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?  

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(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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Proverbs 14, Part II

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

In Part II of this series on Proverbs 14, I'd like us to get to the Hebrew, the Hebraic Greek, and to various translations a bit later in the post.  The questions I'd really like to start with are these:  "What's the right way to read the Bible, to read the Proverbs?"  and "What is the worst consequence of just reading in a way that seems right?"  You see how I'm immediately riffing off of Proverbs 14:12, the epigraph above.  My own father used to quote this one often, often in his daily life but as an outgrowth of his Southern Baptist evangelical Christian missionary preaching.  He used this proverb not only to justify his work; but he used it also as a metonym for the entire mission of the gospel.  As far as I know, he never ever gave a second thought to whether this was the right way to interpret the proverb or not.  What seemed right to him was right.  And so I'd like us to consider this:  there's a bit of irony here in really believing what this proverb means, for any of us.

But let's skip back to verse 1 of Proverbs 14.  There are some, I've noticed, who read Proverbs 14:1 as justifying a woman's, particularly a wife's, being sub-ordinated to a man, to her husband.  For example, here and here are two bloggers who self-identify as Christian women, as helpmates of their respective husbands; both of these wives quote the proverb not only to justify their sub-missive position to their husbands but also to suggest that this complementarianism is the universal and timeless norm for all wives in every place.  The way these individuals are reading Proverbs 14:1, are claiming their reading as right not only for themselves but also for others, certainly seems the right way for them.  But then we find Jared, and Bob, and Kristen, all reading this proverb differently in comments here from Part I of this blog series.  So what's the right way?  What seems right?  And what about the big fat but the end (that's so plain to see in Proverbs 14:12)?

Today, I see that yesterday the Associated Baptist Press reported that representatives for the denomination made clear:  "Southern Baptists ‘cannot commend’ [the] new NIV Bible translation."  It's the way that seems right to these Southern Baptists that's at issue:

The Southern Baptist Convention went on record June 15 saying it “cannot commend” the 2011 New International Version Bible translation and its use of gender-neutral language. “This is as big as it gets....  This is the word of God. The best-selling Bible translation in the United States is now gender neutral.”  ...[T]he NIV retains 75 percent of gender-neutral language included in a Today’s New International Version translation denounced by the Southern Baptist Convention in 2002....  “As Southern Baptists, I don’t think we have the luxury of not speaking to this important issue....  People are buying this translation unaware of what’s happening. We are the anchor of the evangelical world.”

So sure enough, we see this:

The old 1984 NIV, which was not "gender-neutral," had Southern Baptist language that seemed right.  And 1984 NIV Proverbs 14:12 reads in this way:  "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death."  But in the end, the 2011 NIV Proverbs 14:12 goes this way:  "There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death."  Now it's not just "a man's" Bible version, like the right NIV was, and the KJV, the NASB, the ESV, and the "Holman Christian Standard Bible, released in 2004, ... considered [by many Southern Baptists to be] among the most accurate translations" all still are.  And the new NIV's explicit omission of a man, that obvious gender neutrality added so inaccurately to the Bible, just appears to be wrong here in this proverb.  So what's the right way?  What seems right?

Well, let's get to the Hebrew and the Hebraic Greek in just a bit.  I'm going to inflict a little feminism on us blog readers for just a bit first.  Please, by all means, feel free to skip right over this paragraph.  This is my reader's advisory to you.  This paragraph contains references to radical, activist and not-just-academic feminism.  If such does not seem right to you, if its end is death somehow for you, then please do skip the white space to the paragraph immediately following.  Now, I've been following with great interest how bloggers are covering (either promoting or dissing) the Slutwalk movement.  Here's the background:  It seemed right to a man, Michael Sanguinetti, a Toronto police officer, a Constable with considerable authority, to announce publicly that it's not seemly, it's not right, for females to dress provocatively, or else they're setting themselves up for abuse, even rape.  Some of  Mr. Sanguinetti's actual words to the wise were these:  "women should avoid dressing like sluts."  And so feminists, worldwide now, are taking to the streets in protest of this victim-blaming wisdom.  They're dressing like sluts to show that there is a way that seems right to a man but in the end for the woman it can mean abuse, rape, death.  There's a growing entry at wikipedia for any who are just getting up to speed on all of this.  If you want to be impressed, however, with how feminists who disagree are talking, then see this set of blogposts:  Meghan Murphy's conversations with Hugo Schwyzer; and Jessica Valenti's conversation with Meghan.  At stake is what seems right.  And then what appears right to somebody else.

Now, let's get to the Hebrew (Masoretic Text) and the Hebraic Greek (the so-called Septuagint):

יֵ֤שׁ דֶּ֣רֶךְ יָ֭שָׁר לִפְנֵי־אִ֑ישׁ וְ֝אַחֲרִיתָ֗הּ דַּרְכֵי־מָֽוֶת׃

ἔστιν ὁδὸς ἣ δοκεῖ ὀρθὴ εἶναι παρὰ ἀνθρώποις τὰ δὲ τελευταῖα αὐτῆς ἔρχεται εἰς πυθμένα ᾅδου 

What doesn't really seem so right to translator Robert Alter is the repetition of a Hebrew word, which he gives in his English translation as "a straight way" (in the first part) in comparative contrast with "the ways of death" (to end the proverb).  In his footnote, Alter says:

The repetition of "way" from the first verset is a little awkward.  That effect might be at least mitigated if one adopted Tur-Sinai's proposed emendation of 'aharit to 'orhotaw, yielding "its paths are ways to death."

Alter, I'm sure, is not intending just to be pedantic here.  What do you think?  What I'm noticing is how little he needs to appeal to the Septuagint here (which he does so often elsewhere) even though the Greek would help his case, as the awkwardness that seems not right to him is avoided in the Hellene.  Oh well, I just finished reading Rob Bell's book that talks so much about Hell and such and noticed how he keys in on the Greek word Hades as one of the few references to this place in the Bible.  (A friend who bought the book and was also given a second copy lent it to me to read because there is a way that seems right to a man but in the end it's not.  My friend wanted me mostly just to look at what's right, or just seemingly right, in Bell's way of looking at the biblical language.  Well, he himself uses the word Hades four times.  So I got a free meal out of my book review for noticing things like that.  So did you notice how this LXX Proverb 14:12 ends in Hades?)

What way seems right? What's the end?