Gender explosion

There has been an explosion of interest on the issue of gender in Bible Translation.

Adrian has come back twice with Wayne adding excellent comments to Adrians first post having written a post at almost the same time. So go and read:

• 42: Gender: Matthew 10:24.
• Adrian Warnock's UK Evangelical Blog: Bible translation and gender: whats all the heat about? (Matt 10:24, Ro 3:28).
• Better Bibles Blog: Gender-inclusive language Bible version rankings.
• Adrian Warnock's UK Evangelical Blog: Gender-inclusive language: bible version rankings.

Adrian and Wayne are doing a good job of trying to come at this from as neutral a view point as possible, whereas I am not and do not pretend to be.

I believe that one of the problems is that we have a Christian history and tradition (that goes back way part Christ into the Old Testament) of control over the scriptures by men. Even when we try to look at the texts in the original languages clean now we are still influenced by the previous history of translation.

The issues for me are

1. Getting a clear understanding of the original gender intentions of the text
2. Deciding what vocabulary to use in English to represent various gender intentions
3. Deciding which elements of vocabulary to use in which cases
4. The authority of scripture
5. Interpreting the texts to make decisions about how we will structure our Churches and how we will live as disciples.

Just as a reminder, you will see here that on every level of these questions I am going to come up with answers that are different to the ESV translation team, particularly Wayne Grudem. I am basing this first on a book by Grudem that I have bought and am reading (Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth), secondly on the article criticising the TNIV (Translation Inaccuracies in the 2005 TNIV) which I believe he wrote.

It is too late to write more about these issues tonight. However, I suspect that most people will not be aware of how extreme Wayne Grudem's views of women and christianity are. Also quite how controvversial his understanding of the Greek (and I guess Hebrew) texts is, for example:

In view of Grudem’s masculinist ideology, it would not be a surprise if his objection were
not to the original text but to noninclusive language English translations of the original
text. Yet Grudem has chosen to object to translations of the Greek word aner as anything
other than adult male, in spite of the fact that aner has been demonstrated clearly by
scholarship over centuries to be used inclusively of women. Grudem misrepresents
lexicons, makes errors in simple Greek grammar, and at times makes fallacious statements. He presents his interpretation of the Greek text as authoritative, rigid, and defensible. I contend it is not. I have demonstrated that aner is used inclusively of women.

From Against Grudem: Aner and Masculinist Misprisions of NewTestament Meaning, [a PDF file] by Ann Nyland

I am therefore very glad that Adrian is writing on this issues. My own hope is that some progress can be made to errode the credibility of the extreme masculine views that are around and which mis-represent scriptures.

Comments

[Wayne Leman]

Dave, you said: "Adrian and Wayne are doing a good job of trying to come at this from as neutral a view point as possible, whereas I am not and do not pretend to be."

Well, that's true, however both Adrian and I have very strong feelings on these issues. The approach I take is to true to be as objective as possible in terms of biblical scholarship in order to try to get people of all persuasions to think deeply and clearly on these important issues. My heart aches for the damage that the church has done to many of its members. I think that some of that damage can be repaired through better English Bible translations. I can tell you that even when I have tried to present my arguments as fairly and objectively as possible, that I have been banned from at least one major forum discussing the Bible translation implications of this very issue. Can you imagine being banned for posting comments which disagree with the POV of a discussion host? I didn't know that would still happen in today's world.

We choose our battles and our weapons and our approach, but, in the end, many of us are still willing to fight hard for things we believe to be critically important. May God have mercy on us!

[Adrian]

Thanks for keeping this debate sensible and calm. I have linked to this posts over at my place!