The Bible for Better and for Worse

I should point out that the original languages were Hebrew and Greek so the question is how best to translate them into modern English (and note that English itself has changed). For instance “men” can mean either “male Homo sapiens”, “adult male Homo sapiens”, or “Homo sapiens (male and female, all ages)” with the last becoming less common in modern English. So what does the Hebrew (or Greek) word in the original mean and what current English word (or words) best fits that meaning? Using ‘men’ 100 years ago might have made sense but ‘people’ might fit better now due to the changing meaning of ‘men’ in English.

I’m with Erp. I studied ancient Greek as my foreign language in university; and many places that were translated as “man” or “men” were actually words inclusive of all people, regardless of gender. These “original” versions were, in many cases, created with an agenda to create and support a patriarchal society in areas where matriarchy was the norm.

Pretty much what Erp said. I remember that in Spanish class that mixed-sex groups, e.g. mothers and fathers, brother and sisters, male and female students, etc., would be described using the masculine plurals, so the groups would be called “padres” rather than “madres y padres,” “hermanos” rather than “hermanos y hermanas,” and “alumnos” rather than “alumnos y alumnas.” If Hebrew and Greek–which are both gender-inflected, unlike modern English–have a similar rule about mixed-sex rules, then there probably are places where “sons” really means “children,” and “brothers” really means “brothers and sisters,” and not taking this into account would mean a less accurate translation.

I wonder if God will stop by and say “How dare you change the book, those are my words! I damn you for eternity!”

Or maybe he’ll come and rewrite it in such a way as to remove any possibility for misinterpretation – something an all-perfect being should have no trouble doing.

Coincidentally, some Christian publishers are trying to make a revised, more gender-neutral Bible:

How did they deal with Paul’s teachings about women?

“I do not permit a person to teach or to have authority over a person; that person must be silent.”

t would be better scholarship, I think, if they left the “original” version as is, with little footnotes to indicate the revisions, instead of purging the text everywhere it appears sexist.

That’s what the Revised Standard Version tried to do, basically only updating the language from the KJV from 16th century English to a more modern translation, keeping the meaning intact.

I’d guess there are a heck of a lot of instances where it’s perfectly defensible to translate something that’s been previously translated as male in a more gender neutral way.

Even in English there’s no good way to say something and be completely gender neutral (I find myself using “they / their” etc when I’m trying to speak of a neutral general person, and I’m not the only one, but that’s a relatively new usage that’s far from standard).

In English, it’s mainly pronouns and some words describing things like professions that are gendered, with the latter generally moving towards gender neutral terms in contemporary usage. But remember that lots of languages have gender that’s far more pervasive with the same term for a group of males being used for a mixed gender group and such. In Spanish, for instance, both “the sons of God” and “the children of God” would be “los hijos de Dios”, unless someone wanted to phrase it as “the sons and daughters of God” or “los hijos y las hijas de Dios”.

Of course, I do have to admit I know very little about the gramatical structure of ancient Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, etc.

The KJV is hardly the original text of the Bible. Being the main English translation for so long it has had a lot of influence on later translations.

Remember, it’s also not a matter of just translating a text from one language to another – we don’t have the original text in the original language, we have lots of copies of copies that don’t always agree. And modern scholars have a lot more manuscripts available to look at than the translators of the KJV.

Having read a good deal of the “old testament” in Masoretic Hebrew I can confidently state that it doesn’t say much of what the Christians think it says anyway. The King James version, which is used by most Christian fundamentalists, is an utter mess from a translational perspective and many of the “mistakes” appear purposeful. Psalms 26:16, which is often sited by Christians as prophetic of the crucifixion, is an excellent example of beneficial mistranslation:

King James Version:

“For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.”

Masoretic Hebrew:

“For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: like a lion at my hands and my feet.”

Easy to see how they mixed that one up… pierced, from the root karah, looks an awful lot like lion, from the root ‘arly… except… you know… for having entirely different letters. *coughs*

Regardless, I think the whole thing should be re-translated. The results would be fascinating to any true biblical scholar.

(Oh, and PS, slightly off topic but referring to good scholarship, the HCSB version of the Bible is pretty new and that is pretty much what they did. The translators tried to write it in the vernacular as much as possible without taking as much away from the passage as The Message does. They were pretty good about putting ambiguous words in footnotes because they wanted it to be as accurate as possible.)

Psalm 22:16 not 26:16. I believe that the Septuagint uses a word meaning bore or pierce.

For those not familiar the Septuagint is an early (pre Christian) translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. So are current attempts to make out the original Hebrew involve piecing together through a translation as well as through the Hebrew text.

Think of it as a family tree. For a given part of the Hebrew Bible (let us say Psalm 22) we have

1. The original which we don’t have
2a. Copies of copies of this in Hebrew one of which is translated into Greek
2b. Copies of copies of the Greek until we get one or more actual documents (and/or quotes of the Psalm in Greek by various early authors who also left documents (or copies of their documents) that we have)
2c. One of these versions was translated into Latin (the Vulgate) which also has a textual tree
3a. Copies of copies of this in Hebrew one of which eventually becomes the Masoretic Text.
4a. For some parts of the Hebrew Bible we also have alternative Hebrew versions (e.g., Dead Sea Scrolls)

We actually do seem to have Psalm 22:16 in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It apparently supports the Septuagint version (pierced not lions).

Hemant, did you read the article you linked to closely?

The NIV is an older (new) translation (new in that it was published in the twentieth century, but older in that it was one of the first common English translations of the twentieth century).

A revision of it was released in 2002, the TNIV (Today’s New International Version), which was the gender-neutral Bible the article is referring to. The new NIV to be released will undo some of the editorial changes (i.e., gender-neutral changes) made from the original NIV for the TNIV.

a Christian website from the UK, is trying to figure out which verses in the Bible are the worst.

I’m guessing this is so they can remove the verses that absolutely no one can twist to justify their own agenda.

And I don’t quite understand how all the bible editing works. This seems nothing more than a PR stunt so they can say “look how less immoral the bible is now”.

This is just more proof that religion is only about money. Scientist prove half the “history” in the bible wrong and the bible becomes the infallible word of god (and the science is resisted) because accepting the truth can only lead to more people leaving the religion and becoming less fanatical. People start figuring out just how misogynistic some of the things in the bible are and its edited so more women join (and hopefully bring the kids along).

What Erp said. This is a translation issue, not an editing of the “original” Bible.

NRSV uses gender-neutral language in a number of places, where they deemed that to be an appropriate translation. NRSV is still gender-specific in the misogynistic verses (e.g. Timothy), where gender-specific translation is clearly appropriate.

Well according to Ezekiel 23:20:

“For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses.”

A woman named Aholibah really, really, liked big penises. A girl’s gotta have her standards.

My personal favourite:
“Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes;
their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished.”
– Isaiah 13:16

Lovely, isn’t it?
Isaiah 13 really is a work of art…

The simple way to use the bible is to first read it through, then understand what it is trying to tell you. Sort of like reading a novel or even crap books like dan drown’s – i made up 75% of the facts book the davinci code.

If you want to narrate a novel to another person, u wouldn’t include all the sex and unnessary scenes too, just the plot.

Quoting verses will not give you the whole picture. Sigh.

From my humbleness in reading and understanding the bible, it just tells me that there is a GOD, and he loves us a lot, and wishes us to do the same, in which, his love has no boundaries.

On the way, please do not forget to love one another and refrain from doing bad things, although shit happens in life which is proven through past stories.
There, simple. That’s the plot.

Amen, and God bless everyone, including those haters. 😀