pronouns

Gender Neutral Bible Has Evangelists Running To Reclaim HIStory

The 2011 version of the New International Version Bible isn’t even available yet, but all of its additions of “sisters” and “she” where “brothers” and “he” once stood alone has a Christian evangelist group furious.

Hilariously, it’s the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood with the problem; isn’t this an organization who opted for a lengthier title to include women? The AP relays:

The 2011 translation of the New International Version Bible, or NIV, does not change pronouns referring to God, who remains “He” and “the Father.” But it does aim to avoid using “he” or “him” as the default reference to an unspecified person. The NIV Bible is used by many of the largest Protestant faiths. The translation comes from an independent group of biblical scholars that has been meeting yearly since 1965 to discuss advances in biblical scholarship and changes in English usage.

Before the new translation even hit stores, it drew opposition from the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, an organization that believes women should submit to their husbands in the home and only men can hold some leadership roles in the church. The council decided it would not endorse the new version because the changes alter “the theological direction and meaning of the text,” according to a statement. Similar concerns led the Southern Baptist Convention to reject the NIV’s previous translation in 2005. At issue is how to translate pronouns that apply to both genders in the ancient Greek and Hebrew texts but have traditionally been translated using masculine forms in English.

An example from the translator’s notes for Mark 4:25 to show how the NIV’s translation of these words has evolved over the past quarter-century. The widely distributed 1984 version of the NIV quotes Jesus: “Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.” The more recent incarnation of the NIV from 2005, called Today’s New International Version, changed that to: “Those who have will be given more; as for those who do not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”

I simply will not stand for a Bible that haphazardly throws around the pronoun “they” just to avoid an uncomfortable battle of the sexes. The terrorists won.

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