Are the Criticisms of the TNIV Bible Really Justified? An Interaction With Craig Blomberg, Darrell Bock, Peter Bradley, D. A. Carson, and Bruce Waltke

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Introduction

On September 4, 2002, Zondervan Publishing House sent to all members of the Evangelical Theological Society and all members of the Institute for Biblical Research a packet of information about Today's New International Version (TNIV). That packet contained articles written by Craig Blomberg,[1] Don Carson,[2] and Bruce Waltke,[3] all defending the TNIV in one way or another. In addition, the packet contained an interview with Peter Bradley,[4] the president of the International Bible Society, published in an edition of the IBS publication Light Magazine (July, 2002). In addition to these four articles, Craig Blomberg's article mentions a widely-circulated article by Darrell Bock, in which he supports the legitimacy of several of the passages that have been criticized in the TNIV.[5]

I count it a privilege to be able to interact with these five men, each of whom is highly respected in the evangelical world. Craig Blomberg, Darrell Bock, and Don Carson have contributed enormously to the work of evangelical scholarship in New Testament in our generation, and Bruce Waltke has likewise made enormous contributions to the academic study of the Old Testament. I have profited many times both from the academic writings of these men and from personal interaction with each of them.

Peter Bradley is president of a remarkable organization, the International Bible Society, that distributes Bibles in over 100 countries today, and that has been responsible for distributing many millions of Bibles since its founding in 1809. Peter Bradley himself, in several personal conversations with me during the past year, has consistently exhibited personal graciousness and an eagerness to honor Christ in the way we deal with this controversy, as have others involved with Zondervan Publishing House and with the NIV's Committee on Bible Translation (the CBT).

I am sure that people on both sides of this controversy wish that somehow it would go away. Yet people on both sides are convinced that important principles are at stake, and neither side has felt that it could, in good conscience before God, remain silent.[6]

Someone might ask, how could you think to disagree with men of such integrity, such commitment to the Word of God, and such academic expertise? For reasons I will explain in detail below, in spite of the high respect in which I hold the writings of these men on other subjects, I think they have reached an incorrect conclusion regarding a specific matter, namely, the translation into English of certain kinds of male-orientated details of meaning that are present in the original Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible. This may at first sound like a small question, but, as those familiar with the controversy already know, it affects something like 4000 verses in the entire Bible.

Is it possible that such esteemed scholars could have come to an incorrect conclusion on this matter? It is certainly possible, for no human teacher is perfect in this age. James says, "We all stumble in many ways, and if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to bridle his whole body" (Jas. 3:2).

In fact, there are respected Christian scholars and other leaders on both sides of this question. So I simply ask that readers evaluate the reasons and evidence on both sides, including the material below, and come to their own decisions based on the evidence, not simply by following one personality or another in this dispute.

A. What is the main point of disagreement?

The heart of the difference can be summarized in one sentence:

Is it acceptable to translate only the general idea of a passage and systematically omit male-oriented details of meaning that are present in the original Hebrew or Greek text?

Our concern from the beginning has not been with the loss of any kind of male-oriented meaning in English translations, but with the loss of male details of meaning that are present in the original Greek or Hebrew text.[7]

Therefore it just confuses the discussion, and completely misunderstands what several of us have been saying since at least 1997, when Mark Strauss, for example, publishes an article, "The Gender-Neutral Language of the English Standard Version (ESV),[8] in which he compiles a long list of verses in Matthew and Romans where the words "men" and "man" are changed to "people" or "person" in the English Standard Version (ESV, a revision of the 1971 Revised Standard Version ).[9] Strauss says,

Below is a very small sampling of the gender-inclusive language of the ESV.... This list could be multiplied many times over ... in this way, the ESV is very much like the recently published Today's New International Version (TNIV), which revises the New International Version (NIV) in a similar manner.[10]

What Strauss fails to mention in his paper is that the ESV makes such changes where there is no male meaning in the original text. These are cases that use anthropos (which everyone has known for centuries can mean either "man" or "person" depending on the context), or use pronouns like tis (which means "someone") or oudeis (which means "no one"), and so forth. These translations of words that have no male meaning in the original Greek are not under dispute, and they have never been under dispute in this entire controversy. Therefore it is misleading for Strauss to criticize "attacks against the gender language of the TNIV" as "coming from those who produced similar gender changes in the ESV."[11] The changes are not similar at all. The issue is whether there is a male meaning in the original Greek text or not.

We are now five years into this debate. The Colorado Springs Guidelines were released June 3, 1997. The CSG distinguished several types of translation where there was no male meaning in the original text[12] from several other categories of translation where there was male-oriented meaning in the original text[13] But Strauss's paper, five years after the CSG, still shows no awareness of this fundamental distinction that is at the heart of the controversy.

In 2000, Vern Poythress and I wrote,

The real issue is not the frequency with which a translation uses masculine terms like "man" and "he" and "father" and "brother," etc. Nor is the issue whether changes in gender language are made to conform to modern English style. The issue is whether a Bible translation systematically excludes male components of meaning that are there in the original text. If it does, the translation is "gender-neutral," and we argue in this book that such a translation does not properly translate some of the details in the Word of God.[14]

Now if one wishes, one can choose, in a debate, to go on for five years responding to a position that nobody ever held, but it certainly adds no clarity to the debate. And it is misleading to charge that we approve of "similar" changes without indicating to readers that these are all changes where everyone agrees there is no male meaning in the original.

B. Other Bibles

1. Have 18 of 19 recent Bible translations used gender-neutral language like the TNIV?

In the special edition of Light Magazine, Peter Bradley says,

Those who are critical of the TNIV often neglect to mention that since 1985, at least 19 Bible revisions and translations have been produced in English, of which 18 contain some type of inclusive language. In fact even the King James Version and the New Holman Christian Standard Bible [produced by an agency of the Southern Baptist Convention] make extensive use of inclusive language.[15]

That simply misleads ordinary readers. It is counting as "inclusive language" any kinds of change from "men" to "people" even when there is no male meaning in the Greek text. It is based on counting as "inclusive language" verses like Matthew 5:15, which Mark Strauss quotes among dozens of examples of "inclusive language":

RSV: Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel,

ESV: Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a bushel,

But there is no word for "men" at all in the Greek text. It simply has the plural verb kaiousin "to light, to cause to burn."

No one has objected to changes like this. All modern translations and all modern translators agree that these are correct. So why does Bradley, in an interview responding to criticisms that have only objected to changes where there is a male meaning in Greek, respond that everybody makes changes (referring to places where there is no male meaning in Greek)?

Let's say a high school student cheats on a test by opening the textbook and copying answers from it. The teacher catches the student and sends the student to the principal. The principal says, "I hear you copied answers from the textbook." Then the student answers, "I just checked with some other students and 18 out of 19 students copied answers from the textbook." Now the principal thinks this student is being singled out unfairly, and wonders if the teacher didn't give misleading instructions, since "everybody" is doing this. So the student gets away with it.

But what the student didn't reveal to the principal is that 18 out of 19 students copied answers in last week's "open book" test, not in today's test where they could not use any books or notes. So the student has answered the charges against him by making reference to another situation that nobody has ever said was wrong.

This is similar to what is happening in Bradley's statement about 18 out of 19 translations using "some type of inclusive language" and the KJV and HCSB making "extensive use of inclusive language." It can be summarized like this:

TNIV critics: You are removing male meaning that is there in Greek.

IBS: Everybody removes male meaning [unstated: where it is not there in Greek]

For Bradley to claim that these other translations use "inclusive language," and to imply that the TNIV is doing nothing different, may be convincing to unsuspecting readers of Light Magazine, but it is misleading. He is not talking about the kind of verses where the opponents have challenged the TNIV. His statement fails to show an understanding of the very heart of the controversy.

What has actually happened in recent Bible translations? In fact, since the publication of the "Colorado Springs Guidelines" in 1997, I am aware of six new Bible versions that have been published in whole or part: the English Standard Version (ESV), the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB), the International Christian Standard Bible (ICSB), the NET Bible (NET), the New International Reader's Version (NIrV, 1998 revision), and Today's New International Version (TNIV). All of these versions conform to the Colorado Springs Guidelines, with the exception of the TNIV. These other recent translations use male-oriented terminology in English where there is a male meaning in Greek or Hebrew, and they avoid male-oriented terminology where there is no male meaning in Greek or Hebrew. To call them all "inclusive language" versions is simply to confuse the discussion.

2. Did even the King James Version use gender-neutral language like the TNIV?

Peter Bradley's statement says, "Even the King James Version and the New Holman Christian Standard Bible...make extensive use of inclusive language (p. 9).

Does this mean that the King James Version itself provides a precedent that validates the TNIV? Did the King James Version make the kind of gender-neutral changes for which we have criticized the TNIV? The following table makes a comparison:

Did the KJV use gender-neutral language to leave out male meaning that is present in Greek?[16]

FROM (NIV)	TO (TNIV)	TOTAL TNIV	TOTAL KJV
son (huios, singular)	child, children, human beings	6	3 (odd verses)
father, fathers, forefathers (pater)	parents (where inaccurate), people, ancestors	39	0 (Heb. 11:23 has "parents" correctly)
brother (adelphos, sing.)	(fellow) believer, brother or sister, other	43	0
brothers (adelphos, plural)	associates, dear friends, believers [not counted here: "brothers & sisters"]	42	0
man (aner, in non-idiomatic uses)	people, friends, believers, someone, those, or omitted	26	0
he/him/his/himself	they, you, we, or omitted	530	0
TOTAL:		686	3

What this chart shows is that the King James Version accurately retained male-oriented meaning when it was there in the original Greek text. Even the three translations of the singular huios as "child" would be what the Colorado Springs Guidelines allow as "unusual exceptions in certain contexts." By contrast, the TNIV inappropriately omits male-oriented meaning for these terms 686 times. To claim that the KJV uses "inclusive language," and to use that as a justification for the TNIV, without telling readers that the KJV is 0.4% as "gender-neutral" as the TNIV in the kinds of changes criticized by the TNIV opponents, is again misleading readers who have no way of checking the Greek for themselves. In terms of removing male meaning that is there in the Greek, the KJV is not a gender-neutral Bible. But the TNIV is.[17]

C. Endorsements and Guidelines

1. Does the Forum of Bible agencies endorse the gender language in the TNIV?

Peter Bradley says,

"The TNIV adheres to the Forum of Bible Agencies' translation principles and procedures."

And Craig Blomberg states,

"...the Forum of Bible Agencies, which represents roughly 90% of all contemporary Bible translation work, has gone on record stating that the TNIV "falls within the forum's translation principles and procedures." (4).

Two things are not disclosed to readers in these statements. First, it would at least seem fair to readers to insert a disclaimer stating that the Forum of Bible Agencies does not endorse any specific translation and has not endorsed the TNIV. When Blomberg says the FBA "has gone on record" stating that the TNIV "falls within the forum's translation principles and procedures," it sounds very much to the unsuspecting ear like an FBA endorsement of the TNIV, and no doubt many readers of the Zondervan packet took it that way.

But in fact the FBA has not endorsed the TNIV. What neither Bradley or Blomberg mention by way of disclaimer is the June 24, 2002, press release from the Forum of Bible Agencies that was issued for the very purpose of clearing up such misunderstanding:

FORUM OF BIBLE AGENCIES DOES NOT ENDORSE TNIV

NEW YORK-June 24 Contrary to June 11^th news release issued by the International Bible Society (IBS) and Zondervan, the Forum of Bible Agencies (FBA) today announced it has neither approved nor disapproved Today's New International Version (TNIV) of the Bible.

In addition, the FBA emphasized it has never endorsed the TNIV, as strongly implied in the release issued by forum member IBS in conjunction with Zondervan. Other forum members are aggrieved by the release because of the confusion it has generated among their constituents, as it is not the policy of the FBA to approve, endorse, or support members' translations.

The forum has adopted basic "principles and procedures for Bible translation." This set of guidelines for best practiced translation is mutually agreed upon and accepted by all members ...[18]

It seems that the essence of this June 24 press release should at least have been mentioned in the September 2 mailing from Zondervan.

The second thing that is not disclosed to the readers is what the FBA principles actually say about the translation of gender language. In the context of this major public statement by the president of the IBS responding to a controversy over gender language, when he says that "the TNIV adheres to the Forum of Bible Agencies' translation principles and procedures," we naturally assume that those FBA principles make statements about the issue he is talking about, the issue of gender language. In fact, Bradley must understand that readers will think the FBA principles endorse the TNIV's use of gender language, or why would he highlight the FBA principles as his response to criticisms about gender language?

But when we read further in the July 25 press release from the Forum of Bible Agencies, we find this:

Recognizing that translation is a complex process for which there are widely differing opinions on appropriate methodology, the FBA adopted basic "principles and procedures for Bible translation" that were mutually agreed upon and accepted for all members. These standards represent a broad tent, in that they are not language specific and do not address issues of culture or gender. (emphasis added)

What do these FBA principles say about the translation of gender language? Zero. They do not address it.[19] It is hard for me to understand why neither Bradley nor Blomberg mention this in their claims about the FBA principles, when gender language is the whole point in dispute.

To take an example, let's say that you are planning to buy a used car from me without seeing it, because you trust me as your friend. When you call to ask me about the condition of the car, I assure you that it recently passed a safety inspection at the local Firestone dealer, including breaks, headlights, transmission, tires, and so forth. So you send me a check for the car and an additional $500 for shipping, and I ship the car to you across the country. When you get the car you see that the body has massive rust spots all over it, and has actually rusted through in several places. You call me in protest, saying that you thought that it had passed an inspection at the local Firestone dealer. And then I say, "Yes, but that was a safety inspection and it really didn't include anything about rust." You would rightly be upset with me and think that I had misled you. (And in fact I would never sell a car in that way!)

But in a similar way, when the International Bible Society and Zondervan put out materials saying that the TNIV "adheres to the Forum of Bible Agencies' translation principles and procedures," without mentioning that these principles are a "broad tent" that say nothing about gender language, and when they do that in a packet of information that is focused specifically on the translation of gender language in the TNIV, then I think readers are right to feel that they have been misled. The IBS and Zondervan make it look as though the FBA supports the translation of gender language in the TNIV, but in fact that is not true.

2. Do the translation principles of the Forum of Bible Agencies conflict with the Colorado Springs Guidelines?

After mentioning the Forum of Bible Agencies, Peter Bradley goes on to say that the IBS had to withdraw from the Colorado Springs Guidelines (CSG) because they were in conflict with the FBA guidelines and they could not endorse both. Here is his statement:

...the TNIV adheres to the Forum of Bible Agencies' translation principles and procedures. And yet, we know, as do those opposed to the TNIV, that the TNIV does not adhere to the CSG. The bottom line is that the Forum's translation guidelines conflict with the CSG, and we firmly believe we have to abide by the Forum's. After all, the Forum is responsible for nearly 90 percent of translation work done worldwide-they know what they're doing (p. 8).

But is it true that these lists of principles are in "conflict" with one another? It is easy for readers to check this for themselves. I have listed below the FBA's principles and the Colorado Springs Guidelines. The FBA principles contain fifteen statements, not one of which says anything about the translation of gender language. The Colorado Springs Guidelines contain thirteen statements, all of which relate to the translation of gender language. There is no conflict, because they are talking about different subjects.

Forum of Bible Agencies
Basic Principles and Procedures for Bible Translation

After discussion over a period of two years and wide review within each member organization, the following joint statement on basic principles and procedures for Bible translation was unanimously agreed by all member organizations of the Forum of Bible Agencies, Translation section, at their meeting on April 21, 1999.

As member organizations of the Forum of Bible Agencies, we affirm the inspiration and authority of the Holy Scriptures and commit ourselves to the following goals.

Concerning translation principles:

1.To translate the Scriptures accurately, without loss, change, distortion or embellishment of the meaning of the original text. Accuracy in Bible translation is the faithful communication, as exactly as possible, of that meaning, determined according to sound principles of exegesis.

2.To communicate not only the informational content, but also the feelings and attitudes of the original text. The flavor and impact of the original should be re-expressed in forms that are consistent with normal usage in the receptor language.

3.To preserve the variety of the original. The literary forms employed in the original text, such as poetry, prophecy, narrative and exhortation, should be represented by corresponding forms with the same communicative functions in the receptor language. The impact, interest, and mnemonic value of the original should be retained to the greatest extent possible.

4.To represent faithfully the original historical and cultural context. Historical facts and events should be expressed without distortion. At the same time the translation should be done in such a way that the receptor audience, despite differences of situation and culture, may understand the message that the original author was seeking to communicate to the original audience.

5.To make every effort to ensure that no contemporary political, ideological, social, cultural, or theological agenda is allowed to distort the translation.

6.To recognize that it is sometimes necessary to restructure the form of a text in order to achieve accuracy and maximal comprehension. Since grammatical categories and syntactic structures often do not correspond between different languages, it is often impossible or misleading to maintain the same form as the source text. Changes of form will also often be necessary when translating figurative language. A translation will employ as many or as few terms as are required to communicate the original meaning as accurately as possible.

7.To use the most reliable original language Scripture texts as the basis for translation, recognizing that these are always the primary authority. However, reliable Bible translations in other languages may be used as intermediary source texts.

Concerning translation procedures:

8.To determine, after careful linguistic and sociolinguistic research, the specific target audience for the translation and the kind of translation appropriate to that audience. It is recognized that different kinds of translation into a given language may be valid, depending on the local situation, including, for example, both more formal translations and common language translations.

9.To recognize that the transfer into the receptor language should be done by trained and competent translators who are translating into their mother tongue. Where this is not possible, mother-tongue speakers should be involved to the greatest extent possible in the translation process.

10.To give high priority to training mother-tongue speakers of the receptor language in translation principles and practice and to providing appropriate professional support.

11.To test the translation as extensively as possible in the receptor community to ensure that it communicates accurately, clearly and naturally, keeping in mind the sensitivities and experience of the receptor audience.

12.To choose the media for the translation that are most appropriate for the specific target audience, whether audio, visual, electronic, print, or a combination of these. This may involve making adjustments of form that are appropriate to the medium and to the cultural setting, while ensuring that the translated message remains faithful to the original message.

13.To encourage the periodic review of translations to ascertain when revision or a new translation is needed.

Concerning partnership and cooperation:

14.To organize translation projects in a way that promotes and facilitates the active participation of the Christian and wider community, commensurate with local circumstances. Where there are existing churches, we will encourage these churches to be involved in the translation and to carry as much responsibility for the translation project as is feasible.

15.To partner and cooperate with others who are committed to the same goals.

Colorado Springs Guidelines For Translation Of Gender-Related Language In Scripture

A. Gender-related renderings of Biblical language which we affirm:

1. The generic use of "he, him, his, himself" should be employed to translate generic 3rd person masculine singular pronouns in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. However, substantival participles such as ho pisteuon can often be rendered in inclusive ways, such as "the one who believes" rather than "he who believes."

2. Person and number should be retained in translation so that singulars are not changed to plurals and third person statements are not changed to second or first person statements, with only rare exceptions required in unusual cases.

3. "Man" should ordinarily be used to designate the human race, for example in Genesis 1:26-27; 5:2; Ezekiel 29:11; and John 2:25.

4. Hebrew ‘ish should ordinarily be translated "man" and "men," and Greek aner should almost always be so translated.

5. In many cases, anthropoi refers to people in general, and can be translated "people" rather than "men." The singular anthropos should ordinarily be translated "man" when it refers to a male human being.

6. Indefinite pronouns such as tis can be translated "anyone" rather than "any man."

7. In many cases, pronouns such as oudeis can be translated "no one" rather than "no man."

8. When pas is used as a substantive it can be translated with terms such as "all people" or "everyone."

9. The phrase "son of man" should ordinarily be preserved to retain intracanonical connections.

10. Masculine references to God should be retained.

B. Gender-related renderings which we will generally avoid, though there may be unusual exceptions in certain contexts:

1. "Brother" (adelphos) should not be changed to "brother or sister"; however, the plural adelphoi can be translated "brothers and sisters" where the context makes clear that the author is referring to both men and women.

2. "Son" (huios, ben) should not be changed to "child," or "sons" (huioi) to "children" or "sons and daughters." (However, Hebrew banim often means "children.")

3. "Father" (pater, ‘ab) should not be changed to "parent," or "fathers" to "parents" or "ancestors."

C. We understand these guidelines to be representative and not exhaustive, and that some details may need further refinement.

It is difficult for me to understand, therefore, how Peter Bradley can say that "the Forum's translation guidelines conflict with the CSG," and to give that as the reason why the International Bible Society felt it had to withdraw its endorsement of the Colorado Springs Guidelines.

3. Were the Colorado Springs Guidelines forced on the International Bible Society in 1997?

Peter Bradley's article, in referring to the May 27, 1997 meeting at Focus on the Family headquarters in Colorado Springs, says,

During that meeting, IBS representatives and other attendees were surprised by the presentation of the CSG, in first draft form, to all in attendance. By the way, the CSG were drafted under the guidance of a professor who represented a special interest group called the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Every party was asked to endorse them. However, the members of CBT who were present believed the guidelines were flawed. As a result, they chose not to sign the CSG until they could review and edit them. This process went on for a number of months...(p. 7).

I was a part of that meeting in 1997, and I suppose I am the "professor" to whom Peter Bradley refers. Bradley's statement makes the process appear adversarial and makes it sound as though the CBT members had serious objections to the Colorado Springs Guidelines from the beginning.

In order that Bradley's view of the CSG as flawed from the beginning not be established as a balanced report of the origins of the CSG, I present here a different account of that May 27, 1997, meeting at Dr. Dobson's headquarters in Colorado Springs. This account was written almost immediately after the meeting. But is it accurate? Before it was published, I sent it to all the participants to check it for factual accuracy (and some suggested corrections, which I made). Both of the NIV representatives who stayed for the whole meeting (Bruce Ryskamp, president of Zondervan, and Ken Barker, secretary of the NIV's Committee on Bible Translation) approved this account as accurate before I published it, as did those of us who came to the meeting with objections about the TNIV (Tim Bayly, Joel Belz, James Dobson, Charles Jarvis, John Piper, Vern Poythress, and R. C. Sproul).[20] This account was published in June 1997.[21]

I first described the opening discussions of the meeting, including brief statements that were presented by R. C. Sproul, John Piper, and Vern Poythress. Then the report says that "I presented a list of suggestions for guidelines involving the translation of gender-related language in Scripture" (p. 305). And then the narrative continues:

As our discussions continued through the morning, however, we found that we shared even more common ground.... We found that Ken Barker had a list of translation guidelines that he had prepared in recent thinking about these issues, and his list was similar to the list that our group had presented. Several of us saw this as evidence that God had prepared the way for us to reach agreement on a wide number of these issues. From that point on in the meeting, we began to work on a joint statement that could be issued as a press release from Focus on the Family (p. 306, emphasis added).

... We reached substantial agreement on all of these points before the meeting broke up about 2:30 in the afternoon on May 27, but the document had to be circulated by fax and phone three times throughout the subsequent five days, before total agreement was reached on the final wording of all the guidelines. Then on Saturday night, May 31, complete agreement on the wording of the guidelines was final reached by phone. By Monday morning, June 2, all twelve participants had signed the final document and faxed their signatures to the Focus on the Family headquarters. The press release was then issued on June 3 (pp. 311-312).

In fact, during that afternoon, the first draft of the "Colorado Springs Guidelines" was prepared by four of us working together: Ken Barker of the CBT, along with Vern Poythress, John Piper, and me. We did not use my first draft, but began instead with Ken Barker's notes that he had brought to the meeting (and of which I still have a copy of in his handwriting). His draft statement was called "A Balanced, Mediating, Middle Ground Approach to Inclusive Language" and under "Practices to continue/Areas Not Open to Change" it included "generic use of he, his, him," and "don't change from singular to plural or from third person to second person to avoid man, he, his, him," along with several other points that were eventually included in the Colorado Springs Guidelines.[22]

I want to be very clear that I think the International Bible Society, and the NIV's Committee on Bible Translation, and all individual scholars, are completely free to endorse or not endorse the Colorado Springs Guidelines or any other set of guidelines they wish to formulate. I also believe that the Colorado Springs Guidelines are not perfect and are not set in concrete but are open to further refinement and revision, as we said in the last statement of the guidelines: "We understand these guidelines to be representative and not exhaustive, and that some details may need further refinement."

But I do not think it is correct to say that these guidelines contradict the Forum of Bible Agencies' principles, or to say that "the members of the CBT that were present believed the guidelines were flawed," when in fact Ken Barker was the only CBT member remaining in the meeting when they were formulated, and we used his handwritten first draft of principles as the foundation upon which the guidelines were built. Nor is it correct to say that the CBT members "chose not to sign the CSG until they could review and edit them" and then to say that "this process went on for a number of months," without mentioning that the president of the IBS, the president of Zondervan, and both CBT members (Ron Youngblood and Ken Barker) all agreed to the exact wording of the guidelines within four days of the meeting and all signed that wording within six days of that meeting.

4. Are most New Testament scholars in favor of the TNIV?

Craig Blomberg's paper says, "An advertisement has circulated with the signatures of 100 well-known, largely American Christian leaders condemning the new translation, though few are bona fide New Testament scholars" (p. 3). In a footnote to this statement Blomberg says, "Approximately 10% are fully credentialed New Testament scholars." The impression given is that few genuine New Testament scholars oppose the TNIV.

What Blomberg fails to mention is that prior to the publication of an advertisement with the names of 100 evangelical leaders objecting to the TNIV there was a statement signed by 37 evangelical scholars. See later in the journal for both statements and lists.

Of the signers on this list:

21 have Ph.D.'s in New Testament

3 have Ph.D.'s in Old Testament

11 have served as paid professional translators or translation consultants for three different English translations of the Bible

The initial letter asking for signers to this list was sent out from the CBMW office by Bruce Ware and me, and also included as initial signers William Mounce (whose Basics of Biblical Greek in the largest-selling Greek textbook in the US, and perhaps in the world), John Piper (who has a doctorate in New Testament from the University of Munich and whose dissertation was published in the prestigious SNTS Monograph Series), Vern Poythress (widely-published New Testament professor from Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia), and Tom Schreiner (widely-published New Testament professor at Southern Seminary in Louisville).

In addition, J. I. Packer, who did not sign the statement, issued his own statement saying, "This is a retrograde move that the translators have made... The gains that this translation seeks to achieve are far outweighed by the loss. I appreciate the NIV, and I think they have taken a wrong turn" (Baptist Press, Feb. 1, 2002; http://baptistpress.org/bpnews.asp?ID=12653).

If we move outside the field of New Testament to the field of linguistics, we might ask, is there some special competence in the field of linguistics, some "inside knowledge" that perhaps gives validity to the TNIV? Is there some special theory of linguistics that is unknown to seminary graduates and even to New Testament professors, which justifies the TNIV's removal of male-oriented language that is there in the original text? Some TNIV supporters seem to have suggested that, but there is an alternative perspective by an established professional linguist, one who was in fact the president of a professional society for linguists. Here is the endorsement of Vern Poythress' and my book, The Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy, which was made by a woman who is both a professor of linguistics and an elder in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ):

In the present volume Vern Poythress and Wayne Grudem have presented a well-reasoned and level-headed argument for their case. Indeed, they are a voice of reason in a dispute that is fraught with emotion and mis-information. They clearly understand the fluid and changing nature of language and their arguments are based on sound linguistic principles... (from "Foreword" to The Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy, p. xvii). Valerie Becker Makkai (Ph.D., Yale; Associate Professor of Linguistics, University of Illinois-Chicago; past president, Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States).

Of course I realize that the TNIV website also includes endorsement by a number of scholars. On both lists one can find some scholars who are less well known and some who are more well known. So where does that leave us? The bottom line is that there are competent scholars on both sides of this issue.

But this issue really supposed to be decided by who has the "most famous" scholars? I hope that no one will decide this issue simply based on allegiance to one scholar or another like the Corinthians who were saying, "I follow Paul," or "I follow Apollos," or "I follow Cephas," or "I follow Christ" (1 Cor. 1:12). Rather, I hope that people will look for themselves at the patterns of changes in the translation of verses, and will be like the noble Bereans who went back to the Bible for themselves, "examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so" (Acts 17:11).

Nor should we dismiss lightly the mature wisdom of 113 Christian leaders who signed a public statement saying the TNIV was not "sufficiently trustworthy" (www.no-tniv.com; also produced as an appendix to this article). Many of these leaders have solid seminary training and continue to work daily with their Greek and Hebrew Bibles, ministering to thousands of people through solid, expository preaching. They do understand the issues well enough to make a responsible judgment, and they know that something is deeply wrong with the TNIV.[23]

5. Can only scholars understand this dispute?

Some of the TNIV materials give the impression that only scholars can understand this issue (and in fact, the tone sometimes sounds like they think that only pro-TNIV scholars can understand this issue). This seems to me to be a smokescreen. Most of the dispute has to do with some simple English words, and the very common Greek words behind them:

father
son
brother
man
he/him/his

At times when lay persons have asked me, "How can I decide this issue when I am not a Greek and Hebrew expert?" I have pointed out that the issue is mostly over the meaning of those five words. And if a pro-TNIV scholar challenges them, "How are you qualified to make a decision on this?" I suggest that they ask the following questions:

(1) Have the Greek words behind these five terms changed since the 1984 NIV? (No.)

(2) Have the meanings of those Greek words changed since the 1984 NIV? (No.)

(3) So isn't the real question mostly one of English usage? (Yes.)

(4) So I speak English. Are you saying that I don't know English well enough to make a good decision on this?

In fact, the TNIV's preface places the focus on changes in English, because it introduces the changes in gender language by saying, "While a basic core of the English language remains relatively stable, many diverse and complex cultural forces continue to bring about subtle shifts in the meanings and/or connotations of even old, well-established words and phrases" (p. vii).

The question then is whether the English language today requires us to change "father" (singular) to "parents," or "son" (singular) to "children," or "he" to "they" or "we" or "you" in the hundreds of verses where the TNIV has made these changes (see the categorized list of 901 examples at www.cbmw.org). Ordinary English speakers have a good sense of these changes, and they quickly recognize that these changes follow the same pattern as the "politically correct" speech codes that object to any greater use of male examples than female examples.

In fact, the implicit claim that "only scholars can understand this dispute" (or even that "only pro-TNIV scholars can understand this, anti-TNIV scholars don't understand it") sounds to me dangerously like the claim of the Roman Catholic Church during the Reformation, the claim that only experts could understand the Bible rightly.

I don't agree with this view. I think that English-speaking Christians who know their Bibles and can see the evidence and arguments on both sides are very capable of making a right decision on this matter, and they are making it overwhelmingly on the side of rejecting the TNIV Bible.

D. The English language

1. Has English changed so much that gender-neutral Bibles are needed today?

Probably the fundamental claim of the TNIV supporters is that the English language has changed so much that a translation like the TNIV is needed, particularly to communicate to a younger generation of readers. Peter Bradley says,

The fact is, inclusive language is simply the way English usage is rapidly moving....The use of generic masculine language is rapidly fading. As a result, there is an entire generation of young people who don't use it and don't understand its usage (p. 7).

Similarly, Don Carson says, "I have been doing university missions for thirty years, and in such quarters inclusive language dominates. Not to use it is offensive" (p. 21). And Bruce Waltke says, interestingly, "Although I resent it, the English language has been impacted by secular (non-biblical) feminism and many students today are trained to hear ‘man' and ‘he' and their equivalents as referring only to males, excluding females" (p. 1-2).

The problem with these statements is that they are too vague. These authors do not specify what they mean by "inclusive language." Vern Poythress and I in our book, and the CSG, approve of several kinds of "inclusive language," such as saying "No one is justified by faith" instead of "No man is justified by faith." To speak of "inclusive language" in a general way is to blur the main point under dispute. Similarly, to say, "The use of generic masculine language is rapidly fading" is too vague. What kind of "generic masculine" is meant? Everyone has agreed from 1997 onward that we can remove "generic masculine language" like "he who" and "no man" and "any man" and "all men" when there is no male meaning in the original. So what does Bradley mean?

But if we assume for a moment that Bradley means that the use of "he/him/his" in generic statements is "rapidly fading," what does that tell us? The statement is still (a) an admission that this language is still used, and (b) an implicit prediction of the absence of such language in the future.

But the translators of the NIV ten years ago, back in 1992, were convinced that such language was "rapidly fading" and instituted policies that produced the ill-fated NIV-Inclusive Language Edition in 1996. Apparently ten years later such language is still rapidly fading. We begin to wonder if this "rapid fading" might continue for another twenty or fifty or one hundred years. Or if the personal perception of rapid fading is incorrect (see counter-evidence below).

A more sober evaluation is the last sentence in the 1996 American Heritage Dictionary. After it devotes an entire column to discussion about the use of "he" to refer to "a male who is to be taken as the representative member of the group," the last sentence says, "The entire question is unlikely to be resolved in the near future" (p. 831).

Here is the real point at issue regarding the English language:

Do readers today understand male specific language correctly when it represents male-specific meaning in the original text, especially in statements that have a broader application to all people?

The question is not exactly frequency of use, because when people read, they understand all kinds of expressions they don't use frequently themselves. And high school and college English departments can arbitrarily force students to abandon certain expressions that are still used in the Bible and elsewhere, expressions that students still understand very well when they read it in literature that was written outside their own school setting.

For example, consider the following:

NIV Luke 17:3-4: "If your brother sins rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,' you must forgive him."

Jesus is using a single male individual ("your brother") as an example of a general truth. He wants the reader to envision a situation where a "brother" (a male human being who is a fellow believer) sins. He goes on to tell how to deal with such a situation. And he expects that his hearers will be able to extrapolate from that specific situation to a general principle that would of course apply to a "sister" who sins as well.

Now the question is, would a modern day reader (whether the "young people" whom Bradley mentions or the university students whom Carson mentions) first picture a "brother" who sins, and second realize that the principle has application to a "sister" who sins as well?

I think it is beyond question that readers today would understand that the principle has a broader application to women as well as to men. I doubt that any significant group of readers in the English speaking world today would see that verse and reason, "That verse only applies to men, and it has no application to a situation where a woman believer has sinned."[24]

Now some people may dislike the fact that Jesus is using a male individual as an example. But that is different from not understanding that it applies to women as well as to men. And the fact remains that Jesus used a male-specific term (singular adelphos, "brother") and did not teach by using an example of a "brother or sister" or an example of a "person." He taught by using a concrete example of a "brother."

In fact, the Bible often points to a single individual as a way of teaching a general truth. Jesus uses the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), but surely people can understand that it also applies to prodigal daughters. That is the difference between translation and application. The parable of the "persistent widow" (Luke 18:1-8) also applies to men and teaches us all about persistence in prayer, but we should not translate it to be the parable of "the persistent widow or widower." And in the Ten Commandments, when we read, "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife," we can easily realize that the specific female example given here ("your neighbor's wife") teaches a principle that also applies to not coveting a neighbor's husband.

Do we have to change the parable of the prodigal son to make it the parable of the prodigal "son or daughter" in order for modern university students to understand that it has a broader application? Certainly not. Do we have to change the Ten Commandments so that they say, "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or husband" in order to be sure that modern university students will realize that it also applies to wives not coveting husbands? Certainly not - not even in the university settings that Carson mentions, where "inclusive language dominates." Ordinary English readers can make such steps from translation to broader application quite well.

But in Luke 17:3, the TNIV imposed just this kind of change on Jesus' words. Jesus taught using a single male ("your brother") as an example of a general truth, but the TNIV will not let him do this:

NIV: If your brother sins rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,' you must forgive him."

TNIV: If any brother or sister sins against you, rebuke the offender; and if they repent forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying, "I repent," you must forgive them.

This is the kind of change to "inclusive language" that the TNIV translators say is necessary because of changes in modern English.

Readers today are perfectly capable of understanding that a male-specific example (or a female-specific example, such as the woman with the lost coin, or the persistent widow with the judge) has a broader application to people in general. No changes in English speech patterns today have taken away that ability. In fact, I doubt that any future changes in English will ever take away the ability to understand such statements readily. The ability to understand this kind of specific example used to teach a general truth is something inherent in ordinary human life.

Now someone may say that he or she does not like the fact that the Bible uses more male examples than female examples to teach such truths. But we cannot do anything about that, for the Bible is what it is, and while it does use both men and women as examples of general truth, it uses male examples more frequently. Should we try to conceal that fact from modern readers? The TNIV does so hundreds of times.

Another example is 1 Corinthians 14:28, about speaking in tongues in the church service:

NIV: If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God.

The question here is, can modern readers understand that Paul's example here also applies to women who speak in tongues? Do the TNIV translators actually think that there are significant numbers of women in the English-speaking world who have read that verse and decided that it only applies to men, so that women are free to speak in tongues in church without interpretation as often as they wish? Do we know of cases where women have been speaking in tongues without interpretation in church services, arguing that this is just fine because Paul used the word "himself" and therefore the verse only applies to men? Of course this has not happened.

Now people may not like the fact that Paul uses a masculine pronoun that makes it more likely that the reader will first picture a male speaker and second realize that it has broader application to all people, but the fact is that in Greek as well as English, to use a singular pronoun to refer to persons, one has to choose either a masculine or a feminine pronoun. If Paul had used a feminine pronoun, we would have to translate, "If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to herself and God," and we would in that case first think of a female speaker and then immediately realize of course that it had broader application to a male speaker as well. But that is not what Paul wrote, and we do not have freedom to translate it as "to herself."

Nor is the issue here one of modern stylistic preferences for an author composing his or her own new writings. Many modern English style books would look at 1 Corinthians 14:28 and suggest that Paul should rewrite it with plurals, "The speakers should keep quiet in the church and speak to themselves and God." If modern writers are composing their own sentences and wish to recast a sentence in this way, or if they want to say "speak to himself or to herself and God," or if they want to change their sentence in some other way, then they are free to do so, provided that they are writing their own sentences and not translating the words of the Bible. But if we are translating what Paul wrote, then we are not free to change his male-specific example into a plural sentence or something else that fails to represent accurately what he wrote.

What does the TNIV do with this verse? It changes it as follows:

NIV 1 Cor. 14:28: If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God.

TNIV 1 Cor. 14:28: If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to God when alone.

The problem is that there is nothing that means "when alone" in the Greek text (the dative pronoun heauto here means "to himself" in parallel with the dative phrase to theo, "to God"). The TNIV's interpretation that this means "when the speaker is alone" may be some commentator's further explanation of the passage, but it is probably an overly-restrictive explanation, and it is surely not an accurate translation of the passage. Prior to the TNIV, people could disagree over whether Paul allowed uninterpreted prayer in tongues in small private groups outside the church meeting, but here the TNIV invents a new rule that Paul (and God) never stipulated: Someone praying in tongues must be "alone."

The TNIV translators perhaps did not even realize how they were altering the meaning of this verse (or perhaps they did, I don't know). But the point is that they did so in an attempt to avoid the faintly male-specific example which Paul implied when he used a masculine singular pronoun meaning "to himself." That translation is accurate, it is faithful to what Paul wrote, and no changes in the English language have occurred that take away people's ability to understand Paul's meaning and the broader application of the specific example.

Another example is found in Revelation 22:18:

NIV: I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book.

TNIV: I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: If any one of you adds anything to them, God will add to you the plagues described in this scroll.

Once again the question is this: does anyone seriously believe that any significant group of people were reading the NIV, "If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues," and thinking that the warning did not apply to women? Have there been any groups of women who have decided that they were free to add to the words of the book of Revelation, because this warning did not apply to them? Of course not.

I realize that we may find people who do not like the fact that the verse hints first at an example of a male human being who would add to these words, because it does use the pronoun "him." But the Greek text as the apostle John wrote it also used a masculine singular pronoun, and also suggested in the first instance a picture of a male human being adding to these words, with the realization that people would automatically understand that it also applied to any women who would think of adding to the words of that book. The fact that someone might not like something that is in the Bible does not give warrant for changing what it says.

And the TNIV has in fact changed the meaning of the verse. Previously the verse warned that God would add the plagues only to the specific individual who added to the words of the book ("God will add to him the plagues"). But now the TNIV has God adding the plagues to the whole group! When the sentence starts out, "If any one of you," the "you" has to include all of the readers in the group to which John is writing (for the "any one" refers to one person out of the whole group of "you"). But the TNIV does not say God will add the plagues to "that person" or "that one," but, in a way that should terrify us if we think about it, the TNIV has God adding the plagues to the whole group: "If any one of you adds anything to them, God will add to you the plagues described in this scroll." And so, under cover of the argument that "the English language has changed" the NIV has unnecessarily and inappropriately changed the meaning of the very verse that tells us not to change the words of this book of Scripture! And there are hundreds of such changes like this in the TNIV.

2. Do people think that generic "he" does not apply to women today?

Because the use of "he/him/his/himself" is so frequently changed in gender-neutral Bibles, especially in examples like the ones given above, the argument that "the English language has changed" provides an important defense for the removal of such words. Blomberg says,

...in spoken English I almost never hear anyone any more completing a sentence of the form, "Everyone who comes to class tomorrow should bring ______ textbook with _______," with anything other than "their" and "them" respectively" (pp. 22-23).

And Carson says,

...if for the envisaged readership of TNIV the pronouns "him" and "he" have the effect...of excluding approximately half of humanity, one could responsibly argue that the TNIV is, for such a readership, a more accurate, more faithful translation than the NIV or the ESV (p. 28).

But the question is not how frequently people say, "Everyone should bring their textbook with them" in spoken English today. The questions are rather: (1) What English translation most accurately represents what the biblical text actually said? and (2) Will people understand the meaning of such a translation?

As far as most accurately representing what the Biblical text actually said, I agree with Blomberg who correctly says (in this very context), "... there is no question that a change of person or number renders a translation less than fully literal" (p. 23).

Will people understand the use of "he" in a statement of a general principle like, "If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book"? I think it is beyond question that people today do understand the generic use of "he" in sentences like that. What is the evidence that people will understand it? It is still found in ordinary English publications from a wide variety of sources. Just this month the following sentence appeared in Christianity Today:

If the translator doesn't know what he's talking about, why should he be translating? (Eugene Nida, in "Meaning-full Translations," a report of an interview by David Neff, Christianity Today, October 7, 2002, p. 49).

Does anyone seriously think that readers thought Eugene Nida's sentence did not apply to women translators? Or that he was implying that women translators who do not know what they are talking about should be translating, men who do not know what they are talking about should not be translating? Of course not.

"...a passenger assisting in an emergency, for example, could put himself in the line of fire of an armed air marshal" (USA Today, September 17, 2002, p. 9E, in an article on how passengers should react in the case of an airline hijacking).

Did readers of USA Today misunderstand that sentence? Did the women airline travelers reading USA Today think, "Oh, then I am free to try to assist by attacking a terrorist because USA Today said that only men who did this would put themselves in the line of fire of an armed air marshal"? Of course not. Such usage is ordinary English.

"First, the person who buys the policy reports on his tax return only a small portion of what he really paid in premiums....The buyer is allowed to declare on his tax return the insurance company's lowest premium for that amount of insurance" (Arizona Republic July 28, 2002, p. A2, quoting an article by David Cay Johnston in the New York Times about wealthy people who buy certain types of life insurance to avoid taxes.)

There is no possibility that readers would think this article does not apply to wealthy women who buy such insurance policies.

 "Mr. Baer's CIA is a place where...anyone who takes the initiative runs the risk of derailing his career" (Wall Street Journal February 7, 2002, p. A15).

Again, would any reader think that this means there are no women working at the CIA? Or that the sentence means that a woman who takes the initiative to point out a problem in intelligence gathering would not ruin her career? Of course not.

"Should you quit work to stay home with the baby? No, wait till he's eleven" (headline in Wall Street Journal, August 29, 2002, p. D1).

Do Bradley and Blomberg and Carson actually think that readers of the Wall Street Journal did not realize that the article applies also to baby girls (whatever we may think of the strange advice given in the article)?

"Wal-Mart is a reflection of America. ...if [a manager has] three shifts of people working for him, it's going to be a real challenge to know everyone" (American Way Magazine (American Airlines), June 15, 2002, p. 50, quoting Wal-Mart spokesman Jay Allen.)

Does this imply to modern readers that there are no women managers at Wal-Mart? Or that women managers have no challenge getting to know their employees but men managers do have a challenge? Of course not. People today do not really misunderstand such sentences. Some self-appointed guardians of "politically correct" speech may object to such sentences, of course, but they do not misunderstand them.[25]

"Next time your friend wants to drive drunk, do whatever it takes to stop him" (radio advertisement by the advertising council, on news radio KXEM (1010 AM) in Phoenix, June 30, 2002, at 4:06 p.m.).

I wonder if Peter Bradley would say that teenagers hearing that ad thought that it did not apply to a high school girl who wanted to drive drunk? Or if Don Carson would say that this sentence has the "effect ... of excluding approximately half of humanity"?

Or would they say that the Advertising Council, a secular ad agency, doesn't understand how to use current English? If "the English language has changed" so much that people cannot understand such sentences correctly, then why do secular writers in all sorts of formats still use such statements?[26]

Now someone may answer that some of these sentences actually hint slightly at a male representative example, because it is men who are more likely to drive drunk, and men are more likely to work for the CIA, and men are more likely to attack a hijacker. I would respond that I agree completely. Those three sentences do hint slightly at a male representative example. And that is exactly the pattern of speech that we find in the New Testament, where Jesus and the New Testament authors were accustomed to teaching a general truth by speaking of or hinting at a male representative example. We should translate their sentences using "he" in this "representative generic" sense and convey exactly the meaning of what they wrote.

But what about generic "they" and generic "she"? Aren't these also used today? Of course they are (and I could provide many quotations like that as well). But it is not enough to demonstrate that the English language also allows for "they" and "she" in such constructions. The fact of the matter is that English today uses and allows for at least four kinds of statements: generic "he," generic "he or she," generic "she," and generic "they." As Vern Poythress and I said in our book in 2000:

In matters of usage in modern English, we see nothing necessarily wrong with a whole spectrum of typical modern uses. Some people may continue to use generic "he" while others may avoid it, and instead use "he or she" or "you" or "they." Some people may use "man" to designate the human race, others may not....a writer today has authority over what he or she writes. A Bible translator does not have this authority because the meaning belongs not to him but to God.[27]

The question is, out of these legitimate and understandable options, which one most faithfully represents the Bible's use of masculine singular pronouns in such statements? The answer is that generic "he" represents the usage of the biblical authors most accurately in these sentences (where there is a masculine singular pronoun in the original).

The 2002 edition of the Associate Press File Book and Briefing on Media Law says,

...use the pronoun his when an indefinite antecedent may be male or female: A reporter attempts to protect his sources. (Not his or her sources...)[28]

We may ask Bradley and Blomberg and Carson and others, "If ‘the English language has changed' so much that you cannot use generic "he" in Bible translation, then why does the Associated Press, probably the largest association of news writers in the world, not realize that the language has changed in this way? And why do USA Today and the Wall Street Journal and the Arizona Republic (the largest newspaper in Arizona) and Christianity Today and the writers for the passenger magazine for American Airlines (the largest airline in the United States) not realize that the language has changed in this way?

In addition, these writers are writing their own new sentences today, not translating the words of an author who wrote 2000 years ago and who used masculine singular pronouns in sentences that have generic application to men as well as women.

3. Does the common use of "singular they" in English today validate its use in the TNIV?

I recognize that in spoken English today, and somewhat in written English, people use "they" to refer to a singular antecedent. This is thought to justify the TNIV's change to "they" in sentences such as Luke 17:3:

NIV: If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him.

TNIV: If any brother or sister sins against you, rebuke the offender; and if they repent, forgive them.

Or, similarly, in James 5:20:

NIV: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins.

TNIV: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save their soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.

But does good written English require such a use of "they" in order to be understandable, or even in order to be consistent with current English idiom? Craig Blomberg apparently thinks so, for he claims:

And since the late 1980s, the Modern Language Association, the primary American organization that pontificates on what is or isn't acceptable in written English, has approved of and even encouraged the use of plural pronouns to refer back to generic singular antecedents.[29]

But is this claim true? The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Fifth Edition, edited by Joseph Gibaldi (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1999), says:

... many writers no longer use he, him, or his to express a meaning that includes women or girls: "If a young artist is not confident, he can quickly become discouraged." The use of she, her, and hers to refer to a person who may be of either sex can also be distracting and momentarily confusing ... Both usages can often be avoided through a revision that recasts the sentence into the plural, or that eliminates the pronoun ... Another technique is to make the discussion refer to a person who is identified, so that there is a reason to use a specific singular pronoun. They, them, their, and theirs cannot logically be applied to a single person, and he or she and her or him are cumbersome alternatives to be used sparingly (112, underlining added).

Far from approving and encouraging the TNIV's use of "singular they," as Blomberg claims, the MLA specifically says it is not logical to do so. So today's high school students reading the TNIV will find over a hundred times in the New Testament alone that their Bible uses grammatical constructions that their MLA style book says cannot logically be used, constructions like, "Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save their soul from death..."

We should also notice that the MLA does not say the use of "he" in such generic statements is wrong, only that "many writers" no longer use this construction. And they are talking about constructing one's own sentences today, so it certainly does not imply that English translations from a writer in another language who uses masculine singular pronouns in this way should avoid such similar expressions in English.

My primary concern in this issue is not grammar, of course, but accuracy in Bible translation. If the Zondervan and the IBS wish to publish a Bible with constructions that many today find to be grammatically incorrect, that is their decision and I will not object to it on the basis of grammar alone, nor would I take time to write an article about it, much less a book, if grammar were the only issue. But when the TNIV advocates claim that such usage is required because "the English language has changed," then some analysis of that claim is called for.

The TNIV web site (www.tniv.info, under Luke 17:3) also claims support for such changes from two English reference works:

Respected dictionaries and style guides such as Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and The Chicago Manual of Style also affirm its use.

I agree that there are some dictionaries that approve this use, and Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2001 edition) does approve some types of singular they. But what the TNIV web site does not tell us is: (a) This dictionary only approves such use "to refer to indefinite pronouns (as everyone, anyone, someone)" (p. 1220). It does not approve the use of "they" to refer to definite nouns, as in the TNIV's "Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way" (James 5:20) or "rebuke the offender; and if they repent, forgive them" (Luke 17:3). So this dictionary should not rightly be cited to support the TNIV's rendering of Luke 17:3. It gives no support for such use. (b) The entry goes on to approve generic "he" in such sentences as well: "This gives you the option of using the plural pronouns where you think they sound best, and of using the singular pronouns (as he, she, he or she, and their inflected forms) where you think they sound best" (p. 1221). And under "he," their second meaning is "used in a generic sense or when the sex of the person is unspecified" (p. 533).

Then what about the other work cited, the Chicago Manual of Style? It did recommend using singular "they,"[30] but the editors have since withdrawn that recommendation on their web site. Here are the two relevant quotations from their "Frequently Asked Questions" guide:

Chicago Manual of Style Web Site (FAQ's) (May 16, 2002)

Q. I would swear that I saw a reference in your latest manual that approved of the use of "their" instead of a gender-biased singular pronoun. For example, "If the user has completed installing the program, they should put the CD-ROM back in the package," instead of "If the user has completed installing the program, s/he should put the CD-ROM back in the package," but on your on-line FAQ, you dance around the answer to the question and suggest that you do NOT approve of the singular "their." Can you tell us what is acceptable?

A. Yes, you saw it at 2.98 (note 9), but there is some regret at having written it and we may change our minds in the next edition. I personally would rather avoid this usage, but occasionally it's so difficult to find a way around it that I take comfort in this note of approval and rather dread its removal. (I should add, however, that we will do almost anything to avoid using "s/he.")

Q. PLEASE tell me what you are recommending when people need a gender-neutral singular possessive pronoun. In order to avoid saying "his mind" or "her mind" (or, God forbid, "his/her mind") people are saying "their mind"--and it blows MY mind--unless, of course, those people could be sure "they" are "of one mind"! If you have a discussion on this issue, I'd be most happy to receive it or be directed to it.

A. I'm afraid your gender-neutral pronoun (at least in the sense you need) does not exist in our lexicon. I agree that the plural pronoun with a singular noun seems inadequate; I would suggest that you recast the sentence altogether or at least make "mind" plural for agreement: their minds. Other writers alternate between using "his" and "her" in such constructions in order to give equal status to each pronoun. (http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmosfaq.html (Search under "singular they")

So the current Chicago Manual of Style editors "would rather avoid" using "singular they" and say it "seems inadequate." But this "inadequate" construction is what is used so often in the TNIV, and this "inadequate" construction is what the IBS tells us has to be used for a younger generation because "the English language has changed." In fact, when we look at the reversal in the Chicago Manual of Style, we may wonder if our culture is now shaking off some of the influences of radical feminism and the "politically correct" language police, and if common sense and freedom to use words the way we choose is being restored, and if the "rapid decline" mentioned by Peter Bradley is actually being reversed. Predicting the future of language change is a risky business. Building a Bible translation on one's predictions of the future is even more doubtful.

Other highly respected English authorities reject "singular they" and consider it unsuitable for standard written English. For example, the 2000 edition of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, perhaps the most widely-acclaimed and most respected handbook for good writing in the English language, says,

Do not use they when the antecedent is a distributive expression such as each, each one, everybody, every one, many a man. Use the singular pronoun.

[incorrect:] Every one of us knows they are fallible.

[correct:] Every one of us knows he is fallible.[31]

As noted in the earlier question, the current edition of The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual (2002) directs, "use the pronoun his when an indefinite antecedent may be male or female: A reporter attempts to protect his sources. (Not his or her sources...)." While it also says that a sentence may be best recast as plural, as Reporters attempt to protect their sources, there is no mention of any possibility of a mixture such as A reporter attempts to protect their sources, which is the style we find throughout the TNIV.[32]

William Zinsser, one of this country's most highly regarded English stylists, in his book On Writing Well, says that simply changing "he" to "they" is not adequate. He says, "But let's face it: the English language is stuck with the generic masculine ... I don't like plurals; they weaken writing because they are less specific than the singular, less easy to visualize" (William Zinsser, On Writing Well, 5th ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), p. 123).

Wilson Follett, Modern American Usage, revised by Erik Wensberg (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998), agrees that people use plurals to refer to a singular antecedent in colloquial speech, but he then says, "But no esteemed writer of English, early or late, has been cited as using this oddity page after page, in work after work" (p. 31). (We might add, no esteemed writer of English until the TNIV translators.)[33]

The American Heritage Dictionary (2000 edition) notes that of more than 200-member "Usage Panel," consisting of a wide range of well known writers, critics, and scholars, "Eighty-two percent find the sentence The typical student in the program takes about six years to complete their course work unacceptable" (p. 1796).[34]

We must remember, also, that these style manuals and dictionaries are talking about how they want people to write their own sentences today, not about how people should translate sentences from an ancient author who actually used masculine singular pronouns to speak of an example of a general truth. None of the English manuals quoted tells us to translate another writer's masculine singular pronouns as gender-neutral plurals! (We can only suppose that the percent of Usage Panel experts who found that procedure "unacceptable" would be higher than 82%.) But this is the standard usage of the TNIV.

The IBS tells us the gender language of the TNIV is necessary in order to have a Bible to reach a "younger generation." But when this younger generation begins to read the TNIV in high school, they will find the IBS has given them a Bible that repeatedly uses a construction that the MLA Handbook rejects, and that Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary does not approve, and that the American Heritage Dictionary tells them is "unacceptable" to 82% of it Usage Panel experts. When they take advanced English composition classes in high school, they will find their Bible speaks in a way that Strunk and White tell them is wrong. When they reach college, they will have difficulty quoting a Bible that the next edition of the Chicago Manual of Style tells them is wrong, and that William Zinsser's On Writing Well tells them is wrong. And if they perhaps aspire to be journalists and write for the secular press, they will be embarrassed to quote a Bible that the Associated Press Stylebook tells them is wrong.[35]

When the IBS and Zondervan defend a rendering such as "rebuke the offender; and if they repent, forgive them" by saying it is necessary because "the English language has changed," I think it can safely be said that their claim is not true. Such a construction may be acceptable in modern informal spoken English, but in written English it is not necessary, and many think it is not even acceptable. To say that the TNIV's changes in gender language are necessary because "the English language has changed" turns out to be a remarkably weak argument.

4. Is there really a loss of meaning when "they" is used as a singular pronoun?

English speakers recognize that there remains something strange, something that seems vaguely plural, when we read "they/them/their" used in a so-called "singular" sense. That is because in the vast majority of cases we use it as plural in distinction from a singular. So when we try to use it as singular, even when the context would require a singular sense, it just does not work. Think of these sentences:

They is happy.

They is singing.

Is your husband home? Yes they is.

I am not taking phone calls this morning, but if Peter calls, I will talk to them.

In every case, the context tries to force a singular meaning, but the sentence just won't work. "They" remains stubbornly plural.

So I doubt that "they" is truly an adequate substitute for singular "he/him" even in sentences like the TNIV's "rebuke the offender; and if they repent, forgive them." To change "him" to "them" removes the particularity of the specific male example ("your brother ... him" in Luke 17:3) and creates a broadening of the statement to a thought of all the possible people who could fall in the category of "the offender." This is why we would naturally think it strange to read,

If your brother sins, rebuke them.
or even
If any brother sins, rebuke them.

The word "them" just does not function well as a true singular in English, but leaves room for some ambiguity as to whether it is referring to a singular person or more than one.

This is relevant for the TNIV's change in Revelation 3:20:

NIV I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.

TNIV I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with them, and they with me.

Is "they" truly singular? Readers will wonder. The antecedent "anyone" may make them think it is singular, but then in this context Jesus is speaking to a whole church. Consider this sentence:

If anyone comes to class today, I will teach them.

Is "them" singular or plural? We can't be sure, because the situation seems to allow for several students coming to class, and we think that maybe the "anyone" potentially includes several people. Or consider this sentence:

If anyone comes to class today, I will teach them for the first half hour and put them in discussion groups after that.

Here "them" is clearly plural, and we have no problem processing the sentence because we attribute to "anyone" a plural sense, referring to all the students who might come.

Now in Revelation 3:20, the context is "To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:" (vs. 14), and the previous verse said, "Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent" (vs. 19). Therefore Jesus is addressing the whole church. In such a context, it is very possible to take "them" in verse 20 as referring to the whole church: "If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with them, and they with me."

Carson says of this sentence, "But with the best will in the world, it is difficult to see how this change loses ‘the teaching that Jesus has fellowship with the individual believer,' precisely because the preceding ‘anyone' is preserved in both instances" (p. 27). And Blomberg says, regarding plural statements generally in the Bible, "I know of no one who assumes these do not apply to individual believers" (p. 23).

But this misses the point. Of course a promise that Jesus would eat with a whole group of people (a whole church, if readers take "them" as plural) means that the readers would be in the group, and so the promise of a "church dinner" with Jesus applies to them. But what applies to them is no longer a promise of individual fellowship between Jesus and a single person ("I will eat with him"). What applies to them is the changed TNIV sentence, "I will eat with them." The assurance of individual fellowship with Jesus is no longer there. If it is a "church supper" in view, readers who have attended a church supper with an honored guest will think, "Who knows if Jesus will even notice me in such a context, much less have extended fellowship with me?" Readers will think, "Maybe it promises me personal fellowship with Jesus, but maybe the ‘them' means it is fellowship with Jesus in the context of the whole church together." They cannot be sure. There is a loss of meaning for an important, well-loved verse.

People may say, "So what? That's only one verse." But the TNIV changes "he" to plural "they" 271 times in the New Testament alone, and change "he" to "singular they" another 112 times. "He is changed to "you" 90 times (and we often cannot tell if "you" is singular or plural), and to "we" 9 times, and simply omitted 48 times (in every case where Greek has a singular verb or a 3rd person masculine singular pronoun).[36] Such systematic changes constitute a significant change of emphasis in the whole New Testament, a significant loss of emphasis on individual responsibility and individual relationship with God.

E. Justifications for the TNIV

1. Do the New Testament authors' quotations from the Old Testament validate the use of gender-neutral language in the TNIV?

Darrell Bock gives several examples "where Scripture is quoted within Scripture by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit" (p. 15 in my printout from Bock's web site) and mentions several examples. A consideration of Acts 4:11 (quoting Psalm 118:22) and Second Corinthians 6:18 (quoting 2 Sam. 7:14) will illustrate his argument.

2 Samuel 7:14 says, "I will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son." Bock points out (p. 16-17) that Paul changes this in 2 Corinthians 6:18 to: "I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty." Paul thus changes third person "he, him" to second person "you," and changes "son" to "sons and daughters." Does this not give justification for the TNIV translators today to make the same kind of changes as Paul did under the guidance of the Holy Spirit?

To take another of Bock's examples, Psalm 118:22 says,

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

But when Peter quotes it in Acts 4:11 he says,

This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.

Here Peter inserts the word "you" and changes the active verb to passive. Does this not give justification for changing third person statements to second person in translating the TNIV Bible?

The answer in both of these cases is no. New Testament scholars have long recognized that there is a wide variety in how freely the New Testament authors quote or change the Old Testament text. But this varied procedure does not provide us with a new theory of translation, in which we can freely alter the meaning of the original text of the Bible to suit our purposes.

People who claim this fail to take into account what the New Testament writers were doing.[37] In quoting the Old Testament, they are like preachers making an application. They are not translators producing a base translation on which everyone will rely. A preacher who functions in this way is not claiming to give the most accurate translation for general purposes, but is rather giving an interpretive rendering that brings out some of the implications of the original and applies it to the situation at hand. Similarly, the New Testament often gives us interpretive renderings rather than a uniform model that provides us with a pattern for how to translate the Old Testament.

This distinction between a New Testament use of an Old Testament passage and a translation has been recognized for a long time. In the nineteenth century, opponents of biblical inerrancy were using a similar argument to this objection, saying that we do not need to insist on the truthfulness of every word of Scripture, because even the New Testament authors adapt and quote freely when using the Old Testament. But defenders of inerrancy, such as A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield replied in 1881 as follows:

Nor is quotation to be confounded with translation. It does not, like it, profess to give as exact a representation of the original, in all its aspects and on every side, as possible; but only to give a true account of its teaching in one of its bearings. There is thus always an element of application in quotation; and it is, therefore, proper in quotation to so alter the form of the original as to bring out clearly its bearing on the one subject in hand, thus throwing the stress on the element for which it is cited. This would be improper in a translation. The laws which ought to govern quotations seem, indeed, to have been very inadequately investigated by those who plead the New Testament methods of quotation against inspiration.[38]

We can see very easily that New Testament citations of the Old Testament do not show us how we should translate the Old Testament. To take these two examples which Bock quotes, if these were providing us with a pattern for translation, then we should be able to take the New Testament "quotation" and put it back into the Old Testament text as the best English translation of that text. But no translator of any version would do that in cases like these, for it would make nonsense of the original Old Testament statement, and it would be an impossible translation of the Hebrew.

For example, here is what would happen to Psalm 118 if we put Peter's quotation back into the Psalm as the accurate "translation":

I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation. The stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone (Ps. 118:21-22, if the New Testament citation is made into a translation if the Old Testament text).

This is of course impossible as a translation. By inserting "you" into verse 22, it makes the Psalmist say to God that God has rejected a stone but that stone has become the cornerstone anyway! The Hebrew text simply doesn't mean that, and this simply is not a legitimate translation.

The same thing would happen if we put Paul's citation of 2 Samuel 7:14 back into God's statement to David. It would read as follows:

When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men... (2 Sam. 7:12-14).

Once again this is impossible as a translation. It has God saying to David that after he dies, "I will be a father to you [that is, to David], and you shall be sons and daughters to me." It has God telling David that after his death he will be "sons and daughters" to God! It completely omits the meaning of the Hebrew text, which is a promise that God will be a father to David's son. Once again, in 2 Corinthians 6:18 Paul adapts and applies the Old Testament statement for his own purposes in writing to the Corinthian church. But he is not purporting to give an exact translation of the original text, nor could this ever possibly work as a translation of the original text.

Bock argues, in addition, that Paul's introductory formula in 2 Corinthians 6:16, "As God said" (Greek aorist eipen) means that Paul is claiming that this is what God said in the past and "not God is now saying it as a matter of current revelation" (p. 17). But this misses the point, which is that the form in which New Testament authors cite Old Testament quotations still allows for much intermingling of adaptation and application in the midst of the citation. The phrase "as God said" in verse 16 tells the reader that Paul is citing from the Old Testament, not that he is purporting to give an exact translation of the Old Testament statement, but that he is citing it in the way New Testament authors commonly do, mingling with it adaptation and application to the situation at hand.

Nor is Carson's argument on this point persuasive. Referring to this same verse (2 Cor. 6:18), Carson says, "The apostle himself does not think that Hebrew singulars must always be rendered by Greek singulars, or that the Hebrew ‘son' should never be rendered by the Greek ‘sons and daughters.' No one, I think, would quickly charge Paul with succumbing to a feminist agenda."[39] Once again, Carson misses the point that Paul is not attempting to give us an exact translation but is freely adapting and applying the Old Testament text to his situation. Paul's citation simply cannot be put back into Second Samuel 7:14 as a translation.

2. Do the New Testament authors change singulars to plurals and third person to second person and thus justify such changes in the TNIV?

Craig Blomberg apparently agrees at least in part with what I have said in the previous section, for in discussing New Testament quotations from the Old Testament he says,

Yet at the same time, Poythress and Grudem correctly observe that the New Testament many times goes beyond mere translation to interpretation and application in its "quotations" of the Old Testament. So perhaps these examples are not as conclusive as they might at first appear. (p. 25, with reference to Poythress and Grudem, The Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy 198-201, where we discuss this question.)

But Blomberg returns with another argument. He says there are "places where within the Greek New Testament itself, an inspired author shifts between singulars and plurals or between second and third persons, in contexts that suggest no demonstrable difference in meaning. Some of these afford strikingly close parallels to the grammatical constructions the TNIV has employed." (p. 25).

As one example, Blomberg quotes James 2:15:

If a brother or sister are (pl.) naked [or "poorly clothed"] and lack (pl.) daily food, and if any of you says to them, ‘go (pl.) in peace, be (pl.) warm and be (pl.) well fed,' and does not give them..." (Blomberg's literal translation, p. 25).

Blomberg correctly points out that after the first phrase "brother or sister," James shifts consistently to plural verbs and pronouns. Apparently he sees this as justification for the TNIV's translating singular pronouns as plurals and thus changing "he" to "they" hundreds of times.

But the example is not parallel for two reasons:

(1) The sentence is an unusual grammatical construction in any case, and is cited by the grammars as an exception, and not as a general pattern. The reason is that once James has started the sentence with "If a brother or sister," then to follow it with either a singular masculine adjective or a singular feminine adjective would have sounded strange to a Greek ear, so James simply translates "according to the sense" (understanding his hypothetical situation to include more than one person) and makes the rest of the sentence plural. The Blass-Debrunner-Funk Grammar refers to the passage as follows: "Exception: Ja 2:15 ean adelphos e adelphe gumnoi hyparchosin (gumnos or gumna would have been harsh)."[40]

Interestingly, in 1934, A. T. Robertson commented on this verse as follows: "We have a similar difficulty in English in the use of the disjunctive and other pronouns. One will loosely say: "If anyone has left their books, they can come and get them."[41] What this shows is that Robertson also recognized the unusual and rather awkward nature of this individual example. But it also shows that nearly 70 years ago people realized that "singular they" was heard in ordinary speech (it is by no means a new phenomenon!), but no Bible translation ever felt that justified using it in the accurate translation of biblical texts.

(2) There is a difference between translating what an author wrote and changing what an author wrote. If James changed from singulars to plurals, we should translate it that way. So, in translating James 2:15, translators should translate it as James wrote it, shifting in the middle of the sentence from singular to plural (it makes good sense in English, as Robertson noted in 1934), thus accurately rendering James' plural pronouns as plurals:[42]

If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, "go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? (ESV).

But translating James' plural pronouns accurately as plurals here does not give us the justification to translate singular pronouns as plurals elsewhere, and thus change what the New Testament writers said!

Another example that Blomberg gives is the list of Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:3-11), where most of them are in the third person ("Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," for example). But then in the last one Jesus shifts to the second person: "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you..." Blomberg claims this as support for changing third person statements to second person statements in the TNIV in places where the Greek makes no such change.

But the answer here is the same: We should translate Jesus' third person pronouns as third person pronouns, and translate his second person pronouns as second person pronouns, and if Jesus wishes for whatever reason to shift to the more direct "you" in the last Beatitude, then we should let him do that and translate the pronouns faithfully.[43] We should translate what is there in the Greek, but this does not give us license to change what is there in the Greek to something else!

None of Blomberg's examples gives us justification for changing the pronouns that the New Testament author used in any verse, far less in the hundreds of cases where this has been done in the TNIV.[44] As I mentioned earlier, the TNIV does this in a sweeping, systematic way, so that third person singular statements that were accurately translated as "he" in the NIV text have been changed in the TNIV to "they" 271 times, to "singular they" another 112 times, to "you" 90 times, to "we" 9 times, and simply omitted 48 times. This is not faithful or accurate translation. Will readers really trust a Bible where third person masculine singular pronouns ("he") have been translated as "they" or "you" hundreds of times, with no way for readers to know where these are?

3. Should translations exercise "translational gender sensitivity" in order to make clear the "gender scope" of passages?

This question comes from the paper by Darrell Bock, "Do Gender Sensitive Translations Distort Scripture? Not Necessarily." Bock distinguishes between "ideological gender sensitive renderings," which is a radical approach that removes even male metaphors for God and Jesus because it is an attempt to "degenderize" the Bible, on the one hand, and "translational gender sensitivity" on the other hand which "renders terms to make clear the gender scope of passages" (p. 2). Bock thinks that this "translational gender sensitivity" is especially appropriate when passages "use an all encompassing reference to man or mankind to address both men and women" (p. 2).

 I have two difficulties with this approach as Bock explains it. First, to use the phrase "gender sensitive" to describe what the TNIV has done is unnecessarily to prejudice the discussion in favor of the TNIV. For who wants to be insensitive? I would argue that a truly "gender sensitive" translation is one that is sensitive to the exact meanings and nuances of the Greek terms and thus translates those precisely and faithfully into English. And if we believe that God is infinitely wise and infinitely loving and kind, then to translate his Word as accurately as possible is the most sensitive thing in the world to do, for it is giving both men and women an accurate rendering of God's words to them.

Second, to say that translations like the TNIV are justified because they "make clear the gender scope of passages" is to state the case in such a vague way that it fails to represent clearly the actual issue at hand. For example, take Exodus 20:17: "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife." Now what is the "gender scope" of this passage? Judging from the rest of Bock's paper, he seems to think that a passage has an inclusive "gender scope" whenever it states a general truth that applies to both men and women. But in that case the "gender scope" of this passage also includes not coveting your neighbor's husband. Should we then change the Ten Commandments and translate this, "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or husband"? Surely not, and I expect that Dr. Bock should say we should not do so either. But using the vague idea of "gender scope" as a wedge with which to broaden the gender-specific statements of Scripture would seem to do exactly this.

Bock's criterion of "gender scope" is too vague, and improperly confuses translation with application.

With regard to Psalm 34:20: "He keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken." Bock rightly understands that "the individualizing language of the verse is an illustration that picks up on how God defends one person, a man, as an example of how he defends any who are among the class of the righteous (Jesus included, since this verse is also mentioned in John 12:46)" (sic, p. 10; I think this is a misprint and Bock means John 19:36).

But after rightly noticing that this verse uses an individual man as an example of a general truth, then Bock goes on to say that "either rendering ‘his' or ‘their' can work here conceptually" (p. 10). He says, "The advantage of the plural is that it reminds the reader that a class of people is in view theologically which serves as the base behind the individual example" (p. 10). Thus he thinks the reading of the 1997 NIVI, "He protects all their bones, not one of them will be broken," is also acceptable.

My objection here is that in the original Hebrew text of this verse, David, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, chose to teach this truth by use of a specific male example. If God decided to teach us by use of a specific male example, then we have no right to change it into a general statement about a general truth. There are other statements in the same Psalm that make clear the broader application to people generally (see vv. 15, 17-18, 22), and the broader application will not be lost.

But why would we even think to try to change verse 20, which teaches by means of a specific male example, into a gender-neutral broader truth ("He keeps all their bones")? Why do we find something objectionable about verses in God's Word that use a male example to teach a general principle? Quite frankly, I think it is because in the current culture we feel a vague uneasiness about the use of such male examples. We feel they are somehow "insensitive," especially if they are not balanced with an equal number of individual female examples used to teach a general truth. But that means that our objection is really to the fact that the example is male. Yet if God used a specific male example, we should leave it, and translate it accurately. That is the truly "gender sensitive" thing to do, and only that procedure accurately and faithfully makes clear the true "gender scope" of the passage as God originally inspired it.

4. Is the TNIV acceptable because some loss of meaning is necessary in all translations?

A common theme in D. A. Carson's paper is that all translation work involves judgment and careful balancing of alternatives, and frequently some aspects of meaning have to be lost in order for others to be preserved. He argues that the TNIV should not be criticized for doing just what other translations have done, since the TNIV is just making somewhat different judgments on the details of what is preserved and what is lost in each case. Carson says:

While the goal is certainly to preserve as much meaning as possible, translation is an inexact discipline, and something is invariably lost in any basic translation. One is constantly forced to make decisions. That is one of the fundamental reasons why there are commentaries and preachers. But somewhere along the line, Poythress and Grudem start referring to any loss of any meaning at any level as a "distortion" and an "inaccuracy"....But all translators, including Poythress and Grudem, are inevitably bound up with making choices about "nuances" they get across....Poythress and Grudem articulate reasonably sound theory, but every time a decision goes against their favorite "nuance," they accuse their opponents of distorting Scripture and introducing inaccuracies (pp. 19-21).

I find I cannot agree with this assessment for two reasons. First, it is not true to say that "Poythress and Grudem start referring to any loss of any meaning at any level as a ‘distortion' and an ‘inaccuracy.'" What we actually say is this:

Because the task is so complex, no translation can attain the ideal and communicate into the second language absolutely everything that is meant in any speech or writing in the first. So what do translators do in practice? They try to do the best they can. They make hard choices and settle for compromises.[45]

We go on to say,

We must face a central fact: at a fine-grained level translators cannot avoid trade-offs .... All translations should endeavor to include as much as they can. But differences of priorities among the different translation strategies will sometimes lead to different solutions in detail.[46]

So we explicitly recognize that there is a loss of nuance at various places in translation, and sometimes difficult choices have to be made. Never do we make the foolish claim that any loss of any meaning at any level is a "distortion."

Second, we are not criticizing just any loss of meaning or nuance that goes against our preferences, but rather (a) a systematic program of excluding a certain kind of male-oriented meaning that is in the original text, when (b) the English language is clearly capable of representing that meaning in translation today. Thus, we are criticizing a systematic and unnecessary removal of male aspects of meaning that are in the original text.  We say:

The issue is whether a Bible translation systematically excludes male components of meaning that are there in the original text. If it does, the translation is "gender-neutral," and we argue in this book that such a translation does not properly translate some of the details in the Word of God....We ought not to tolerate these losses of meaning as long as a way exists of avoiding the losses.[47]

It is hard to understand how Carson can miss this point. We give literally hundreds of examples in our book, all of which focus on the loss of male components of meaning that were represented quite well in the original NIV and can still be represented well in English today.

For example, consider Matthew 7:3:

NIV: Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

TNIV: Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in someone else's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

Here the Greek text has tou adelphou sou. The word adelphos ("brother") can mean either "(1) a male from the same womb as the reference person, brother" or, in an extended sense, "(2) a person viewed as a brother in terms of a close affinity, brother, fellow member, member, associate figurative extension of 1" (BDAG, p. 18). All the meanings and uses of the term carry the sense of someone who has a personal relationship with another, a relationship strong enough that it can be thought of in terms of the familial language of "brother." And the genitive pronoun sou is rightly translated by the possessive pronoun "your."

Jesus is using a specific example of "your brother" to express a general principle. This is the way he often teaches, using a specific example to teach a general truth. It will not do to say "the English language has changed" and to use that as a reason for changing the verse, for it is perfectly understandable and perfectly clear English to speak of "the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye."

Why then did the TNIV change it to "the speck of sawdust in someone else's eye"? Not because of any change in English, and not because the meaning of the Greek words have hanged, but simply because Jesus' use of a male-specific example was objectionable. This is an example of a loss of meaning that is both systematic and unnecessary in the TNIV.

It gets worse in the next verse, Matthew 7:4:

NIV: How could you say to your brother "let me take the speck out of your eye," when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?

TNIV: How can you say _____________ "let me take the speck out of your eye," when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?

Here again the Greek specifies that Jesus said, "to your brother" (to adelpho sou) and the NIV got it exactly right. But the TNIV left the phrase out completely. In Jesus' statement, he specified the indirect object: "to your brother." He emphasized once again the personal relationship of the one to whom the person is speaking, one who is considered "your brother." But the TNIV translators apparently did not think that these three words of Jesus had any importance whatsoever, for they simply omitted them.

Why? Not because "the English language has changed," for the expression, "How can you say to your brother...?" is simple, clear English. But "to your brother" was left out because it was a male-specific example by which Jesus was teaching a general truth.

When we find several hundred examples like this in the TNIV, then we object that this is not just the kind of "loss of nuance" that is necessary in any translation, and this is not just Poythress and Grudem complaining because something goes against their personal preferences, but it is rather a thoroughgoing, systematic removal of a certain kind of male-oriented meaning, a removal that is unnecessary and that could easily be avoided with ordinary English (as the NIV itself clearly shows). It is not true to say that we are objecting to any loss of nuance at any level. We are objecting to a systematic and unnecessary removal of a male-oriented meaning that is in the original text.

5. Is this just an argument between advocates of two legitimate views of Bible translation, formal equivalence and dynamic (or functional) equivalence?

The claim that critics of the TNIV are simply trying to preserve "formal equivalence" comes up again and again. For instance, Carson says,

That is not to say that preservation of formal equivalence is always a bad thing; it is to say, rather, that appeal to loyalty and faithfulness toward the Word of God as the ground for preserving formal equivalence is both ignorant and manipulative, precisely because the significance and range of use of a masculine pronoun in Hebrew are demonstrably not the same as the significance and range of use of a masculine pronoun in English (pp. 25-26).

But that is not at all what we claimed in our book. With regard to a spectrum of translations from "more preservation of form" (or "more literal") to "more changing form" (or "periphrastic"), we say,

We think that there is room for a spectrum of approaches here, provided that readers understand the limitations as well as the advantages of the different approaches (Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy, pp. 79-80).

In fact, in that 2000 book, we responded directly to a similar charge that Carson had made earlier, that we were simply trying to preserve "formal equivalence" and that that was an incorrect approach to translation. We pointed out that the Colorado Springs Guidelines themselves in several places encourage the change of "form" (namely, masculine grammatical gender) in order to adequately represent meaning. If our concern were simply the preservation of grammatical "form" we of course would not approve such changes. But our concern is preservation of meaning, not preservation of form.

Here is the statement we made earlier:

What these two guidelines do claim is not that Hebrew, Greek, and English are "exactly" the same in pronoun use but that in the generic constructions mentioned they are substantially the same-so much so that (with few exceptions) generic third person singular masculine pronouns in Hebrew in Greek are best translated by generic third person singular masculine pronouns in English....What we have claimed is that a translation of a personal pronoun that uses the same gender and number often conveys the maximal amount of meaning. And this is nothing new-it has been followed for all English translations until the advent of gender-neutral Bibles beginning in 1986.

...the CSG did not insist on "formal equivalence" but on preserving meaning. It is surprising that Dr. Carson can write this [a statement that we were "blinded" to the fact that "formal equivalents are often impossible"] when the CSG themselves affirm at least six examples of translation that do not preserve formal equivalents:

Guideline	Heb. or Greek word or phrase	Grammatical gender in Heb. or Greek	Approved English translation	Sex indicated by English translation
A.1	ho pisteuon	Masculine	the one who believes	unspecified
A.5	anthropoi	Masculine	People	unspecified
A.7	oudeis	Masculine	no one	unspecified
A.8	pas	Masculine	all people, everyone	unspecified
B.1	adelphoi	Masculine	brothers and sisters	male and female
B.3	banim	Masculine	Children	unspecified

Carson has simply attributed to the Guidelines a position that exists only in his own mind, and one that is explicitly contradicted by the Guidelines.[48]

Though we wrote this in our 2000 book, and though we wrote it in explicit response to a similar claim by Carson, in his 2002 paper he continues to raise the same objection.

Another way to answer the objection that this is just a controversy between "dynamic/functional equivalence" and "formal equivalence" is to note that the kind of male-specific meaning that is left out of the TNIV can easily be represented in a translation that is far over on the "dynamic/functional equivalence" end of the spectrum. For example, the New Living Translation (NLT) in Matthew 7:3, says:

And why worry about a speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own?

Now there is nothing in the theory of functional equivalence that would prevent the change of one word so that the verse would read:

And why worry about a speck in your brother's eye when you have a log in your own?

Or, to take another verse from the NLT, consider Luke 17:3:

If another believer sins, rebuke him; then if he repents, forgive him.

Here the NLT, clearly a "dynamic/functional equivalence" translation, has used "he" and "him" in a representative generic statement, thus preserving the singular force of Jesus' example. So a "dynamic equivalence" translation can do this, and it preserves the singular and the male component of meaning. As far as the phrase "another believer," there is nothing in this translation theory that would prevent such a translation from rendering the verse as follows:

If your brother sins, rebuke him; then if he repents, forgive him.

In fact, the NLT in its marginal note says "Greek your brother." Now the policy of the NLT toward gender language probably led to their decision not to put the literal translation "your brother" in the verse itself, but it was a policy regarding gender language which led to that decision, not anything about the difference between "dynamic/functional equivalence" and "formal equivalence" in translation theory.

Therefore, as Vern Poythress and I indicated in our book in 2002, our objection is not against a certain theory of translation. Our objection is against the systematic and unnecessary removal of male-oriented components of meaning that are there in the original text. Any kind of translation can include these.

6. Are the TNIV critics angry, incompetent, and ignorant?

I was somewhat surprised to see the choice of words that Dr. Carson used in his paper to describe those who disagreed with him or to describe their arguments. Here are some examples:

"positively cranky" (p. 7)

"betrays linguistic and...theological naiveté" (p. 9)

"hopelessly naïve" (p. 10)

"astonishing naiveté" (p. 11)

"shockingly ignorant" (p. 11)

"linguistically indefensible....even worse...inexcusable" (p. 12-13)

"deceptive and manipulative" (p. 15)

"manipulative rhetoric" (p. 15)

"theological naiveté" (p. 15)

"uninformed and misdirected" (p. 16)

"reactionary wing" (p. 16)

"demonized functional equivalence" (p. 16)

"linguistically uninformed" (p. 16)

"rarely balanced and ... sometimes shrill" (p. 16)

"thoughtful and informed" (p. 17)

"patiently explains its authors' position" (p. 17)[49]

"scathingly" (p. 21)

"a rather heated review" (p. 22)

"increasingly shrill polemic that so roundly condemns fellow complementarians" (p. 24)

"both ignorant and manipulative" (p. 25)

"their wrath knows few bounds" (p. 26)[50]

In addition, there are some comments that imply that those who differ with Carson do not really understand Hebrew or Greek very well. He says, "Even many teachers of Greek and Hebrew in colleges, seminaries, and universities do not enjoy much facility in the languages they are teaching. These are precisely the kinds of people who are least likely to be sensitive to the demands of functional equivalence" (p. 46). On the next page he says, "It is the student of Greek and Hebrew who has a mechanical view of language who will have most difficulty grasping these elementary points, and who in the name of fidelity will demand more "direct" translations..." (p. 47).

With regard to the motives of those who are saying we need more accuracy in translation, Carson has this comment:

As one very sophisticated linguist wryly said, after reading his way into this debate, perhaps one of the reasons that impels some people to lay more stress on "accuracy" (by which they usually mean a greater tilting to more direct translation, though in all fairness accuracy is more complicated matter than that) is that what they really want is not so much a better translation as a "crib" on the original languages (Carson, p. 7).

Now a "crib" is "A word-for-word translation of a foreign language text, especially one used secretly by students as an aid in studying or test taking" (American Heritage Dictionary). The implication of this sentence is that Carson's opponents do not know Greek and Hebrew very well and really want a more literal translation so they can cover up their ignorance.

The net effect of these comments scattered throughout Carson's paper is to build up an impression of his opponents as academically incompetent to understand or discuss the complexities of these issues, incapable of making balanced judgments, driven by wrongful anger against those who differ ("scathingly," "heated," "wrath"), and secretly motivated by a desire for a literal translation that will help them hide their ignorance of Hebrew and Greek.

Such characterizations of one's opponents are known as ad hominem arguments, that is, arguments "against the person" rather than against the arguments that the person is making. Such ad hominem arguments should find no place in this discussion (and, I am glad to say, such language is not found in the papers by Blomberg, Bock, Bradley, and Waltke). It is disappointing to see it in Dr. Carson's essay, and it is also disappointing that Zondervan would include it in a packet that was mailed to all members of the Evangelical Theological Society and the Institute for Biblical Research.

Now some of the phrases I quoted above are not directly applied to persons but to positions that Carson says these persons hold. But as I read through Dr. Carson's paper, it seemed to me in a number of cases that the use of such language occurred in cases where Carson was not responding to a position that his opponent actually held, but to a position that Carson wrongly attributed to the opponent. For example, Carson discusses Tony Payne's argument that Romans 1:17 should be translated "righteousness of God" in order to preserve the ambiguity that is in the original genitive theou, rather than the NIV's translation "righteousness from God" (which excludes the other possible meaning of the genitive, "righteousness that belongs to God" or "God's righteousness"). Carson reports Payne as saying that in allowing only the one sense "righteousness from God," the NIV "places the responsibility for interpretation in the hands of the translator, rather than the reader" (p. 11). Carson's response is to say, "Surely we are not to return to the astonishing naiveté that thought that translation could be done without interpretation?....The notion that one can translate responsibly without interpretation is, quite frankly, shockingly ignorant of the most basic challenges facing translators" (p. 11).

But did Payne ever say that translation can be done "without interpretation"? Certainly not in the sense that translators first have to understand a text clearly ("interpret it") before they can translate it rightly, and certainly not in a sense that every translation is in some sense an "interpretation" (even the translation that leaves the ambiguous expression "righteousness of God"). What Payne was objecting to was translations that could translate in a way that left open for English readers both possible interpretations, so that readers today would have to do the same thing that the original readers had to do, namely, decide from the sense of the context which interpretation was appropriate. A sympathetic reading of Payne would have made that clear, but instead Carson attributes to him a foolish position that he never held (that translation can be done with no interpretation at all), and then criticizes Payne as if he in fact did hold that position.[51] So this procedure first misrepresents Payne and then maligns him.

As to whether Vern Poythress and I use language that is "shrill" and speaks "scathingly" of others and whether our "wrath knows few bounds when the TNIV deploys a plural instead of a singular" (p. 26), it may be helpful to quote again what we said in 2000:

We are not criticizing the personal motives of the translators. Only God can judge people's hearts. We do not know our own motives perfectly, let alone the motives of others (p. 7).

It is inappropriate to make this issue an occasion for personal attacks. We must beware of overreacting and firing ourselves with a zeal that is "not based on knowledge" (Rom. 10:2). "For man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires" (Jas. 1:20). The law of love requires us to hope for the best concerning other people's motives (1 Cor. 13:7)....However...it is not amiss to warn others about temptations that we see impinging (pp. 293-294).

In this more recent controversy over the TNIV, we have continually sought to exclude from our website (www.no-tniv.com or www.cbmw.org) any ad hominem statements or any negative comments about the persons involved on the other side of this issue. We have attempted never to write or speak out of anger. If we have failed in this attempt and have wrongfully spoken of others or said anything in anger at any point, then we certainly want others to call us to account for it. But it is troubling to be charged with acting in "wrath" when we are not aware of that attitude toward others in our own hearts.

F. Questions about specific verses

Although I have discussed a number of specific verses up to this point, there are some important and representative verses that received extended discussion in the September 2, 2002, Zondervan packet, and it is appropriate to include a brief discussion of them here.

1. In Hebrews 2:17, is it appropriate to say that Jesus was made like his "brothers and sisters"?

Here is the TNIV change in Hebrews 2:17:

NIV For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest ...

TNIV For this reason he had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest ...

I agree that the plural Greek word adelphoi can mean "brothers and sisters" when the context supports that understanding (and the Colorado Springs Guidelines allow this). But here the change to "brothers and sisters" is not appropriate. All the Old Testament priests were men, and surely the high priest was a man. So it is appropriate to keep the NIV translation, "like his brothers in every way."

The problem with "like his brothers and sisters in every way" is that it hints at an androgynous Jesus, one who was both male and female. The TNIV translation does not actually require that sense, but it surely leaves open a wide door for misunderstanding, and almost invites misunderstanding. Meditate on that phrase "in every way" and see if you can trust the TNIV. As the TNIV's readers begin to meditate on the phrase "in every way" and to preach on "in every way," it will be hard to avoid thinking that Jesus was somehow both male and female.

Carson's response is to say that even the phrase, "like his brothers in every way," which is the 1984 NIV's translation, "does not mean that Jesus must be like each ‘brother' in every conceivable way: as short as all of them, as tall as all of them, as old or young as all of them ..." (p. 29). Of course not, but it does mean that he shared "in every way" in the characteristics common to "brothers."

Second, he says, "if the focus is on being human, then for Jesus to become ‘like his brothers and sisters in every way' is not contextually misleading" (p. 30). Carson's line of reasoning here is representative of what we find often in defenses of the TNIV: (1) appeal to the vague, general meaning ("being human") and (2) then say that the male-specific details ("like his brothers") do not matter. That brings us back to the exact question with which we began this paper, the question at the heart of the controversy:

Is it acceptable to translate only the general idea of a passage and omit male-oriented details of meaning that are present in the original Hebrew or Greek text?

Here the specific male meaning ("brothers") is excluded by appeal to the vague general meaning ("being human"). The original readers, however, in reading adelphoi in connection with Jesus' becoming a high priest, would have thought of being "like his brothers," not of being "like human beings" generally. The TNIV omits the male-specificity of the original.

Third, Carson says the phrase "brothers and sisters" is a "unified pair that must be taken together" (p. 30), somewhat like the phrase "flesh and blood" in verse 14, "Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity ..." In response, I agree with Carson that "flesh and blood" will be understood by TNIV readers as a helpful parallel to the phrase "brothers and sisters" just three verses later in verse 17. But just as verse 14 clearly implies that Jesus had "blood," and just as saying he had "flesh and blood" has additional meaning that "flesh" alone would not have, so by this parallel we have further reason to say that "brothers and sisters" has additional meaning that "brothers" alone did not have: it affirms that Jesus was somehow like his "sisters" in every way as well, and that being like his "sisters" added something to him that he did not have in merely being "like his brothers in every way." The more readers look at this parallel, the more they will wonder if the verse teaches an androgynous Jesus.

But what is the point of this change in the TNIV? What is objectionable about saying that Jesus, in order to become a high priest, had to become "like his brothers in every way"? What is objectionable is the male-specific meaning. So the TNIV removes it. Once again, this has nothing to do with any claims that "the English language has changed," for modern English is perfectly capable of saying that Jesus was made "like his brothers in every way." The reason is not a change in English but a systematic and unnecessary removal of male-specific meaning that is there in the original text.

2. In Hebrews 2:6, is it legitimate to remove the phrase "son of man"?

The TNIV in Hebrews 2:6 changes "son of man" to "human beings":

NIV What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?

TNIV What are mere mortals that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?

Our objection to this change has been that the TNIV needlessly obscures the possible connection of this verse with Jesus, who often called himself "the Son of Man." (This verse is a quotation from Psalm 8:4.) And in changing "son of man" to "human beings," it incorrectly translates the singular Greek words huios ("son") and anthropos ("man").

Carson's response to this is to argue that the majority of commentators on Hebrews do not think that "son of man" here is a messianic title:

Scanning my commentaries on Hebrews (I have about forty of them), over three-quarters of them do not think that "son of man" here functions as a messianic title, but simply as a gentilic, as in Psalm 8 (pp. 28-29; Carson explains that "in Hebrew gentilic nouns are often singular in form but plural in referent").

There are at least three problems with this explanation. First, all the "gentilic" nouns listed in the grammars by Gesenius and by Waltke and O'Connor are formed in a different way from what we have in Psalm 8:4: they are constructed by adding a hireq-yod to the end of a noun, and they "frequently (often even as a rule) take the article" (Gesenius, section 125d; see also 127d), as in ha'ibri "the Hebrew" or hakkena'ani," "the Canaanite." Waltke-O'Connor say, "Names with the -i suffix are called gentilics" (5.7c; see also 7.2.2). And they say, "Both singular and plural gentilics regularly take the article in referring to the entire group" (13.5.1f). So if Carson wishes to claim ben-'adam is a "gentilic" noun in Psalm 8:4 (vs. 5 in Hebrew), he at least needs to explain how he can know this, since it has no article and no hireq-yod ending, and thus is different from both the examples and the rules listed in these standard grammars.

Second, when Carson says that three-quarters of the commentators on Hebrews do not see "son of man" as a messianic title in Hebrews 2:6, while admitting that "there are competent interpreters" who do see it as messianic (p. 29), he actually indicates the problem with the TNIV rendering "human beings." The problem is that this legitimate interpretive possibility is excluded by the TNIV. The original readers of Hebrews could see that Hebrews 2:6 had the Greek phrase huios anthropou ("son of man"), and they could realize that that was the same phrase as huios anthropou ("son of man") in the Septuagint of Psalm 8. The original readers could also realize that Jesus used these same two words when he called himself "the Son of Man." Then they could ponder whether there was a connection between Psalm 8:4, and Jesus' calling himself "the Son of Man," and Hebrews 2:6. But none of these options is open to readers of the TNIV, for the phrase "son of man" has disappeared.

In addition, we should realize that there are other possibilities than "this is a messianic title" or "this is not a messianic title" in Psalm 8:4. Psalm 8 points to the creation plan of God to have human beings ruling over creation: "You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet" (Ps. 8:6). Even if "son of man" is not specifically a messianic title in Psalm 8:4, it still uses a singular expression in the second line ("the son of man" or "a son of man"), and it thus invites the reader to narrow the focus from the whole race in the first line ("What is man, that you are mindful of him") to a singular example in the second ("the son of man"). The Hebrew parallelism in this case (as often) is not exactly synonymous, but repeats the idea of the first line with increased specificity in the second line.

Thus, even if readers don't see "son of man" in Psalm 8:4 as a messianic title, surely Jesus saw himself as the fulfillment of the world-rule intention of God spoken at creation (Gen 1:28) and reaffirmed in Ps. 8 (and the author of Hebrews affirms in Heb. 2:9 that Jesus does fulfil that role). As Blomberg correctly says, "Jesus has come and proved to be the perfect human that Adam and Eve failed to be: ‘But we do see Jesus' (v. 9)" (p. 20). Therefore, whether "son of man" is strictly a messianic title, or whether for some other reason it just speaks in the singular of "a son of man" whom God planned to have dominion over the earth, it is likely that Jesus saw himself as the fulfillment of Psalm 8. This means that when Jesus called himself "the Son of Man" it is likely that he had in mind not only the prophecy in Daniel 7:13 but also other "son of man" themes in the Old Testament, including that of Psalm 8:4. The TNIV should not prevent readers from seeing these possibilities.

Third, the TNIV's plural expression "human beings" in Hebrews 2:6 is simply not an appropriate translation of the singular Greek expression huios anthropou. Two components of meaning are unnecessarily left out: (a) The TNIV does not even have "human being" but "human beings," thus unnecessarily translating the singular phrase as plural. But the singular phrase is part of the inspired text.[52] (b) The sonship component of meaning in both the singular Hebrew ben and the singular Greek huios is lost. Even if huios anthropou ("son of man") referentially indicates a human being, it does so by means of a specific phrase which includes the indication of descent from another human being, which I suspect is why even the gender-inclusive NRSV in Ps. 8:4 adds a footnote, "Heb ben adam, lit. son of man."[53]

What is the reason for such a loss of meaning in the TNIV? The reason is not that the phrase "son of man" cannot be understood today due to changes in the English language, for the words "son" and "man" are not difficult words. The reason is that "son of man" is male-specific, and so the TNIV changed it to something "gender-neutral." Such a change is again part of a systematic and unnecessary loss of male-specific meaning that is there in the original text.

3. Can aner ("man, husband") sometimes mean "person"?

We have objected to changing verses such as Acts 4:4:

NIV: But many who heard the message believed, and the number of men grew to about five thousand.

TNIV: But many who heard the message believed, and the number of believers grew to about five thousand.

Of course, this makes quite a difference, for if there were 5000 men, then the size of the church was 10,000 or more.[54] The Greek word is aner (in this case plural). Whereas earlier Bible translations regularly translated aner as "man" or "husband," the TNIV translates it in some gender-neutral way like "people" 26 times.

Craig Blomberg defends this translation by saying, "...one well-attested meaning of the word is as a synonym for anthropos" (p. 15). He then cites definitions from the standard BDAG lexicon (p. 79) as well as two theological dictionaries.[55]

But these entries have to be read carefully, and it is not clear that the citations they provide actually demonstrate that aner can take the meaning "person," for several reasons:

(1) Where is the convincing data from citations of ancient sources? It is still not clear that there are any examples in the New Testament where the sense "person" is required instead of the sense "man." As for literature outside the Bible, what is the new data on aner that anyone has produced in the last five years that shows that Bible translations have understood aner wrongly up to this point? It has been well-known by Greek scholars for centuries that the term anthropos can mean either "person" or "man," depending on the context, and aner always (outside of special idioms) means "man" or "husband." Nobody in the last several years of the gender-neutral Bible controversy has "discovered" any new examples that prove a new meaning for aner. (And when we check the evidence for the meaning "person" given in some reference works, it turns out to give no new support for the supposed meaning "person"; see below.)

(2) Anthropos and aner: Given the way language works, it is highly improbable linguistically that Greek would have two different words, anthropos and aner, and that both words would mean both "man" and "person." That would leave Greek an amazing linguistic vacuum of having no common noun that could be used to speak specifically of a male human being.[56]

(3) Liddell-Scott: The standard reference work, the Liddell-Scott Lexicon (p. 138) for all of ancient Greek, gives no meaning "person," but only "man, husband," and some specific variations on those. This is very significant because aner is not a rare word: it is extremely common in Greek. Thousands upon thousands of examples of it are found in Greek from the 8th century BC (Homer) onward. If any meaning "person" existed, scholars likely would have found clear examples centuries ago.

(4) BDAG: The Bauer-Danker-Arndt Gingrich Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2000), needs to be read carefully so that it is not misquoted. Although they list one meaning as "equivalent to tis, someone, a person" (p. 79), we should note first that that is subordinate meaning (2) under the general meaning at the beginning of the entry, "a male person."

And in this entry under "equivalent to tis, someone, a person," every one of the examples they cite can easily be understood to refer to a man or men (such as Luke 19:2, "a man named Zacchaeus"; Acts 10:1 "a man named Cornelius"; or Luke 5:18 "some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed"). So the entry in BDAG really shows that aner can mean "someone, a person (but always male)."

Now someone could argue, "But maybe there was a woman helping to carry the paralytic." The answer is that lexical definitions cannot be built on maybe's. There is no factual evidence that a woman was helping. And the clear pattern of other examples pushes us to say aner (plural) here must have meant "men" to first-century readers as well, unless we find some clear counter-examples.

The situation is similar in Rom. 4:8, "Blessed is the man (aner) whose sin the Lord will never count against him." The context does not require the sense "person," and this is a quotation from Ps. 32:2 where David is speaking (as several times in the Wisdom Literature) of the "blessed man" who is an example for all the godly to follow, as in Psalm 1:1, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked."

Of course these verses apply to women as well as men, just as the parable of the prodigal son applies to women as well as men, and the parable of the woman with the lost coin applies to men as well as women, but in none of these cases should we translate it to be the parable of the prodigal child or the parable of a person with a lost coin.

There is one other verse that people have sometimes mentioned, but it is ambiguous at best. Acts 17:34 says, "A few men (aner, plural) became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others" (NIV). This verse does not mean that Damaris is included in the "some men" (aner plural), as both F. F. Bruce's commentary and the BDAG Lexicon itself make clear (p. 79; note the word kai, "also"). It just means some men (on the Areopagus where Paul spoke and addressed them as "men of Athens," vs. 22) believed, and some others like Dionysius and Damaris were added to them.

BDAG also cite several references to extra-biblical literature in this entry. I have looked up every reference and they all either clearly refer to male human beings (as 1 Maccabees 13:34, "Simon also chose men and sent them to Demetrius the king with a request to grant relief to the country..."), or the context is not determinative but the meaning "man" makes good sense and the meaning "person" is not required (as Psalms of Solomon 6:1, "Happy is the man (makarios aner, in likely imitation of Psalm 1:1) whose heart is ready to call on the name of the Lord").

There is an idiomatic use, kat'andra, which BDAG also note at the end of this entry, with several references. This idiom means "man for man, individually," and clearly includes women in some instances, but that idiom does not occur in the New Testament. The LSJ Lexicon (p. 138) also notes the idiom kat'andra, with a similar meaning. The LSJ Lexicon does not give the meaning "person" for aner, but rather, "man, opposed to women," "man, opposed to god," "man, opposed to youth," "man emphatically, man indeed," "husband," and some special usages.[57]

(5) Louw-Nida: The Louw-Nida Lexicon does not treat aner by itself, but defines both aner and anthropos in the same two entries (9.1, under the category "Human Beings" and 9.24, under the category "Males"). It is surprising that they make no distinction between these two words, about which other lexicons regularly recognize a difference, with aner being a male-specific term.

In entry 9.1, with respect to aner, Louw-Nida quote Romans 4:8 as meaning, "happy is the person to whom the Lord does not reckon sin." They then say, "The parallelism in this quotation from Ps 32:1-2 indicates clearly that the reference of aner is not a particular male but any person." They then quote Matt. 14:35 as meaning, "when the people of that place recognized him," and then say, "one may argue that hoi andres refers specifically to males, but the context would seem to indicate that the reference is to people in general" (p. 104).

What has happened here? They have given a new meaning for aner with no new evidence. Translators and authors of lexicons have known about Rom. 4:8 and Matt. 14:35 for centuries, and those two verses in their contexts have not been sufficiently clear to persuade them that a new meaning for aner should be established. Louw-Nida have just asserted this new meaning while producing no new evidence to prove that meaning.

As we indicated above, in Rom. 4:8, the context does not require the sense "person," because "man" makes perfect sense, especially since this is a quotation from Ps. 32:2 where David is speaking, as often in the Wisdom Literature, of the "blessed man" who is an example for all the godly to follow, as in Psalm 1:1, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked." As for Matt. 14:35, when Jesus landed at Gennesaret (vs. 34) it would be natural that the first people to see him and recognize him, and then send people to bring the sick to him, would be the men out working along the shore or in nearby fields. The translation "the men of that place" makes good sense.

The principle that would keep us from adopting the additional sense "person" for aner is that if a well-established meaning makes sense in the context, then we should not adopt a previously unattested meaning in its place. Such a general principle of lexicography is well stated by Cambridge lexicographer John Chadwick, whose book Lexicographica Graeca: Contributions to the Lexicography of Ancient Greek is a collection of specialized studies that reflect his years of experience on the team overseeing a supplement to the Liddell-Scott Lexicon:

A constant problem to guard against is the proliferation of meanings....It is often tempting to create a new sense to accommodate a difficult example, but we must always ask first, if there is any other way of taking the word which would allow us to assign the example to an already established sense .... As I have remarked in several of my notes, there may be no reason why a proposed sense should not exist, but is there any reason why it must exist? (John Chadwick, Lexicographica Graeca: Contributions to the Lexicography of Ancient Greek (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 23-24).

In other words, the burden of proof is on the person who postulates a new sense. If an already established sense can account for a particular use, one must not postulate a new sense.

So the Louw-Nida Lexicon has asserted a new meaning for aner, but has not supported that claim with any new or convincing evidence.[58]

(6) Other reference works: Blomberg also mentions two other reference works. With regard to the NIDNTT entry, perhaps Blomberg just cited the entry without checking the supporting citations from ancient literature, because they do not support the meaning "person." The meaning "adult" which Blomberg (p. 15) mentions from NIDNTT (p. 562) is supported by just one piece of evidence, Xenophon, Cyropaedia. 8.7,6, in which Cyrus, king of Persia, is recounting his life, telling about "when I was a boy," then "when I became a youth," then "when I became a mature man (aner)." The fact that Cyrus calls himself an aner hardly proves that aner can include women!

With regard to the entry in Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, the situation is the same as with the Louw-Nida Lexicon: no new, decisive examples are cited from extra-biblical literature, but the same New Testament verses we have always known about are claimed as evidence that aner "can denote any human being" (p. 99). The verses given as evidence include Matthew 14:35 (the men of Gennesaret); Luke 5:18 ("some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed") and Mark 6:44 ("those who ate the loaves were five thousand men"). This last verse in Mark about the feeding of the five thousand is said to be a different meaning from the use of aner in the parallel account of the same event in Matthew 14:21, "And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children." But if this is right, then Matthew and Mark have vastly different reports of the number who were fed at the same event: with Mark (according to this entry in Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament), there were 5000 people, total, but according to Matthew there were 5000 men, plus (we suppose) at least an equal number of women and children, giving a total of more than 10,000 people. These accounts would thus stand as significant factual discrepancies in the Gospels. And all in order to demonstrate that sometimes aner can mean "person." I have to admit that I do not find such evidence convincing. I return to the question with which I began: If aner really does mean "person," and not just "man," where is the convincing data from quotations of ancient sources?[59]

(7) But could new information change my mind about aner? I do not wish to deny the possibility that the plural of aner could take on a wider sense such as "people" in the fixed idiomatic expression, andres + plural noun, such as "men of Athens," "men of Israel," etc. If substantial evidence is forthcoming, I would be happy to change my understanding of plural andres, and I recognize that there may be such evidence that I have not yet seen, especially with regard to fixed idioms such as "men of Athens," etc. (In any case the CSG allow for unusual exceptions in certain cases.) But I have not yet seen clear evidence that this is the case. So I cannot at this point agree with the claim on the TNIV web site that aner "was occasionally used as a generic term for human beings."

I think the perspective of Steve Baugh, an expert in the history and culture of the ancient Greek world, is helpful at this point. Baugh writes (in an e-mail to Wayne Grudem on Feb. 20, 2002, quoted with permission):

The ANDRES EPHESIOI ("Gentlemen of Ephesus") in Acts 19 is pretty standard type of formal public address to an assembly. So, for instance, the "W ANDRES ATHHNAIOI" ("O gentlemen of Athens") with which Socrates opens his address in the Apology.

That women might be present in such a crowd does not take away from the fact that ANDRES (as also "gentlemen") addresses the preponderant male constituents. I've always thought that Pliny the Younger's letter (4.19) regarding his wife's practice of attending his public readings "seated discretely behind a curtain nearby" (in proximo discreta velo sedet) to be quite telling on ancient practice. Any respectable women in public venues were expected to be discretely out of the spotlight. Hence the traditional "gentlemen" opening to a public address.

So it seems to me that the burden of proof is still on those who say that aner could lose its male meaning. Before I would agree that aner can sometimes mean "person," I would hope to see some unambiguous examples from the Bible or from other ancient literature. This kind of evidence is simply what is required in all lexicography, especially concerning such a common word. Unless such examples are forthcoming, it seems unjustified to translate aner as "person" or the plural form andres as "people."

And even if someone produces some unambiguous examples that aner can mean "person" without implying a male person (as there are many unambiguous examples with anthropos), this would still be an uncommon sense, not the "default" sense that readers assume without contextual specification. And even in such cases the male-oriented connotation or overtone would probably still attach (with the sense that the people referred to are mostly or primarily male). But until substantial evidence in that regard is found, we cannot agree with the procedure of systematically changing many NT examples of aner to "person" or "persons." What seems to be driving the decision at this point is not the preponderance of evidence but an attempt to eliminate male-oriented meanings.[60]

4. Other verses

There are, of course, disputes about many other verses, several of which I have treated in the earlier part of this paper. Others are treated more fully on the CBMW web site (www.cbmw.org), especially in the section "CBMW interacts with TNIV explanations of changes," and readers can consult those discussions. Many verses are discussed in detail in our book, The Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy. But perhaps what I have said to this point is sufficient to understand the kind of concerns I would have about other passages in the TNIV as well.

G. Other concerns about factual accuracy

As I read the articles in the Zondervan packet on the TNIV, I wondered about care for factual accuracy in a few other places. I mention them here by way of asking for documentation to support these claims, all of which portray TNIV critics in a negative light, and none of which is supported with any documentation.

1. Do we say there is nothing to be learned from feminism?

Carson writes:

"... it is important, in the face of feminist demands, not to tar the entire movement with one broad brush. One must try to assess where, in the light of Scripture, feminist agendas make telling points ... and where they seem to fly in the face of Scripture ...But that is a far cry from saying that there is nothing to be learned from feminist cries, from feminist writings ... (Carson, p. 23, with reference to Poythress and Grudem).

But we say in our book, in the beginning of the chapter on feminist influence on language:

Early feminism contained some very legitimate concerns, but also some wrongheaded ideas. But God can bring good results even out of wrong human intentions (Gen. 50:20). And some good results have come. Not only society as a whole but also Christians in particular have received a wake-up call to pay more attention to the needs and concerns of women, and to value women as highly as they value men. As a result, we hope, Christians have become more alert to the dangers of male domineering and pride, and have gone to the Scriptures to learn and obey more thoroughly God's standards for male-female relations (p. 135).

2. Do we say the English language is not changing?

Carson writes:

I cannot help remarking, rather wryly, that in light of the ESV, the argument of Poythress and Grudem sounds a bit like this: "The language is not changing, so we do not need to respond to the demands of inclusive language. But if it is changing, the changes are driven by a feminist agenda, so they are wrong and must be opposed if we are to be faithful to Scripture. Because of the change, we will make some minor accommodations in our translations, but if others make any other changes, they are compromisers who introduce distortions and inaccuracies, and should be condemned, because changes are not necessary anyway! (P. 24).

The fact that we appreciate many of the influences from feminism was stated in the previous section. As far as the claim that we say "the language is not changing," the official statement issued with the Colorado Springs Guidelines June 3, 1997, said,

we all agree that modern language is fluid and undergoes changes in nuance that require periodic updates and revisions (GNBC, 302).

Why does Carson repeat this accusation in 2002, an accusation he also made in his 1998 book, without mentioning that we already responded to it directly in our book in 2000? Here is the relevant citation from our 2000 book:

We first quoted Carson's 1998 book, in which he said:

At the risk of caricature (in which on this issue I really do not wish to indulge), their argument runs something like this: (1) The English language is not changing, or not changing much. (2) If it is changing, we should oppose the changes because the feminists are behind the changes. (pp. 183-184)

In response we said,

First, let us assure readers that Carson's description is indeed a caricature. The accompanying statement that we published with the Colorado Springs Guidelines and that was signed by all participants said, "We all agree that modern language is fluid and undergoes changes in nuance that require periodic updates and revisions" (CBMW News 2:3 [June, 1997]: 7, emphasis added). In addition, the Colorado Springs Guidelines themselves contain Guidelines that approve some changes. The following all approve changes in translations due (at least in part) to changes in English: Guidelines A.1 (approving "the one who.." rather than "he who"), A.5 (approving "people" rather than "men" for plural Greek anthrÜpoi), A.6 (approving "anyone" rather than "any man" for Greek tis), A.7 (approving "no one" rather than "no man" for Greek oudeis), and A.8 (approving "all people" rather than "all men" for Greek pas).

More accurately stated, our position would be: (1) Many changes in the use of gender language in current English should be reflected in modern translations, and these changes can be made with no significant loss of meaning (see Chapter 5) ...

We discussed the question of feminist influence on changes in English in Chapter 8, but it should be noted here that the CSG give approval to several changes in translation that reflect changes in English due at least in part to feminist influence. To say that we "ascribe whatever gender changes that are developing in the language to feminist influence and then heartily oppose them" (p. 183) is simply untrue. But Carson says in the very next sentence, "The latter course is being pursued by the critics of gender-inclusive translations" (p. 183). Furthermore, to say we hold that "If [the English language] is changing, we should oppose the changes because the feminists are behind the changes" (p. 184) is also simply untrue, in light of our explicit endorsement of many changes in translation due to these very changes in English.[61]

Perhaps Carson thinks it makes no difference that we denied this same caricature in 2000, and said it was simply not true. Perhaps he thinks it is valuable to repeat it anyway for rhetorical effect. Perhaps he thinks it is most forceful if he then includes no footnote informing readers that we have already responded in print by quoting this caricature and saying that it is untrue. Perhaps he thinks it is most helpful to his case to go on making the caricature and ignoring anything that we, the targets of his caricature, might say in hopes of clarification. I really don't know why Dr. Carson has done this again. I can only say, as I have said many times when people have asked me about Carson's book, that it is impossible for readers to understand the position of the TNIV critics simply by reading about us in Carson's book.

By contrast, here is what linguistics professor Valerie Becker Makkai says about our book:

Vern Poythress and Wayne Grudem ... clearly understand the fluid and changing nature of language and their arguments are based on sound linguistic principles (GNBC, p. xvii).

We do not claim, and have never claimed, that the English language is not changing.

3. Do people repeatedly claim that Dr. Carson profits financially from the TNIV?

I find it puzzling that Carson says, "... my views have been repeatedly dismissed on the grounds (it is said) that I was a translator for the NIV and therefore benefit financially from my arguments" (p. 32; he answers with a note that he did provide free consultation regarding one book of the NIV).

I am reasonably familiar with this debate and what has been written about the issues, and I have never heard anyone claim this, much less have I heard it "repeatedly." Dr. Carson provides no documentation for this claim.

4. Have entire denominations been torn asunder in this debate?

Carson writes, "Entire denominations have been torn asunder in debate [over the issue of gender-inclusive language]" (p. 17). Again, I am reasonably familiar with the events of this debate, and I know that the Southern Baptist Convention and the Presbyterian Church in America passed resolutions against the TNIV by substantial margins (see www.cbmw.org for details). But I am not aware of any denominations that have been "torn asunder in this debate." Perhaps Dr. Carson is aware of events unknown to me, but he provides no documentation, so as it stands the claim is unnecessarily inflammatory.

H. Cultural pressures on language are not always neutral

I realize that for several decades, some English style rules imposed on students, especially in universities, have told them them to avoid generic "he" (and other male-oriented expressions) and to rewrite their sentences in other ways. Of course people can rewrite their sentences with plurals, or change to the second person, or clutter them with "he or she," but then the sentences say something different and they sound different and their meaning is different. But if the author does not want to say the "something different," but wants to use a pronoun to hint at a specific male example of a general truth, then a generic third person masculine singular pronoun is needed. Since "he" is the only recognized English word that functions that way, if this use of "he" is ruled out, the result will be that the would-be rulers of the language will have told us that there are certain things that we cannot say, even in the Bible. We are permitted by them to say something similar, something related, something that sounds nearly the same, but we cannot say precisely this idea. It is not surprising that wise writers have resisted such a mandate, for if this kind of rule should ever prevail, our thinking would be impoverished.

This is because the pressure to conform to "politically correct" speech is primarily a pressure not to use certain expressions. But when our freedom to use certain expressions is taken away, then our ability to think in certain ways is also curtailed. For example, if all masculine generic singular statements are removed from the Bible, then the ability to think of such a representative male who stands for a whole group will have been removed - for we will have no acceptable words in which to formulate our thought. There will be no way to say, "If any one loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him" (John 14:23), and thus there will be no way to think of that precise idea. Restricting certain types of expression is restricting certain types of thought.

George Orwell understood this well in his novel 1984. One of the government functionaries who is rewriting the dictionary explains what is really happening when he revises English into the Newspeak that is required by Big Brother:

You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying words - scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone...It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well...Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it...Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller... (pp. 45-46).

I. Conclusion

It is appropriate to end where we began. The heart of the difference can be summarized in one sentence:

Is it acceptable to translate only the general idea of a passage and systematically omit male-oriented details of meaning that are present in the original Hebrew or Greek text?

I have argued in this article that it is not appropriate to do this, as the TNIV has done.

I believe much is at stake. If the TNIV should gain wide acceptance, the precedent will be established for other Bible translations to mute unpopular nuances and details of meaning for the sake of "political correctness." The loss of many other doctrines unpopular in the culture will soon follow. And at every case Bible readers will never know if what they are reading is really the Word of God or the translators' ideas of something that would be a little less offensive than what God actually said. These words of the Bible are not ours to tamper with as we please. "You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it" (Deut. 4:2).

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