What's Worse ?

In English, where gender isn't specified, it is rendered in the masculine in the Divine order of creation: Adam then Eve.

If one wants to subdue the Divinity of creation and demand male dominance to be an error, then one might argue that the woman was created more pure in that she came from that which was made from the dust of the ground.

We men are just plain ol' dirt.

 

Why, Rippon? Where are you going with that? And which translation are you quoting from?

 

Rev 7:9-15 (KJV1611 Edition):

1. a great multitude, which no man could nuber

so I guess that most any woman could number the
Church Age Saints that make to before God's Throne

2. These are they which came out of great tribulation

IMHO, they 'came out of great tribulation' by being
raptured before the Great Tribulation Time Period started.

3. serue him day and night in his Temple

-God's Temple contains God's throne

4. Saluation to our God:

This is NOT the best translation. God does not
need Salvation - there is nothing threatening God
for which God requires salvation. Here is
a better (non-MV) translation:

Rev 7:10 (Geneva Bible. 1587 Edition):
And they cried with a loud voice, saying,
Saluation commeth of our God,
that sitteth vpon the throne, and of the Lambe.

Does anybody remember why a perfectly good
translation got (what is the opposite of improved?
-- 'disproved'?) in 1611?

(Item edited for vertical spacing clarification,
I checked the spelling before SAVE-ing the first time.
Did you know the e-mails notifing one of a response
to a topic are sent out at first SAVE? So any editing
later on is NOT in the e-mail. This gets really interesting
when someone reads the posting rules and figures
they should delete what they said against a Bible
or against a person. Don't worry, most of us won't tell,
but we do mark down the one who does that
as a RESPONSIBLE POSTER.)

 

This is changing, TCassidy, as much as I don't like it. Those people who attended public school in the last 30 or so years, or less, have been taught that the use of the male pronoun in general or non-specific cases is archaic, or, at best, hopelessly old-fashioned and biased. Now terms like "he or she" replaces "he," and "person," or "man or woman," or something similar, often replaces "man." Or an author can switch back and forth between generic "he" and "she," being careful, of course, to use "she," at least as, or more often than, "he." The feminists won that battle.

It's already affecting our Bible translations.

 

Have you read "Eats, Shoots & Leaves?" Never knew grammar could be funny. lol

 

Which is why I started the other thread about MV's causing confusion. :tonofbricks:

 

I do not think that there is anything wrong with using a generic he/man when speaking of all people. We have become way to sensitive in this area.

 

I was the first to add agreement on that thread.

Though I'm not sure why you would single out MV's. Older versions cause just as much confusion, especially as their languages, dialects, etc, die out.

 

Since no one has given this response, thus far, what is the difference? Is either not adding to or taking away from the Word of God?

That said, there are instances in the Greek (don't know any Hebrew or aramaic, so cannot comment) where the English (again, don't know about any other language so can't comment) does not adequately cover the question. For examples, "Pneuma" is a noun in the neuter gender. But when it refers to the Holy Spirit, the usage is masculine; "pisteuo" (faith), "charis" (grace), and ""ekklesia" (church) are all feminine. However in English, we normally refer to these three as neuter. So the various nuances may or may not be all that readily apparent in our language. Conversely, we also have made some slight or not so slight changes, merely due to one language versus another. An example to this might be the spiritual gifts of "apostolos" (apostle) and "poimen" (pastor). These are masculine nouns, but the usage is not exclusive, IMO, for Scripture says that the Holy Spirit divides the gifts severally to every man, as he wills. Other scriptures show that spiritual gifts are not limited to the male gender, as I read it, so that all women gets one or more as well as all men, when one becomes a believer at the point of salvation.

Again, that said, the Bible is not concerned with being PC, but is given in order to give us God's written revelation. It is adding to or taking away from Scripture to conform Biblical usage to modern and 'post-modern' thinking and terminology.

Ed

 

First, any expression of a specific gender when the text is actually gender neutral inversely results in the exclusion of the other gender. More precisely stated the question might have been: Which is worse, to be feminine exclusive or masculine exclusive? Of course, the answer is neither! The gender of translated words should be expressed as accurately and completely as is possible.

Second, I emphasized the above words with boldness because it is an addition only in the sense that a gender has been supplied into the translation where originally there was none. In the AV, "man" and "men" were proper renderings (mostly one English word for one ancient language word) of neuter terms; the principle meaning of those words in the AV literary style was not masculine, but rather generic (Webster's 1828 Dictionary first entry) --

MAN, n. plu. men. [Heb.species, kind, image, similitude.]

1. Mankind; the human race; the whole species of human beings; beings distinguished from all other animals by the powers of reason and speech, as well as by their shape and dignified aspect. "Os homini sublime dedit."

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion Gen.1.
Man that is born of a woman, is of few days and full of trouble. Job.14.
My spirit shall not always strive with man. Gen.6.
I will destroy man whom I have created. Gen.6.
There hath no temptation taken you, but such as is common to man. 1 Cor.10.
It is written, man shall not live by bread alone. Matt.4.​

But the NIV has no such excuse since the first definition per modern dictionary is that "man" now means an adult male human. I believe that this is evidence that, despite some contemporary translations attempts to bring modern language to the scriptures, the 'traditional wording' in the Tyndale-AV tradition continues to be influential.

I share this information from The American Heritage Dictionary --

Traditionally, many writers have used man and words derived from it to designate any or all of the human race regardless of sex. In fact, this is the oldest use of the word. In Old English the principal sense of man was “a human,” and the words wer and wyf (or wæpman and wifman) were used to refer to “a male human” and “a female human” respectively. But in Middle English man displaced wer as the term for “a male human,” while wyfman (which evolved into present-day woman) was retained for “a female human.” Despite this change, man continued to carry its original sense of “a human” as well, resulting in an asymmetrical arrangement that many criticize as sexist.​

For example, whenever the Greek word anthropos (Strong's #444, meaning people, humans without regard to male or female) occurs the best contemporary rendering would likely be gender neutral. I cannot think of a context where this would not be true.

 

Many of you are bailing water on a sinking ship. The English language has changed so much that even the rules of accepted grammer are changing. For example, the singular usage of "they" is perfectly acceptable.

I use the TNIV preciselly because it has modern English rules and is gender accurate (not neutral meaning without gender).