who and God had a lot of things in common

If Frank Schaeffer and Pearl S. Buck are my MK cousins (that is, are evangelical Christian missionaries' kids, like me), then Rachel Held Evans is similarly kin to my spouse (whose parents are in full-time Christian education and churchwork).  She recently finished Held Evans's book Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions, saying how it really resonated with her, and so now I'm reading it.  Just a few pages in, I'm struck by how the author describes her parents, and how differently.  Through daughter and little girl eyes, she somehow finds God like father but mother otherwise.  Take a read and see for yourself.  A telling contrast comes in the final sentence of the four paragraphs excerpted below.  I don't have much time really to say more here at the blog but have been thinking about this all day, about imagination and where it ends up sometimes before it can evolve elsewhere.  Your thoughts?

The daughter of a genuine, certified theologian, I'd memorized the "Four Spiritual Laws" before I'd memorized my own address. My father earned a graduate degree from Dallas Theological Seminary, a school famous for producing megachurch pastors like Chuck Swindoll, Tony Evans, and Andy Stanley. Instead of pursuing full-time ministry, however, my father committed his life to Christian education, which I suppose explains the plastic cups. A college professor, he often invited his brightest students over for coffee and long talks about hermeneutics and eschatology and epistemology. I loved falling asleep to the sound of their voices undulating from the living room. I felt secure in knowing that while I slept, my father was awake having important conversations about God.

I always looked up to my father with a sense of reverent awe. It wasn't that I thought he possessed supernatural powers or anything; I just imagined that he and God had a lot of things in common, that they subscribed to the same magazines and wore similar shoes. Looking back, I realize how important it was that my father loved me so openly and listened so carefully. My first impressions of my heavenly Father were that he too was gentle, playful, and kind.

Despite knowing about dispensationalism long before I probably should have, I never felt trapped in a world of endless churchgoing. My mother had been raised Independent Baptist and as a girl was forbidden to dance and go to movies. Determined to avoid legalism, she let Amanda and me wait until we were good and ready before we got baptized, took communion, or asked Jesus into our hearts. Her private disdain for potlucks and church business meetings kept us from being at church every time the doors were opened, and I noticed that she got a little fidgety whenever the pastor discussed wives submitting to their husbands. I loved this about her, the same way I loved the scent of her cherry-almond lotion when she tucked me into bed at night.

A substitute teacher at my elementary school, my mother earned a reputation for doting on the needy kids. Those with absent parents, stained shirts, runny noses, and learning disabilities always left her classroom beaming with self-confidence. I think I must have gotten my bleeding heart from her, which, combined with my father's cautious idealism, accidentally made me into a liberal. If my father gave Christianity a head, my mother gave it a heart and hands, and it was her tender telling of the story of the cross, mingled with cherry almond, that first moved me to ask Jesus into my heart.

More Public Discussion: and some of my complaints

Suzanne, as you know there has been a lot of private discussion about these matters. So I will discuss it with you privately.
   -Peter Kirk

I've been away from the blog for a few days.  Do you know whether there have been private discussions?  Of course you don't.  Now that I'm back, I see that Peter Kirk has announced at his own blog that he's on vacation, that he won't be back until September.  This, to me, is important for several reasons.

First, if there's a public discussion here at this blog, I don't want to leave Peter out of a more public conversation that he may have started (even if he announces in public at my blog how he prefers for some things "private discussion").  Second, if there's discussion mentioning him, he should be able to speak for himself.  Third, Peter asked a question of me, which I haven't taken the time to answer as if I've had the time; but I think he deserves an answer before September.  Fourth, related to Peter's question, there's really a larger discussion going on at BBB, that's been stopped now.  Fifth, what happened at BBB is indicative of a larger problem we've already observed with bible-blogging in general, the fact that men and not women continue to dominate the bible "studies" blogger carnivals and the Top 50 listings, where Peter now finds himself comfortably and increasingly near the top.  Sixth, the general bible-blogging problem seems related to male privilege and to sexism and to mysogyny and to gynophobia.

Seventh, several have already noted particular issues for them, very likely because they are women.  For example, Suzanne notes:

"Naturally my comment will stand out as marked, because I am one woman among a large group of male bloggers."

 And Paula remarks:

"Right now, based on this conversation alone, all I can see is that Sue has a legitimate grievance of clear bias against only her discussing gender. If the BBB wants us to believe this isn't so, they can't hide their argument from public view."

And Kristen says:

"I made a couple of suggestions over there. But I'm leaving tomorrow on a trip and will be gone for about a week, so I won't see the results. Catch you when I get back! "

And Judith reads and then comments "over there":

"A nice carnival. Any real reason that all the women bloggers are down at the bottom in a group called ‘Miscellaneous’? As one of that pack, I’m curious…."

She gets an answer and then replies:

"Believe me, I know how much time it takes to put together a good carnival. So thanks very much for your work on this one. As I said, I was just curious how we all landed up in the same category of ‘Oddities’ "

Please observe
the oddities that Judith observes,
the extra work that Kristen must do,
the call for more public discussion that Paula has to make,
and the public markedness.
The markedness is what Suzanne
can't help but experience.

This is the experience of females, not males,
of women, not men,
in bible blogging.

So Peter, as one justifiably hypocritical man to another, asks me:

"Kurk, isn't it the pot calling the kettle black when on this all-male blog you complain about BBB being all-male? The only reason BBB is all-male is that, despite looking, we can't find a woman who wants to join it. But surely what matters in this case is not what body parts we possess but what we have to say.

I have written quite a lot about the phrase sometimes translated "husband of one wife". Last year I busted the myth that it was used of women. Five years ago I wrote a whole series about this phrase.

But there are other interesting topics in Bible translation, so at BBB we don't want every thread diverted into a discussion of gender."

Now, I reply:

"Peter, I am glad you worked to 'bust the myth' that the Greek phrases μιᾶς γυναικὸς ἄνδρα, mias gunaikos andra AND ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή, henos andros gune were used exclusively for one sex but not the other.  You did that by blogging individually; and not in a team of bloggers as you're a member of at BBB.  Probably I should have pointed out that I don't blog with anybody else at my blog just as you don't at your Gentle Wisdom blog.  But I do value the comments of women as well as men.  I censor neither and try to allow the voices of all people of all genders to be expressed as the individuals commenting here would like.

Is my observation about the BBB team being all-male a complaint?  If so,

•  then my complaint is that you haven't looked hard enough to include women in your team of BBB bloggers.  
• My complaint is that you want the default and unmarked body parts to be male so then you can say, by male logic, that "surely what matters in this case is not what body parts we possess but what we have to say."  
• My complaint is that you all-male BBB bloggers censor a woman differently than you do a man.  
• My complaint is that you have rules for commenters that you apply rather unevenly and pretend that gender is not in view.  
• My complaint is that you all-men BBB bloggers say, 'Comments are closed, but you can leave a trackback' but then you allow trackbacks, if seems, only if we don't use the g-word in our posts.  
• My complaint is not that all-you-males-and-only-males 'don't want every thread diverted into a discussion of gender.'  Rather, my complaint is that you use your maleness as if it's not gender to control who gets to say what and how.  
• My complaint is that you say you only want to 'discuss' such things in private while making rather public statements nonetheless here also at my blog."

Visiting the Men's Room; Revisiting "the Son of Man"

With this blogpost, I'm hoping we'll be willing to compare how we readily read The Declaration of Independence today with how reluctantly we read the Bible with any openness at all now.  We're ready to punt the male privilege of the one text; but many of us are still much more resistant to understanding the Bible as having language that's inclusive of women as well as of men.

I almost entitled the post, The Subtle Power of Man Exclusive Words.  That title, however, is just a little too nice.  Then I thought about this one:  How Man Holds His Pen is His Privilege.  And yet I know some people who get the "pen is" pun will think it's just too nasty.  Hence, Visiting the Men's Room; Revisiting "the Son of Man."

Here's the blogpost outline:  I. Preface, II. Back to the Declaration, III. Back to the Bible, IV. What's Next?

I. Preface

Exactly what did Thomas Jefferson mean when he penned the following words?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

What did this mean to Martha Wayles Skelton? What could it mean for Sally Hemings, Martha's half-sister? Or to the children, Beverley and Harriet, or even Madison and Eston? What did Mr. Jefferson's words mean to Outassete? To the other Cherokees? To all of the Monacan and the Saponi and the Tutelo and the Meherrin and the Shawnee and the Miami and the Kaskaskia?

Exactly what did English Bible translators mean when they translate foreign phrases frequently as "son of man"?

The traditional “son of man” -- explains Joel Hoffman -- is a literal translation of the Hebrew ben adam, which is how God frequently calls Ezekiel. We also find it elsewhere in the OT. In these cases, the Greek Septuagint translates the Hebrew literally as uios anthropou.

What could the male author of the Hebrew phrase mean?  How about the male translators of this phrase into Greek?  And what then of the male translators of the Hebrew and of the Greek into English?  What do these sons of men intend?

What might this mean to Chloe Angyal, to Sindelókë, to Kristen, to Tonya, and to Jaime?

II. Back to the Declaration

When Thomas Jefferson wrote The Declaration of Independence, he did, in fact, pen the words human, people, and mankind; and, of course, these are gender neutral and gender inclusive words.  If you are an English-reading man or woman, you pretty much have to agree with that.

But, however, and nevertheless, the fact is that Jefferson and all the other English human people who signed that Declaration were men.  They were representing their interests as "men created equal."  They were not particularly interested in "mankind" as it includes women and the non-English such as Africans and Native Americans.  Indeed, Jefferson himself took an English woman as his wife.  He held in his possession an African woman as his slave and concubine.  The two women were the daughters of another English man, the one woman being a child born to this man's English wife, the other woman being the child of this English man's African slave.  None of these women were equal, or were even viewed as "created equal," with the men.  The children their women produced for these men, likewise, were not "equal."  The sons would only some day be equal if they were not daughters and if they were not boys tainted with African blood.  And then there were the "the merciless Indian Savages," whom Jefferson writes of in the Declaration of Men.  These natives to America were not considered equals.  In the Preface of this blogpost, you should have recognized the names of individuals and of individual tribes of women and men and children whom the Declaration of Independence does not include in the clause, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

The male privilege of the Declaration of Independence extended for many more than 100 years in the United States of America.  Clearly, the women who wrote the Declaration of Sentiments in 1848 saw how Jefferson's male-only signed Declaration excluded them.  They wrote:  "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal."  And men and women together signed this document.

And African American men were not excluded either.  As a matter of fact, Frederick Douglass, one of the blacks (or one of the not whites) who signed the Declaration of Sentiments was the one who pushed for this controversial line: "Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation, in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States."  When Victoria Claflin Woodhull ran for President in 1872, running alongside her as her Vice President was this same Frederick Douglass.  This, of course, was just a very few years after African American men were considered by the USA to be legally whole humans, and it was just a couple of years after these particular men could vote.  It was still nearly a half-century before women of any race could vote.

And the influence of Native American women and men was not excluded from the Declaration of Sentiments either.  Historians Joy Ritchie and Kate Ronald point out this influence out in their commentary on the Declaration:  "Wilma Mankiller, former chief of the Cherokee Nation, notes also the important influence Native American matrilineal and matriarchal tribal structures had on emerging feminist ideas, especially since [Elizabeth Cady] Stanton and [Matilda] Gage [two of the authors of the Declaration of Sentiments] both lived in the Iroquois country of upstate New York" (page 138).  The authors' inclusive Declaration finally ended with this sentence, implying a geography inclusive of all tribes of peoples:  "We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of conventions embracing every part of the country."

In the United States today, men and women of all tribes and all races are viewed as full humans, as equals.  Citizens of any sex and of any race ostensibly enjoy the same Creator-endowed rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Even outsiders to the USA, translators of the Declaration of Independence, have no trouble using gender neutral words for Thomas Jefferson's "man."  In other words, some foreign language translators seem to get better than Jefferson and his fellow English men did that "all men" really does include all who are "human" and all "people" and all of "mankind."

For example, Shakila Yacob of the University of Malaysia has rendered "all men" as the Malaysian "semua manusia"; it's a translation that means, very inclusively, "each and every one" or "all of humankind."

Now, no natural born American should think that he or she has a more natural right to the Declaration of Independence than others.  To be sure, Thomas Jefferson was not an American when he penned the Declaration.  Moreover, The Declaration of Independence was not written to you.  In some ways what this means as that all of us are outsiders to this text.  And yet.  and yet it speaks of categories that may include or might just exclude us, depending on who we are.  The funny H. L. Mencken puts the English Declaration of Independence into "American"; and reading that foreign clause "all men are created equal" he writes it as, "you and me is as good as anybody else."  Then somebody named Tame writes this really Wild translation, "for Dummies":  "God created every person equal."  The point of this paragraph is that is it absolutely okay, however an outsider of the text you may be, to use gender neutral and gender inclusive language, despite what the author Thomas Jefferson intended.  His race, his gender, his class, he might now just agree, is not all he could intend by "all men."  You have rights.  And you have rights to read.  And you have rights to under-specify things such as the implied male body part.

III. Back to the Bible

If you've stayed with me so far, then you see where I'm headed, don't you?  Let's now turn back to the Bible.  There are these Hebrew and sometime Greek phrases in the Bible that seem man-ish.  "Son of man" is one of them.

I've already bored you before with how a son and a man like Wayne Grudem (an expert on "biblical manhood and womanhood" and the world's leading expert on "evangelical feminism") does fault English Bible translators who make the phrases of Hebrews 2:6 not "man" and not "son of man" but, instead, gender neutral "mere mortals" and gender inclusive "human beings."

But please do notice again how for the man and the son of a man named Wayne Grudem it's a huge problem that, "The male-oriented details are erased" from the Bible with "mere mortals" and with "human beings."  It the male-oriented details that matter most.  This is male privilege, even in language, especially in language of the Bible, and especially for people who don't read the Hebrew or the Greek for themselves in the language of English of the translation of the Bible.  The Bible was not written to you, reminds David Ker.  Especially if you're not a man, take note that the Bible was not written by you or for you or to you or any of your kind.  (Did I bore you before with how feminist-phobic David confesses to be, and did you see questions #35 and #36?)  If you're neither a man nor a son of man, well then.  Tough luck.

If you are a man, as I am, then why always hold on to your male-oriented detail?  Why not consider what the male privilege is like if you're just going to be a mere mortal.  If you're only going to be a human being, then consider this.  Consider these five cases.

Yes, 5.  Then let's discuss this further, together.  I know you thought we were going to go back in the discussion together to the Bible.  Well, don't think we're not talking about the Bible still.  Here are the 5. cases.  For him who has ears to hear, let him hear:

1. 

I’m not entirely sure how easy it is to call out sexism while standing at a urinal with one’s junk in one’s hand (but if anyone could do it, Charles probably could). I know what I would have said if this conversation had taken place in front of me – and it probably wouldn’t have been terribly non-confrontational at all. But because this happened in the men’s room, and because these men probably cared a good deal more about what a fellow dude thought than what I think, what I would have said doesn’t really matter.

What matters is that in this situation, loathe though I am to admit it, Charles has more power to effect feminist change than I ever could. 

   --Chloe Angyal, "Overheard in the men’s room"

2.

Well. This is where things get a bit tricky to understand. Because most examples of social privilege aren’t that straightforward. Let’s take, for example, a basic bit of male privilege:

A man has the privilege of walking past a group of strange women without worrying about being catcalled, or leered at, or having sexual suggestions tossed at him.

A pretty common male response to this point is “that’s a privilege? I would love if a group of women did that to me.”

And that response, right there, is a perfect shining example of male privilege. 

   --Sindelókë, "On the difference between ..." (HT Kristen)

3.

Now, I’ve never taken the time to express my frustrations with these types of issues in the blogging world, mostly because it’s very easy to just ignore the comments I don’t like. If you would oblige, I would like to set the record straight. When Daniel and I started the blog it was just for fun, and it still is. We had no idea what ‘biblioblogs’ or ‘bibliobloggers’ were. We began our blog as a joint effort of two Biblical languages students to produce, no matter how informally, consistent writing on a topic we were interested in, admittedly, with limited success. All of a sudden we were part of this ‘biblioblogging’ community.

We very quickly noted that this community was very white and very male. Being from Texas this didn’t throw us off too much (even though Daniel is half non-white and I’m completely non-male) and we decided it would be fun to try to keep the posts anonymous. This (no surprise) led many, if not most, of our readers to assume that it was Daniel doing the blogging and because of him I was  involved. When this comment came up I said nothing, but I should have.

The idea that a woman who collaborates with her husband on a blog (or any project) is only doing so (or has only come to the attention of others) because her husband is involved is offensive. If Daniel were not my husband but only a colleague I would be viewed in a much different light. Perhaps if I blogged on my own I would receive even more praise. Because my work is better? My ideas more interesting? Absolutely not.

   --Tonya, "Guess What? Daniel is my husband."

4.

So the other day, this guy – you know, on Jersey Shore – this guy had done something stupid and it pissed off his girlfriend, so he looked at the camera and said, “What?! So now I’m frickin’ Jesus? I’m Jesus and I’m so perfect I’m not gonna look at another girl’s rack when it’s right in front of me?! Cuz I’m not perfect, and I am going to look!...I’m only human, ya know.”

Ugh! I really hate that.

I hate it when people use the fact that they're human as an excuse to be a douche.

It doesn’t even make sense. I mean, I could understand it if you were, like, ripping my arm off, for example, and I was crying and begging you to stop but you wouldn’t stop because you were, say, a tiger. Then you might say to me, “I’m sorry, but I’m only a tiger”, and I would totally have to be understanding because a tiger lives by instinct and not reason. So it would be pretty stupid of me to beg a tiger to stop hurting me, because a tiger lacks that little seen human-trait we call ‘compassion’.

But to claim that your humanity is the thing that’s keeping you from doing the right thing? That seems backwards to me. Isn’t it our humanity that compels us to treat others with kindness and respect? Isn’t it our humanness that kind of pushes us toward decency?

One of the things that I love about the Bible is that as we look into the life of Jesus we get such a clear picture of his humanity. We see Jesus celebrate and mourn, and we see him challenge injustice and cross social barriers. He is protective of the prostitute, gentle with the elderly, and compassionate toward the infirm. I like to think that during Jesus time on Earth, he was showing us a thing or two about how treat one another in this life....like, the life we’re living... right now... 

   --Jamie, the Very Worst Missionary, "Human, like Jesus."

 5.

I understand the motivation behind “human one” in the CEB. And I think that in isolation it’s a better translation than the traditional “son of man.” But in the broader context of the full NT, I think the association with “son” is too central to give up, and so the CEB misses more than it captures. 

What do you think? Which part of uios tou anthropou (“son of man” / “human one”) is more important, the meaning of the phrase or the associations of “son”? 

   --Joel Hoffman, "Making Jesus the 'Human One'"

If you don't get the first 4 case studies above, then you probably holding in your hand a severe case of male-oriented detail privilege.

After reading case study #1, did you get where I get the title of this post from?  Please go back to that post of Chloe's if you didn't.  Or re-read it carefully anyway.

After reading case study #2, are you getting the subtle abusive power of male privilege?  

After reading case study #3, I hope you went over to Tonya's post today to see how she linked to one of my blogposts.  Did I tell you already that I'm a man?  That I'm Julie's husband?  But did you catch how I failed to count women bloggers who blog about the Bible with their husbands as if they were mere wives of those men?  I'm trying to blog with a bit of humor today, but it's a serious problem.  When will gender end?  Miriam Perez is dreaming it will, and today now (and more than ever thanks to Tonya to whom I apologize right here in public), so am I.  Steve Caruso has hit me up with this idea of a women's studies section for the biblioblogger library.  Today, I'm only wanting to study this male privilege thing.

After reading case study #4, won't you think of a human Jesus as not having to excuse himself for his misbehavior because of douche privilege? 

So, let's consider Joel's case, case #5 above.  It's probably the case here that's most focused on the male words of the Bible.  Joel is knocking an English Bible translation, the CEB, because it fails to make central enough the male-detailed "association with 'son'."  Joel is convinced, too, that even the Greek behind the word "man" is male-detailed only; he says elsewhere, "[W]e can look at how anthropos is used.  To the best of my knowledge, when it is specific and singular, it always refers to a specific man, never to a specific woman" [my emphasis].  So to summarize his own position, the English "son" and the Hebrew and Greek it's translated from needs to be linked to males only; and the Greek word "anthropos" isn't used to specify a woman.  (And I've already bored you with a bit of a rebuttal to that last claim, here.)  But the point is this:  that male privilege calls for language to be boxed up and locked down.  The male-oriented detail, the male-semantic chains of reference, all won't allow neutralization of the male-ness or the inclusion of any other, any female-ness in the cases of the Bible.

IV. What's Next?

Well, you tell me.  

Some of you who've stayed with me all the way through to this final chapter (or have scrolled ahead) are just seething.  "What's next?  It's the slippery slope where we can't tell the gender of anybody.  It's the absolute relativism by which we ignore the facts of the penis and other important biology.  You're just neutralizing gender, tossing away the important male-oriented detail of Jesus Himself."  Okay, I say.  I've spoken quite enough today already.  But isn't the detail of the race of Jesus important too?  And his religion?  And his class?  How about his circumcision, and I'm not just specifying the details of his maleness either.  What I'm saying is that his mere mortality, his glorious humanness (as Jaime writes about it) gets overlooked when the "son" part and the "man" part are all that might matter, or when those things are mainly what's emphasized (to the exclusion of a "daughter" or a "child" or "offspring"; and to the neglect of "people" and "humans" and "humankind" and "all men and women").

I'm just wondering if we can be consistent with our rules.  (I've already confessed in this post that I have hurt others by my own outspoken male privilege, when I'm trying to argue for inclusion and for gender neutralizing.)  So now I'm just wondering if we can be consistent with our rules.  We finally want men and women, white and black and red, to be able to be equal, to be viewed as all created equal, as we read The Declaration of Independence, whether we're Thomas Jefferson or Shakila Yacob or Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Frederick Douglass or Michelle Obama or Wilma Mankiller.  And yet we change the game when it comes to the Bible.

So what's next? 

Proverbs 14 part vi: Gender in 2011

The Gender of Proverbs 14 in 2011

When writing Part II of this series, I had just read the official and public Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) statement against the NIV 2011 denouncing its gender inclusive English.  So we looked at Proverbs 14:12 in the NIV 1984 and also in the NIV 2011; and, in our discussion, we didn't stop short of looking at the proverb's translation from the potentially gender-neutral words of Hebrew and Greek:  ish (אִ֑ישׁ) and anthropois (ἀνθρώποις).   In Part III, we started in with Kristen's suggestion that "Perhaps the NIV 2011 was incorrect in leaving out that the word 'iysh' does appear here."  I'd also suggested that, in a later post, "we may get into the fact that, in Proverbs 14, the Hebraic Hellene translators from the Hebrew have in certain verses have really restricted the translation and have confined the meaning to men only, to males and not to females.  For example, in verses 7, 10, 30, 33 there are the words ἀνδρὶ, ἀνδρὸς, and ἀνὴρ [andri, andros, aner] that are not at all gender neutral or gender universal."  Now, in this Part VI, let's look carefully and closely at gender in all of Proverbs 14, in 2011, in English translation.

Let's do this because the gender words are the now-very-public problem that the official SBC men have with the NIV 2011.  I'm going to ask that you look with me at every English gendered word in five different translations of Proverbs 14.  The five are these:

1. the HCSB, produced by the SBC publishing house;

2. the ESV, which R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, also recommended to the SBC "for serious study" before the HCSB was produced;

3. the NIV1984, the old version which is less of a "profound disappointment" to the SBC men and less of an "inaccurate translation of God’s inspired Scripture" in the eyes of the SBC resolvers because the older Bible did not have so much "use of gender-neutral [English] language";

4. the NIV2011, the newest version that really is now a publicly "profound disappointment" to the SBC men and really does seem to be an "inaccurate translation of God’s inspired Scripture" in the eyes of the SBC resolvers because it really does have the "use of gender-neutral [English] language";

5. the NLT, the newest translation to just narrowly beat out the HCSB in familiarity among SBC pastors and to very widely to beat out the HCSB in familiarity among other Christian ministers in the USA.

So let's read these five English Bibles and compare their gendered words in Proverbs 14.  Let's read each verse, each proverb, below, in this order:  HCSB then ESV then  NIV1984, and then NIV2011 and last NLT.  I've highlighted with various colors the feminine, masculine, neuter (i.e., gender-neutral), and gender-inclusive nouns and pronouns.

I'll let you figure out which Hebrew and Greek nouns and pronouns are being translated from.  But can you also answer these English-only questions?

1.  In which proverbs below do all five translations agree with respect to the gender of the nouns and pronouns? 

2.  Are there any proverbs for which the HCSB does the "profoundly disappointing" thing of making "use of gender-neutral language"?  (Do look below for yourself.  Okay, let me answer:  YES.  Now can you tell me which verses in Proverbs 14 below the HCSB uses gender-neutral language for?)

3.  Are they any proverbs for which the HCSB makes MORE "use of gender-neutral language" than the other four translations?  Does the HCSB really make more "use of gender-neutral language" than the NIV 2011 in some of the proverbs noted below?  (Again, Yes.  So please note which proverbs.)

4.  Is there a proverb for which the HCSB genders "Wisdom" feminine?  Which one?

5.  Are there any proverbs for which the ESV does the profoundly disappointing thing of making "use of gender-neutral language"?  (Do look below for yourself.  Okay, let me answer:  YES.  Now can you tell me which verses in Proverbs 14 below the HCSB uses gender-neutral language for?)

6.  Are they any proverbs for which the ESV makes MORE "use of gender-neutral language" than the other four translations?  Does the ESV really make more "use of gender-neutral language" than the NIV 2011 in some of the proverbs noted below?  (Again, Yes.  So please note which ones.)

7.  Is there a proverb in which the NIV1984 makes God's gender inclusive?   YES.  And which one is it?

Please have a read for yourself.  Please feel free in comments to share your answers to the above questions or your thoughts about anything else you see here.  (Remember, the order of the trnaslation, verse by verse and proverb by proverb here, is HCSB, ESV,  NIV1984, NIV2011, and NLT.)

 

 

 

So what does the gender-neutral language of Proverbs 14 in the HCSB, the ESV, the NIV1984 and 2011, and the NLT say about the SBC men who have made their targeted resolution?  

----- 

(Now, for anybody wanting it, here's a bit of the background on the controversy surrounding these words in 2011.  If you would like to read the SBC resolution against the NIV 2011 for yourself, Suzanne McCarthy links today to several bloggers who've quoted it directly and have given links to the primary sources.  

Moreover, for more background, since we're getting into the language of Proverbs 14 (language which Robert Alter refers to as ancient "Hebrew" poetry), you may also want to see this.  You may also want to how John Hobbins claims that "Old Testament scholars who blog have expressed dissatisfaction with the new NIV."  He links to 4 bloggers total, unless you also count him with his 2 links to his own blog.  He agrees with 3 and disagrees with the 4th.  However, 1 blogger John agrees with has mainly expressed only dissatisfaction with the advertising of the NIV 2011 and not with the gender-neutral language of the translation.   Likewise, another 1 has expressed dissatisfaction but not so much with the gender-inclusive English "beef" that the SBC has.  Then there's the 1 who does express dissatisfaction with the gender-neutral language of the NIV 2011, as the SBC resolvers have.  As mentioned, John includes himself among the dissatisfied, as 1 who shares the gender "beef" of the SBC men.  To be clear, John only links to 3 other "Old Testament scholars who blog who blog have expressed dissatisfaction" and only 1 of whom [other than himself] actually shares the gender "beef" of the official Southern Baptist men resolving to denounce the NIV 2011.  That John so far finds only 1 in agreement with him as he validates the resolution of the SBC men is important.  It's important because he goes on to mention 1 blogger with whom he has the disagreement, and John puts that this way:

So far as I know, the only blogger/ Biblia Hebraica scholar who offers praise for the new NIV is Joel Hoffman. He expressed satisfaction for the its gender-sensitive modifications of NIV 1984; he describes them as gender-accurate. These kind of changes satisfy some but raise the hackles of others. In Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist contexts – the largest church polities in the US – a reaction against gender-sensitive translation has set in.  Both faith traditions seek to retain a degree of independence from prevailing cultural trends. This is no doubt salutary. At the same time, it would be easy to build bridges across some of the divides if the debate were not dominated by Ninja warrior types on both sides.

It's curious the way John has put this.  He's called "salutary" what he sees as independent "Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist" efforts to resist cultural corruption, suggesting that the SBC resolution against the NIV 2011 and its language and its use and its sales is somehow a resolution against "cultural trends" that ostensibly must be reacted against.   And John has mentioned the "Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist" as if in some contrast to Joel, who self identifies not as a Catholic or a Baptist or even a Christian of any sort but as the child of someone who has built language bridges with Christians.  One of Joel's parents - also a blogger/ Biblia Hebraica scholar - says this:  "I am a liturgist. 'Liturgy' is a common enough word among Christians, but it does not flow trippingly off Jewish tongues, and I am not only Jewish but a rabbi to boot."  Here we have the SBC vs / the NIV2011 and "accurate" vs. / "inaccurate" and a few scholarly bloggers vs / the NIV2011 and John vs / Joel and "the largest church polities in the US" vs  / "prevailing cultural trends."  All these divisions.  These are important background to how we might read Proverbs 14 in 2011.  Sorry for the long digresssion.  [To see John's words here in 2011 on his "beef" with the words of the NIV 2011, go here. ])

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Unholy and Hallowed Whore Words: Part II

You may have seen my post entitled, "Unholy and Hallowed Whore Words: Part I" and wondered -- with all the Greek and English horse words and whore words and slave and Master allusions but no religious references -- what Unholiness and Hallowedness may have had to do with it.  

In Part II, here, let's get to that.  But let's go back to the Greek.  Then we'll get to the unHoly and Hallowed.

THE GREEK

I learned something reading a comment by Theophrastus at BBB.  He said:

“hallowed” [the English word for the Greek] (ἁγιάζω) does not mean “honored.” It means “separated.” 

Well, that's not exactly what I learned from Theophrastus.  What I learned is this:

(The Hebrew word, קדשׁת is the same root as קדשׁה — which means prostitute — see Genesis 38:21 — the point being that cult prostitute is “separated”, not that she is “honored”).

(So let me make a couple of parenthetical comments of my own here.  First, I've studied an awful lot of Greek but far too little Hebrew.  So I'm quite familiar with the connections between and associations around “hallowed” (ἁγιάζω), as “separated.”  And, in fact, in my own comments at that thread where Theophrastus made his comment, I was suggesting these are words with Jewish and religious connotations, but Hebraic words for translation, Hellene and English translations of something Jesus said in a poetic prayer.  However, I've only taken one graduate level course in Hebrew and have since mainly been reading Hebrew as Greek and as English mirror the language.  So somehow, I missed what Theophrastus was pointing out:  the root of קדשׁת as קדשׁה.  I missed this even though I've read through the translations of Genesis from Hebrew -- sometimes Greek -- into English.  By the way, two of the best translators of Genesis ever are Everett Fox and Robert Alter.  Second, the way most of us learn, I think, is by connections and associations.  Translation, when done well, mirrors this process.  And it works, when done well, as appositives work in our English language.  You know.  If we want to say what something is [metaphorically or even syllogistically] or what something's kind of like [with a simile], then we can't shortcut these more direct processes but just smashing one noun right up to another [without even using an adjective].  It's one thing, for example, for me to say precisely, "Bdelycleon is an elite Aristocrat in Athens."  And it's quite another thing to leave things rather undefined when saying, "Xanthias, a slave."  When jammed together, the phrases "Xanthias" and "a slave" change with respect to one another, because they're now associated and cross-fertilizing meanings, but they also are still what they were before the jamming together.  When we move now to Hebrew, I'm going to suggest this sort of appositive stuff might be important.)

When playwright Aristophanes used the Greek word πόρνη [pórnē] in his plays, the word for him and his audiences always referred to "whore."  And we all know that it's a word with the same root as the word we use to refer to pornography, or porn for short.  But for the play audiences of Aristophanes, we might want to know, the word was rare, was un-common.  Yes, it's true.  The word's only used twice in The Wasps and just once in The Acharnians.  And the related form πόρνα is only used eight times in six different plays.  And, for all of the un-lost plays of his, that's it.  And none of his contemporaries used the word much either.  Lysias, the logographer, the speechwriter, used it but one time in his many many speeches.  The point is, the word πορνη wasn't in anybody's dictionaries.  Today, some Greek etymologist speculate it could be related to the more common Greek word for "selling" (πέρνημι) since these women were sold by men to other men for sex.  But we just don't know for sure.  It was just something uncommon jammed up against other more common words.  For example, in The Wasps, the Aristocrat Bdelycleon promises to take care of his father Philocleon, and he says:  "I will feed him, I will give him everything that is suitable for an old man; oatmeal gruel, a cloak, soft furs, and a wench (πόρνη [pórnē]) to rub his tool and his loins."  Here, Eugene O'Neill is translating the word "wench."  πόρνη [pórnē], wench, whore.  The word just caught on.   It was a rare word, but men didn't have to be educated to learn it.  

THE unHOLY AND HALLOWED

An equally rare word is the one Theophrastus pointed out.  "The Hebrew word, קדשׁת is the same root as קדשׁה — which means prostitute — see Genesis 38:21 — the point being that cult prostitute is 'separated'...."

Now, this word is so un-common, so rare, that in the whole of Genesis, it's only mentioned in 38:21 and 38:22.  In the whole of the Torah, it's only mentioned again once, in Deuteronomy 23:17.  And elsewhere, it's only used again in Hosea 4:14.  So, if there were no dictionaries, how did the original readers of ancient days, read and understand?  And how do the current etymologists and scholars and lexicographers and rabbis and preachers know?  Is it kind of like Matthew's readers knowing what ἁγιασθήτω meant when no one ever before had used such a special and specialized form of this Greek word before (and without even pronouncing the name of G-d)?  Is it sort of like readers of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows getting what Hallows means?  Well, yes.  And, yes.

So how did I miss this?

Well, maybe it's the fault of translators who feel like they need me to have my own Bible in my own language and not in such a foreign and strange tongue as, well, as rare Hebrew.  The Greek Septuagint uses Aristophanes's once-rare Greek word, πόρνη [pórnē].  The "Bible in Basic English" gives the word to me as "the loose woman."  Young's "literal" Bible gives it to me as "the separated one."  Other translations make it "the harlot."  Most have "the prostitute," and many of those have some adjective like, "temple" or "shrine" or "cult" prostitute.

Fortunately, in contrast to all of the above, two of the best translators, ever, see fit to hyphenate the word.  They bring it across in English as one-word, as punctuated-apposition.  (Maybe I should have read their footnotes and their translations more carefully.)  Everett Fox has the Hebrew word as "that holy-prostitute." Robert Alter has it as "the cult-harlot."  The ambiguity is so very important.  The word can go one way, or the other, and in this case both ways at once.

So let's hear a bit more from the good translators, in some of their footnotes on this word.  Fox has:

prostitute:  Heb.  kedesha, which in cognate languages may indicate a "holy" official, here seems to describe a woman who is similarly outside the usual constraints of family.

 Alter, at Deuteronomy 23:18 has:

cult-harlot . . . cult-catamite.  The precise meaning of these two terms, qedeshah and qadesh, is diputed.  There is no clear-cut evidence that ritual prostitution was practiced in the ancient Near East, though it remains an undeniable possibility....  Exceptionally, the female qedeshah is presented here before the male qadesh suggesting she was the more familiar type.  The story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38 makes it clear that qedeshah was some sort of more refined or dignified designation for a prostitute:  Judah takes Tamar for a "whore" (zonah); Hirah his emissary then refers to her more decorously as a qedeshah.  Since the root means "sacred," it is a reasonable inference that the qedeshah was either a woman who prostituted herself as part of the cult (in this case, a fertility cult) or a prostitute working near the site of a santuary who devoted part of her professional income to the sanctuary.  Since the pilgrim obligation to participate in the temple service was laid upon the males, the qadesh would in all likelihood have been a homosexual prostitute, as the translation "cult-catamite" is meant to indicate.

So, knowing what we don't know and the little bit we do know, then how would we like to read a Bible that tells us we're reading about Tamar, as "the loose woman" or as "the separated one" or as "the shrine prostitute"?

A better question is how would we like a translator like Everett Fox and Robert Alter to translate Hosea 4:14?  They haven't yet.  So why don't we in the mean time?  Here's the MT and then a Fox-and-Alter-like modifying of the Jewish Publication Society's translation:

א־אפקוד על־בנותיכם כי תזנינה ועל־כלותיכם כי תנאפנה כי־הם עם־הזנות יפרדו ועם־הקדשות יזבחו ועם לא־יבין ילבט׃ 

I will not punish your daughters when they commit harlotry, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery; for they themselves consort in un-holiness with lewd women, and they sacrifice with the hallowed-harlots; and the people that is without understanding is distraught.

As we look at the various ways men have used women, and have used language to use women, it's somewhat curious how the language, as if it were un-holy, is sometimes so hallowed.

Unholy and Hallowed Whore Words: Part I

κἀμέ γ᾽ ἡ πόρνη χθὲς εἰσελθόντα τῆς μεσημβρίας,
ὅτι κελητίσαι 'κέλευον, ὀξυθυμηθεῖσά μοι
ἤρετ᾽ εἰ τὴν Ἱππίου καθίσταμαι τυραννίδα.

Me at least, to my Whore yesterdy, were comin at noon.
She at me, Sir Steed of Speed, were eruptin in outrage
At Bronco Buckin. Like she were sittin on her Horse, like a tyrant!

  --Xanthias, a slave
   (in the play "The Wasps," line 500, by Aristophanes,
   in Greece, in 422 BCE,
   translated here by J. K. Gayle)

What's meant to be funny about the line above is that it's out of the mouth of a mere slave, who's been using a mere whore, to answer the elegant Bdelycleon.  Bdelycleon is an elite Aristocrat in Athens.  He not only owns many horses but he also owns several slaves, including Xanthias.  He had so many slaves, in fact, that they were like swarming wasps, after which the play is named.  Bdelycleon (as Eugene O'Neill, Jr. translates him in the play) has just complained aloud, with sophisticated rhetoric, about how others are accusing him of being a tyrant when he feels he's been more than fair and just:

Everything is now tyranny with us, no matter what is concerned, whether it be large or small. Tyranny! I have not heard the word mentioned once in fifty years, and now it is more common than salt-fish, the word is even current on the market. If you are buying gurnards and don't want anchovies, the huckster next door, who is selling the latter, at once exclaims, "That is a man whose kitchen savours of tyranny!" If you ask for onions to season your fish, the green-stuff woman winks one eye and asks, "Ha, you ask for onions! are you seeking to tyrannize, or do you think that Athens must pay you your seasonings as a tribute?"

This is what the slave replies to.  In a post yesterday, we saw O'Neill's rendering:

Yesterday I went to see a whore about noon and told her to get on top; she flew into a rage, pretending I wanted to restore the tyranny of Hippias.

But I wanted to show the playwright's play on the language.  And the connections between a mere whore and a ridden horse are clearer in the Greek.  What's supposed to be funny here (as the men laugh in the audience of the play performed in Athens) is that the mere slave of the sophistocated Aristocrat who owns him inadvertently compares his Master to a mere whore.  And he's put himself in the mere position of the horse.  Yes, the men are also laughing because of the sex play, the sexual role reversals, the woman on top.  And if we had more time, then we could investigate the playwright, and his choice of words, and realize how πόρνη [pórnē] was just coming into currency in Athens as a phrase for prostitutes.  If men in slavery had no rights, and if tyrants ruled like dictators, then at least all men had rights to these women.  And the reinforcement of the sexualized hierarchy -- all men over possessed women -- came in their laughs and language.

How she (a biblical disaster) responds

Rachel Evans Held has a piece up today entitled,

"How (not) to respond to a natural disaster:"

which points out how John Piper and Skye Jethani respectively tell Christians the meaning of the earthquake for Christians. "One presumes to know the mind of God," she observes; "the other simply imitates the actions of Jesus." You'll find which is which and her response to both men when you read her post, which I'll link to below.

And you'll read how helpfully agnostic Held Evans can be, how helpfully open.  She says, "We cannot know for sure why these things happen. But we can weep.... The Japanese people don't need our lectures; they need our love."  Now that's quite a response.  And some of us are weeping; I know a Japanese mother is crying here in the USA, where she studies English, although she was to board an airplane for home, where her daughter was to have wed her own bridegroom in Sendai later this month.  Sadness.  Profound sorrow.

This, then reminds of a really biblical response.

It's very similar to Rachel Held Evans's response of empathy.

It's also the Jewish, pre-Jesus response of an earthquake or of the Earth herself.

Well, hmm, only some Christians might agree it is a biblical response.  And most Jews would agree, that if biblical, it makes no mention of G-d whatsoever. And then many Christians and Jews would question whether it was really ever canonical, although entirely historical, in the first place. It's the stuff of translation and of gendered translation and such.  Pathetic really.

Without further ado, here it is (in four - or five - translations - if you'll work with me on a fifth):

25 Great sorrow came upon Israel,
.....wherever they lived.
26 Nobles and elders broke out wailing,
.....maidens and young men lost their vigor,
.....and the women's beauty was marred.
27 Every bridegroom took up the dirge
.....while his bride sitting in the bedchamber turned to mourn.
28 Indeed, the earth had quaked against its inhabitants,
.....and the entire house of Jacob was clothed in shame.
..........--Jonathan A. Goldstein, for the Anchor Bible series

 25 Israel mourned deeply in every community, 26 rulers and elders groaned, maidens and young men became faint, the beauty of women faded. 27 Every bridegroom took up the lament; she who sat in the bridal chamber was mourning. 28 Even the land shook for its inhabitants, and all the house of Jacob was clothed with shame.
..........--the Revised Standard Version translation team 

25 And there was great mourning in Israel, in
...............every place of theirs.
26 .....And rulers and elders groaned,
virgins and young men weakened,
..........and the beauty of the women was
...................deformed.
27 Every bridegroom took up lamentation;
..........she who sat in the bridal chamber was in
...................mourning.
28 And the land quaked for those dwelling in it,
..........and all the house of Iakob was clothed
...................with shame.
..........--George Themelis Zervos, of the NETS translation team

25 καὶ ἐγένετο πένθος μέγα ἐπὶ Ισραηλ
..........ἐν παντὶ τόπῳ αὐτῶν.
26 καὶ ἐστέναξαν ἄρχοντες καὶ πρεσβύτεροι,
..........παρθένοι καὶ νεανίσκοι ἠσθένησαν,
.....καὶ τὸ κάλλος τῶν γυναικῶν ἠλλοιώθη.
27 πᾶς νυμφίος ἀνέλαβεν θρῆνον,
.....καὶ καθημένη ἐν παστῷ ἐπένθει.
28 καὶ ἐσείσθη ἡ γῆ ἐπὶ τοὺς κατοικοῦντας αὐτήν,
.....καὶ πᾶς ὁ οἶκος Ιακωβ ἐνεδύσατο αἰσχύνην.
..........---some anonymous Jewish translator rendering
................some anonymous Jewish writer's Hebrew into Hellene
....................in, of all places, Alexander the Great's Alexandria, Egypt

To be sure, Goldstein and the RSV team and Zervos are only working from the Hellene, bringing the Greek language into their English.  The real struggle for them is to know how to render the preposition epi (ἐπὶ).  It might have been written, and certainly can be read, as a bookend preposition, appearing at the start of the poetic stanza of the initial verse (25) and then at some point of the ending verse (28), which concludes the sad song.

Notice in verse 25, Goldstein chooses "upon" for the English, while the RSV team and Zervos make it "in."  What's better "upon Israel" or "in Israel" or does it make a difference?   But then in verse 28, to round out the poetic stanza, Goldstein has "against."  In contrast, the RSV team and Zervos have the opposite of "against":  "for."

I think all these men translating have missed the fact that the phrase for "the earth" or "the land" is in the feminine form in Greek:  Hē Gē (ἡ γῆ).  That's not so important until you're trying to translate the feminine pronoun:  autēn αὐτήν.  She's such a troublesome little pronoun for English bible translators these days!  Should she be he or she or it?

Couldn't we all just as easily note the Pathos, specifically the Penthos, of the Earthquake here?  Everybody is sad and is weeping.  Old people, young people, brides and bridegrooms.  Even the Earth is.  If great sorrow has come upon Israel (men and women), as Goldstein shows it has, then listen again to that Greek of verses 25 and 28 of I Maccabees 1:

25 And It birthed - Sadness did - a tremendous pain upon Isra-El,
..........in each of Its places - His places, Her places.

28 And She quaked - Earth did - a shaking upon those of
..........Her household,
.....And everybody of Jacob's house dressed with Her in shame.

(If that's not enough Bible for you, then go here for some real "New Testament."   And then do notice what Held Evans says that Jethani says that Jesus says -- and what he does not say, while he's weeping, while he's helping, when it all seems way too late.)


Now, if you're really ready, then please go read Rachel Held Evans's post.