Featured Inclusive Language

I just was doing a quick study of the term "children of the kingdom". The exact term is only found twice in the NT (Matthew 8:12, and 13:38, KJV) --

12 But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

38 The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked [one]; ​

The Greek words from the TR are identical in both verses: υἱοὶ τῆς βασιλείας.

That first Greek word is huios (Strong's #5207) which simply means "son". Very literal translations, such as the ASV, NASB, RSV, and Darby for examples, render the word "sons", and thus "sons of the kingdom".

It seems that the KJV made a inclusive language decision in these verses.

 

Strong's lexicon says the word is sometimes used to refer to the descendents of someone, thus an inclusive term given the right context. the KJV translates G5207 about 49 times as children. Thus the many versions using "sons" might have missed the actual message. I also found "natural heirs" and "subjects" but the majority went with sons.

 

Why did the 2011 niv decide to go so much into inclusive language renderings though, unless it was due to some perceived male bias in the prior version they did then?

 

The Inclusive language renderings by themselves are not always the wrong rendering to support in translation, but the problem is that the Niv 2011 in its zeal went too far in this issue, as some of them were good to do, but others not so much, and should have stayed as the 1984 rendered them originally...