TNIV and Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy

I just received in the mail the new edition of Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy by Wayne Grudem and Vern Poythress. (Prof. Poythress is one of my most respected theologians, not least because he had also been a mathematician.) This new edition includes updated information about the new revision of the New International Version, i.e., Today’s New International Version (TNIV). It’s sad that this issue is causing a controversy in the evangelical world, and I am quite surprised at the position that D. A. Carson are taking in this issue, given that Carson wrote an article for the book Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. That ad hominem attacks should come from Carson, as quotations from the book show, was even more surprising. I find that Grudem and Poythress are very charitable toward those who disagree with them; they generally focus on issues of linguistics and translation. Though they touch upon the problem of feminism’s influence, they do not attribute bad faith or evil intent to others. I wonder if Carson has retracted at least some of his more intemperate statements.

By the way, the claim to gender neutrality is disingenuous. Consider how one of the first so-called gender-neutral translations, the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), translates James 4:4 as follows:

Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

The Greek word that was translated as adulterers is moichalides, which is grammatically feminine. Even the King James Version has “Ye adulterers and adultresses”! So, when a rebuke is issued, only men receive it and women are excluded! That would be the logical conclusion of the underlying principle that a generic “he” would exclude the fairer half of the population. Oy!

UPDATE (2005-04-25 18:18) It’s a good thing, I suppose, that Chinese does not have the analogous problem. Well, actually, it has the opposite problem of oppressing the less fair half of the population. In Chinese, the normal character for the third-person singular pronoun has the root of ren2 (a human being), and is applicable to either sex. It is my understanding that the character specifically for the feminine form—with the root nü3 (“woman” or “female person”) replacing ren2—came at a later time. In fact, the traditional Union Version of the Chinese Bible does not use it at all. So the problem with the Chinese may be just the opposite: women get special treatment by having a character of their own, while men’s identity is lost in genericity. We ought to complain!