesis 1

(translated by Everett Fox

from Hebrew

into English)

This is the record of the begettings

of Adam/ Humankind.

At the time of God's creating

humankind,

in the likeness of God did he then make

it,

male

and

female

he created them

and gave blessing

to them

and called their name:

Humankind!

on the day of

their being

created.

--Genesis 5

(translated by Robert Alter,

from Hebrew

into English)