God is not male, God in the divine essence does not have a gendered identity, and yet God is the Father of Jesus and by extension the Father of all his adopted children as well. How so?

Witherington answers his own question:

…the relationship between Jesus and the Father is one of direct kinship. Jesus and the Father are one…

This doesn’t mean that the Son was literally begotten by the Father, only that they had a unique, distinctive, even exclusive family relationship to one another. The language of Father and Son implies intimacy, deep kinship, sharing of a nature (in this case a divine nature) and the like. It is relational language, not gender language.

Thus the attempt to treat the “Father” language used of God as either a bad manifestation of a male-dominated patriarchal culture or a clue to the actual masculinity of God is wrong on both counts. It also ignores an important fact. The reason Jesus did not call God “Mother” is not just because God is never prayed to or directly addressed that way in the Bible, but also because Jesus had an actual human mother.

And a note on language:

When we see male or female nouns or pronouns, we assume they must imply or entail gender. This is false.

Moore College professor George Athas writes:

A friend of mine who pastors a congregation told me of a young man in his church who was heading off to study at a theological college. This young man approached my friend for advice on making a choice: should he study Greek when he got to college, or should he study Hebrew? My friend’s response was legendary: “Well,” he said, “when you finish college and get up into your pulpit, do you want to be wearing only your shirt, or only your pants?” Since not many of us should presume to be teachers, we should do our best to make sure that our teachers are as well equipped as possible. Hebrew is just one of the tools of the trade.

And again:

Our teachers in our churches, our theologians and Christian scholars, our Bible translators and missionaries, will inspire more confidence when they’ve done the hard yards of understanding the biblical texts — the authoritative Word of God — in the original languages. It’s not a guarantee to good teaching or sound theology, but it certainly is a good step in the right direction. It’s the responsible act of going back to the sources.

May God grant us perseverance in biblical language study.

What the author did wrong:

• She did not employ the already established Tlingit writing system, leaving her work illegible
• She used a non-conventional spelling of the language in the title
• She’s entirely unknown to the the people for whom she did the encyclopedia
• She remarks, “I think often I’m led spiritually, and I don’t make my decisions with the full knowledge of the situation.”
• To elders, who learned Tlingit at the knees of their parents and grandparents, her CD recordings are gibberish

Does the author then view her self-published work as a waste? She describes her motivation,

“To some degree I think I was trying to bring my mother and father back together through my Celtic heritage. My father had a little French, and my mother had a little Scottish. And I thought that when they lost their culture, they lost their reason for being together. And I think that deep in my heart I was looking for that family togetherness, and I wanted to find that through language.”

What?!

Read the full story (with audio).

(HT: Language Hat) New Tlingit encyclopedia baffling to scholars, speakers _ KCAW

“The world’s most celebrated hyperpolyglot relied on the same tools given to first-year language-learners today. The conclusion? Hyperpolyglots may begin with talent, but they aren’t geniuses. They simply enjoy tasks that are drudgery to normal people. The talent and enjoyment drive a virtuous cycle that pushes them to feats others simply shake their heads at, admiration mixed with no small amount of incomprehension.”

Read on…

The first half highlights the lasting impact of the King James Version while the second introduces erstwhile Christian missionary and translator Daniel Everett who walked away not only from Bible translation and missions, but also from Christianity and regrettably, his wife.

Recent technological advances are speeding up the process of Bible translation, not without controversy. Through it all, Bible translation and linguistic research have marched hand in hand, sometimes producing unintended results. In 1977, Christian missionary Daniel Everett went to Brazil with the intention of bringing the Bible to the Pirahã people of the Amazonian basin. He didn’t manage to convert anyone– except himself. He lost his faith, and became an expert in the Pirahã language. He theorized that Pirahã has no recursion, or ability to embed phrases within sentences, as in relative clauses. This was a direct rebuke to Noam Chomsky’s theory that all languages are recursive (which is a cornerstone of the idea that all languages share a “universal grammar”). Some linguists have taken issue with Everett’s findings. Read more.

Give the episode a listen.

Translators are usually the first theologians in any language or community. They have to grapple with all the complex problems arising out of the need to express the ancient and eternal message of the Bible in their own language. They face the challenge of how to translate Biblical concepts, ideas, practices, festivals, rituals, spiritual beings, cultural artifacts, metaphors, beliefs, etc. in terms that make sense in the local vernacular. How to do this meaningfully, accurately, faithfully, clearly and with native genius and natural rhythms is the challenge that faces every translator. In so doing the translator is a pioneer who enters new territory, names it, demarcates it and thereby delimits to a certain extent the nature of biblical discourse in the local language. No wonder translation is too important to be left to translators alone!

–Dr. A.O. Mojola

When he claims “all agree,” Strauss is “referring to Carson, Poythress, Grudem, and myself, though in most cases I believe it would include others who have written on this topic (including Grant Osborne, John Kohlenberger, Andreas Köstenberger, Darrell Bock, Craig Blomberg, Jon Weatherly, and others).”² “P&G” is shorthand for Poythress and Grudem.

1. All agree that gender-accurate (gender-inclusive, gender-neutral) translation is a good thing, when the use of such language accurately represents the meaning of the original text. In many cases the use of an inclusive term improves the accuracy of the translation. An example of this is the translation “person” in contexts where Greek anthropos is used generically to refer to either a man or a woman. Romans 3:28 (TNIV, italics added) accurately reads, “For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from observing the law.”
2. All agree that care should be taken not to use inclusive language when the original author intended a gender-specific sense. The (biological) gender distinctions of the original text should be respected.
3. All agree that translations should seek not to obscure cultural features, including patriarchal ones, that were part of the original meaning of the text.
4. All agree that gender-specific terms should be used with reference to historical persons when males or females are specified in illustrative material, and in parables where characters are male or female.
5. As a possible qualifier to the previous point, all agree that words should be translated according to their sense in context, not according to extraneous features associated with their referents. For example, an author may use anthropos in the sense of “human being,” even though the person referred to happens to be a male. James 5:17 is accurately translated “Elijah was a human being [anthropos] just like we are,” because anthropos in this context means “human being,” not “male human being” (the “we” is surely inclusive). Though Elijah was a male, this characteristic is extraneous to the sense of anthropm os in context (cf. Acts 10:26; John 10:33; 1 Tim 2:5).
6. All agree that there is nothing inherently immoral or evil in masculine generic terms. The goal of translation should not be to abolish male references but to determine which English words and phrases most accurately and clearly reproduce the meaning of the original text.
7. All agree that grammatical gender is different than natural or biological gender (sex). It is therefore incorrect to demand the reproduction of grammatical gender across languages with different gender systems.
8. All agree that Greek anthropos is accurately translated “person” or “human being” when the author intended to refer to either a man or a woman.
9. All agree that Greek anthropoi is accurately translated with inclusive terms like “people” or “human beings” when the author intended to include both men and women.
10. All agree that Hebrew ,îsh sometimes has an inclusive sense, and in these cases it is accurately translated with expressions such as “each one” or “each person.”
11. All agree that adelphoi is accurately translated “brothers and sisters” when the referents include both males and females
12. All agree that Hebrew banmîm is accurately translated “children” when the referents include both males and females. While most would say the same about Greek huioi, P&G affirm this only reluctantly and with qualifications.
13. All agree that Greek pateres may be translated “parents” instead of “fathers” when the referents include both males and females.
14. Do Greek pateres and Hebrew ,abmôt ever mean “ancestors”? Most commentators would say yes. P&G seem to agree with this in principle, but they reject this translation in practice and do not discuss passages where both males and females are in view (e.g., 1 Sam 12:6; Heb 3:9).
15. All agree that the translation “man” for the human race is one of the most difficult issues in gender-related translation and that there are no easy answers. Neither English “man” nor terms like “humanity” or “humankind” can capture all of the wordplays present in the Hebrew admamm. Whichever translation is used, footnotes are appropriate to explain the wordplays of the original text.
16. Similarly, all agree that the translation “son of man” for Hebrew ben admamm and Greek huios tou anthropmou is another difficult issue without easy answers. While these phrases usually mean “human being,” this translation may obscure messianic references in some contexts. Again, explanatory footnotes are sometimes necessary. A number of other agreements could be added to this list, but these are sufficient to demonstrate common presuppositions and philosophical perspectives.

Do you agree?

When we read in Romans 1:1 that Jesus was declared to be the Son of God at his resurrection, we are lead to ask in what way is Jesus (like) a son and in what way he is (like) a/the Son of God. But by asking these questions we are starting with our own pre-understanding and experience of what it means to be a son as used in our own ethnolinguistic community. Here arises the difficulty with translating “Son of God” in Muslim contexts as readers come to the text with a notion of what it means to be a son that contrasts sharply with the way the Bible speaks about sonship. God becomes analogical of man.

Linguist Rick Brown summarizes the difficulty:

In some languages and people groups, sonship terminology is used almost exclusively for direct biological relationships, i.e., it means the same as ‘offspring’ in English. In Classical Arabic, for example, the counterparts for ‘son’ and ‘father’ mean biological son and biological father. These terms were not used metaphorically for other interpersonal relationships, not even for a nephew…

The Arabic usage contrasts significantly with the situation in Hebrew and Aramaic (and Akkadian), where one could address his son, grandson, nephew, son-in-law, and neighbor’s son as bni/bri ‘my son’…

So it is not surprising that these Hebrew idioms were misunderstood by the Arabs in classical times, even by some Arab Christians, as referring to biological descent.¹

Concerning sonship language in Muslim contexts then we see that the pattern for the analogy runs from human to divine; that is, the human ethnolinguistic view of sonship supplies the content for the divine, Scriptural way of speaking. God becomes analogical of man rather than man analogical of God.

Athanasius, however, questions this human-divine direction of analogy in writing against the Arians. He asks,

Why is it that, on hearing that God has a Son, they deny Him by the parallel of themselves; whereas, if they hear that He creates and makes, no longer do they object their human ideas? they ought in creation also to entertain the same, and to supply God with materials, and so deny Him to be Creator, till they end in grovelling with Manichees. But if the bare idea of God transcends such thoughts, and, on very first hearing, a man believes and knows that He is in being, not as we are, and yet in being as God, and creates not as man creates, but yet creates as God, it is plain that He begets also not as men beget, but begets as God. For God does not make man His pattern; but rather we men, for that God is properly, and alone truly Father of His Son, are also called fathers of our own children; for of Him ‘is every fatherhood in heaven and earth named.’²

While no language will comport exactly as Scripture does, Christians must bear in mind Athanasius’ grounding principle for analogical language: God does not make man his pattern. Unfortunately this is more easily said than applied.

Please use the version available at http://sblgntforkindle.appspot.com

Original Post

My boy Timothy Lee is unstoppable. First, I posted my Kindle version of the SBLGNT. Then, Timothy Lee left a comment announcing his Kindle version which incorporated fast dictionary look up of passages. Now he’s updated his version to include the SBLGNT critical/textual apparatus and the front matter. This is the Kindle version I like most. Did I mention that Timothy is 16 years old?! What a brother!

Release Notes

2011-06-10 sblgnt-timothylee-2.0.prc

NEW – apparatus included. When a verse has a text-critical note associated with it then the verse number becomes a link you can navigate to and click on to take you to the corresponding note.  From there you can hit the back button to go back to your previous location in the main text.

NEW – the front matter (preface, introduction, etc.), not including the table of contents, has been included

CHANGED - Certain in-text elements of the critical apparatus have been modified so as to make their inclusion possible. See PDF.

2011-04-03 sblgnt-timothylee.prc

See details here.

Regularly reading Hebrew is a struggle for me. It can be so taxing staring at those characters! And that’s even while using my Reader’s Hebrew Bible. But let me tell you, I am always blown away how more facility with Hebrew comes with regular reading. Read one day and feel tired. Read two and feel a little bit better. Read three in a row and you’ve almost connected four. Read four or more in a row and start rolling. To go further, how about a strategy?

There’s a great summer Hebrew reading strategy posted over on the Ancient Hebrew Poetry blog. He  writes that “One way of weaving a part of the Hebrew Bible into your cognitive flesh is to read through the book of Genesis in Hebrew until you understand every line of it on the fly without a dictionary or a grammar to help you.”

His strategy follows this format to tackle Genesis:

1. Study visually pericope by pericope
2. Listen pericope by pericope
3. Master the text grammatically – think in terms of grammar, syntax, and information structure.
4. Master the text semantically. Before running to commentaries, it pays to devote time to the language and structure of the text itself.

What a beast of a strategy! I can testify to the value of a multimedia approach to learning/retaining Hebrew. When I did an independent study on Exodus in seminary, I listened through the book ad nauseum until I began hearing the text in my head. This served in part to speed up the pace at which I was able to read and this made me happy. (Any little thing to lift your spirits while studying a language will keep away a defeatist attitude and keep you going.)

Yes, the strategy above is a beast, but it’s a strategy, a purposeful, intentional outline to master Hebrew. It won’t be comfortable, but it’ll sure be a blessing.