This is something that many advocates for a conservative, gender exclusive bible simply fail to recognise the significance of unifying man and womankind into human kind! Thy fail to see that the very roots of gender inequality lay in the Bible and its complete disregaurd of female participation. Too many of these critics are making way too big a deal about relatively small changes, but fantastically important ones. Yes, something is lost when a translation moves away from the image of the solitary godly person in Psalm 1 ("Blessed is the man who") to the collective ("Blessed are those"). But how much, really? Enough to warrant blasting a Bible with a shotgun and mailing it back to the publisher? Enough to sanction threats to a Bible society if it doesn't cease producing the offending version? Enough to justify the dismissal of a seminary professor involved in the translation project a year before his retirement? Enough to keep a new translation out of the hands of people who would welcome it both for its merits as a bridge between men and women in Evangelical matters, and simply as a good read?
Ladies and gentlemen, what we are witnessing across the globe is "Bible rage." What agenda could possibly be pressing people to such instant and insistent opposition? Some critics openly articulate their fear that such inclusive translations represent the not-so-thin edge of a feminist wedge that will lead next to feminine language for God (not just for human beings) and from thence to outright goddess worship. God forbid should THAT happen!
The authors of this bible don’t only have "feminist" convictions, but they share the goals of egalitarianism, and believe in the rights of the "evangelical feminists."
Our language has been under much pressure to conform to "politically correct" patterns of speech that were first demanded by feminists in the 1960s and are now demanded by other interest groups as well. The preface to the NRSV explains exactly what led to these changes: It was a requirement from the National Council of Churches to eliminate "masculine-oriented language." And the preface to the NIVI explains that they thought it appropriate at times "to mute the patriarchalism of the culture of the biblical writers."
The English language is the largest in the world. Can't we figure out how to include everyone? In a world where women in church must be assured that God is talking to them too, and where women must struggle to throw off the chains of the binding “Weaker sex” tag, and they're not just radical feminists, they're women who want to be included, its obvious that something must be done to reprimand the situation.
This new bible is a debate with egalitarianism and feminism being the key ssues. How can we be equal if God fathered only sons? Isn’t religeon all about acceptance and equality, whether it be Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or spirituality from the inside? Changing third person to second person or singulars to plurals for the sake of inclusive language does sacrifice a little in original meaning but the benefits of this are spectacular! The critics drastically overestimate how much is lost and do not appreciate what is gained. It is doubtful if most modern American listeners will interpret "blessed are those who. . ." (whether in the Proverbs or the Beatitudes) as a corporate reference that excludes individual application. It is not really something that jumps to mind. But, the question posed by the current version of the bible is, “why are the Proverbs only addressed to men or sons? Whatever happened to women and daughters?”
Critics also rightly point out that many printed media still use the "generic he"(and comparable exclusive constructions), that alternatives retaining the third person singular are awkward ("he or she", alternating between "he" and "she,") and that those that switch to plurals are grammatically incorrect. But they say nothing about the fact that in spoken English only a tiny handful of people ever still complete a sentence like "No one brought their book to class" with any pronoun other than "their," and that the Modern Language Association has since the late 1980s authorized such usage for standard printed materials.
What initially purports to be a linguistic debate quickly turns theological as one discovers what really annoys the critics. Men, according to their version of complementarianism, are the representative heads (in the sense of "authorities") for the human race, and therefore all but the very most cautious usage of inclusive language such as "brothers and sisters" for "brothers" and "people" for "men" in certain but not all contexts, is muting the masculinity of Scripture and undermining the frequency with which readers can recognize the God-ordained rationale behind the use of masculine language. Oh the injustice of it all! How can we allow people for a moment to consider that this world is not dominated by the male?
Of course, it is impossible to calim that inclusive-language translation cannot still be substantially improved. This claim becomes difficult when translating the phrase:
“And the Father reached his hand to his son and he said “He will accept you and he will
love you”
“And the parent reached his or her hand to his or her child and he or she said “He or she will accept you and he or she will love you.” But, the importance of gender neautral language in the bible is really to burn the last and most opressive barrier to gender neautrality across our society – Religeon!
To critisize gender neautral bibles for applying inclusive language is tacitly to argue that all translations must be literal and that there is no convincing rationale in any context for other kinds of translations. But, as the critics deny this logical conclusion in other contexts demonstrates that it really is not translation theory or a concern for the accuracy of God's word that most fundamentally motivates them, rather it is one particular conviction about what Scripture teaches on gender roles and the corollaries which they believe (erroneously) necessarily follow from that conviction.
"Ladies and gentlemen, now that we’ve taken care of the bible, its time to look at the bigger picture. Lord of the Rings? Its time all popular culture got a gender neutral makeover...we've burnt our bras long enough! The world is ready...Its ready for a Lord OR LADY of the Rings, for a Monarch of the Damned, for a Person of the Flies."
