Year of Biblical Womanhood

Rachel Held Evans has announced the topic of her next book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood. I have enjoyed reading the posts and comments on her blog ever since. Her audience is diverse and the comments are quite entertaining. Unfortunately commenters do not worry much about the sensitivities of complementarians so be warned. I don't think they mean any harm, and are not vicious, but many just can't get their head around many of the things that John Piper likes to smoke. I recommend To Vote or Not to Vote.

The end of perspicuity

I am not sure when the doctrine of perspicuity began. Perhaps it was during the Reformation that some decided the scriptures were clear and forthright. However, we can safely announce the end of perspicuity this year. It is now out in the open that complementarians dither endlessly about whether Ephesians 5:21 refers to non-reciprocated submission, or submission which is reciprocal, albeit different.

They are not the same thing, if you think about it. If submission is non-reciprocal, then the command in Eph. 5:21 is only intended for those Christians who are in roles of submission to other Christians, it is not an instruction for everyone. Some time ago after careful consideration, Denny Burk wrote,

I think “one another” is used in the non-reciprocal sense Ephesians 5:21 as well.

But the other day he wrote about Thielman,

He takes a different tack on the interpretation of “submitting to one another” in verse 5:21. He understands that both husbands and wives are to submit to one another, but they are to do so in different ways. Thus he maintains the Pauline notion of headship while distinguishing his view from the “mutual submission” interpretation of egalitarians.

For most complementarians, there are many different ways to interpret the words of scripture. As long as they all lead to the authority of the husband over the wife, one can still call oneself a complementarian. But great latitude is allowed in exegeting scripture. Why is Thielman acceptable? Because he distinguishes himself from egalitarians. Not because he has any particular understanding of scripture. In fact, relatively few jump to defend the clarity of scripture. Many jump to defend the authority of the male over the female.

More about kephale in Philo

On Denny Burk's recent post about a commentary of Ephesians, Derek writes,

What part of “in a manner” do you not understand about Philo’s text and explanation? The mechanics of his interaction with the other kings is simply not relevant here and Philo says as much. All that is needed is to understand the way a leader relates to his herd. That’s it. Read it again and more carefully and you’ll see it.

The difficulty is that "leader of the herd" is not a particularly literal translation of this phrase. I would prefer to see Derek engage with the passage in Greek, rather than continue to comment on the English. This is from Fitzmeyer, page 86,

Philo speaks of Ptolemy II Philadelphus as one who was outstanding among the Ptolemies and expresses it thus,


genoumenos kathaper en zōō to hēgemoneuon kephalē tropon tina tōn basileōn

being, as the head is the leading part in a living body, in some sense the head of kings [of the Ptolemaic dynasty]. (De Vita Mosis 2.5.30)

The word translated as "herd" is ζῷον, "animal, creature, image" found here,

πρῶτον μέν νυν τύπον ποιησάμενος λίθινον ἔστησε: ζῷον δέ οἱ ἐνῆν ἀνὴρ ἱππεύς, ἐπέγραψε δὲ γράμματα λέγοντα τάδε: “Δαρεῖος ὁ Ὑστάσπεος σύν τε τοῦ ἵππου τῇ ἀρετῇ” τὸ οὔνομα λέγων “καὶ Οἰβάρεος τοῦ ἱπποκόμου ἐκτήσατο τὴν Περσέων βασιληίην.”

First he made and set up a carved stone, upon which was cut the figure of a horseman, with this inscription: “Darius son of Hystaspes, aided by the excellence of his horse” (here followed the horse's name) “and of Oebares his groom, got possession of the kingdom of Persia. Herodotus Histories

The truth is that Philo's use of kephale is as a metaphor, and we are not exactly sure how to translate it. It is not an established way to say that someone had authority. Philo uses the word kephale elsewhere to denote a person of exemplary virtue. There is no indication that Paul wants us to believe that the husband in a marriage relationship naturally displays an exemplary morality that the wife would do well to emulate. The comparison is strained.

Here is a longer article about kephale in Philo. I regret that these are not full posts, but simply responses to a discussion which is ongoing on Denny Burk's blog, where I have been blocked.

The main question that I am left asking is why such a passage would be considered one of the most significant pieces of evidence that kephale means "authority."

Kephale in Philo

With reference to the discussion going on on Denny Burk's blog, all I can say is that the citation from Philo is proof against Grudem's taxonomy, which is as follows, stated negatively,

"we cannot find any text where person A is called the "head'' of person or persons B, and is not in a position of authority over that person or persons"

Ptolemy was called the head of the Ptolemies, but was not the authority over his father or other kings in his famiy line. In fact, the only person who was ever called the kephale of a family, tribe or nation of which he was the leader, was Jephthah.

I am not going to change my story on this.

If you want to talk about who is the "head of the household" then you have to go to another Greek phrase oikodespotes. In the verb form, this word is applied to women in 1 Tim. 5:14. In the New Testament, it appears that there were at least a few women who were the head of their own household - Lydia, Chloe, Nympha, the elect lady, and so on.

Any woman reading this needs to know that believing that the husband is the authority in the marriage, has no benefit in terms of getting into heaven, raising one's children well, bringing honour to God, or preventing divorce. Submission to an unpleasant spouse, either husband or wife, may seem to work in the short term, but it is highly dysfunctional in terms of maintaining a relationship, and is in fact, one predictor of divorce. People need to know the truth.

Response

I am not able to comment on Denny Burk's blog, but my material is discussed there. I will post in response this evening.

Venus and Mars - Love and Respect

I wonder why Venus and Mars have become such popular icons for the female and male in love. Why do we imagine that eros is the child of war and beauty? Why is "beauty submitted to war" even an erotic image in the first place? And why do some Christians invest such an notion with even a particle of truth?

In fact, we may find another romantic hero in mythology. Not Mars, the god of war, but Hephaestus, also known as Vulcan, the god of technology. Perhaps he was not the best-looking, the most buff and fit god of all the gods. He was a plain-looking creature, by some accounts a bit lame but nonetheless, the god of craft and fire, the god of forging and forming. What's to choose between war and craft?

Who loves a Vulcan, but Jane Eyre, that pragmatic young woman, who wisely rejects St. John Rivers, the staid clergyman, for Rochester, her personally flawed but much loved Vulcan. I am sure that by now you must think that I am in love with Spock, not so, although I wonder just how many real life males fall between Nimoy and Shatner.

In any case, it was not Mars but Hephaestus (that is Vulcan) who warrants our interest. And who did he marry? According to some traditions, Hephaestus was married to Aphrodite, (that is, Venus) but according to another story (the Iliad) Hephaestus' true mate was Charis (Grace.)

If I wanted to hijack a story to use as an icon for Christian mating, for seeking the perfect complementarian relationship, I would not touch Mars and Venus with a ten foot pole. I would chase after Hephaestus and Charis. (okay, so it doesn't make a great book title, "Men are Hephaestus and Women are Charis" (or Aglaia, the youngest grace.) Nope, that would not sell books. But it might be a love worth having.

In contrast to both John Gray, of Men are from Mars ..., and Eggerichs, of Love and Respect, I highly recommend John Gottman. All this to say, in an interesting way, that there is a great comparison between John Gray (Men are from Mars ...) and John Gottman right here. If I had to recommend any books - by anyone at all - on love and relationships, it would be John Gottman.

All this nonsense, or sense - depending on who you are - is because I received an email today thanking me for my series on Love and Respect, which I wrote about a while ago. I am no fan of this kind of pop psychology.

Love and Respect 1
Love and Respect 2
Love and Respect 3
Love and Respect 4
Love and Respect 5
Love and Respect 6
Love and Respect 7

There are a few more posts on this topic under Eggerichs.

preparing to be a help meet

Just when I think that I need to put the whole issue of biblical womanhood out of my mind, and enjoy a little fresh air, it inserts itself back into my life. Last week my daughter came home with "Preparing to be a Help Meet" by Debi Pearl. I actually read most of it, and found some of the anecdotes quite entertaining. It was an odd read, unsophisticated in many ways, and I can in no way recommend it. But I understand how a young girl, who is recently engaged, might enjoy reading it and fantasize a little.

Anyhow ... my daughter was horrified. She doesn't normally want to talk these things over with me, but she did admit that this book was so much worse than anything I had mentioned. Oh well, she'll survive and she won't be overly influenced by it.

We did confirm that this is the same Debi Pearl who still advocates on her website that parents buy half inch flexible tubing in order to give their children a series of "licks" on their feet or legs whenever they stray from the straight and narrow. This is still up on their site. Go figure.

Anyway, I do think that women need to consider what it means to "help" others. Being a caregiver is a major preoccupation of women my age. Some are caring for parents, moving them into supported living facilities, or moving them into their own house. One friend has just acquired a new house that she can live in with her parents.

Other women are paying for their children's university education or helping them get on their feet financially. Some women are caring for husbands, siblings, or others in their family.

The important thing is that each of us will feel the need at some point in our life to be the caregiver, the one who provides for others that we love. The question then is how we prepare for this. It is something that we don't really want to think about. We might want to fantasize that we will be the one who is cared for. This may happen for us also, in our turn. But we don't need to prepare for that. We need to prepare for those times when we have to care for others.

Preparing to be a help meet, then, in my view, is a vital consideration. We need to be able to support ourselves, to pay for food, shelter and eduation for our children. We may need to buy a house, or cover medical costs or travel to be with our parents. Ideally these responsibilities are ones that we will share with a spouse. But chances are that half of us, or more, will be on our own at some time in our lives with these responsibilities staring us in the face.

We need to be in a position also to care for others beyond our famility and close friends. We need to be able to reach out to others, to change the living conditions of those who cannot care for themselves. How can we do this?

Preparing to be a help meet - nothing is more important.

FIRST TIMOTHY 2:8–15

While I have not been blogging much lately, I have still been reading the blogs, and it seems that the topic of women and the Bible has not cooled. Quite the opposite, it is warming up. I want to contribute a few notes, as I can.

Noel Bullock of British Columbia has written a paper called FIRST TIMOTHY 2:8–15. HT CBE Scroll. She covers material that I have presented on this blog in the past and does a very thorough job of it. I think my readers will be grateful to have her paper.

Young Earth Egalitarians?

RJS has been blogging at Jesus Creed. Let me say that while I am comforted at the steady blogging on behalf of women in ministry, I am hurt and horrified at how the actual woman herself is abandoned to her fate. RJS writes,

I’ll be blunt – to attach complementarianism to the gospel in any fashion is to distort and damage the gospel message. Complementarianism devolves to rules. But God will use our efforts anyway. To attach egalitarianism to the gospel message is to distort and damage the gospel message – it takes the focus off of Christ and onto us, and this has dire consequence. Egalitarianism devolves to rights.

So are women not to have rights? Men have rights. It is okay, just fine and dandy, for men to have rights. Oddly even Saint Paul had rights. He asked to be recognized as a Roman citizen so that he would not be beaten. Why did he do such a craven thing and stand on his rights? A woman should never do this. She should just put up, even if what is happening to her is wrong.

I have the sense that the insistance that egalitarianism is about rights and that is not gospel, is expressed by someone who has no idea what it would mean to live out one's life from birth to death without rights. Clearly this writer would not rate abolition of slavery as a gospel essential either.

Please judge by my sarcasm that I am still hurting from what it meant to me to be part of a complementarian community. The truth is that I was lucky. I have a job and I can support myself and my children. I feel privileged and grateful to my parents. Many people come out of fundamentalism with the sense that they have wasted years of their life in futility. Vanity, I think it is called. Emptiness. Feeding the beast of fundamentalism.

PS. In the comment thread, there is a call out for young earth egalitarians. I am pretty sure that some women who read this blog are young earth egalitarians, although I am not. You might want to take a look.

In all honesty, I am grateful to RJS for keeping this topic alive. However, I get the impression that he thinks it is no big deal to live one's life without basic human rights, such as going in and out of one's house freely, working to earn money, controlling how many times one becomes pregnant, attending the church of one's choice and so on.

a question for Gospel Coalition

In today's post, Scot Mcnight is engaging the blogosphere on the issue of women in ministry. HT New Leaven

KJB spotting

A few years ago, I used to post on spotting citations of the King James Bible in literature. To tell the truth, I don't think that I have ever spotted any other translation in a work of English literature. This could just be me, but I don't think so. The King James Version is by far the most cited and most recognized translation of the Bible in modern English literature.

Here is my most recent find,

Its gonna be okay, I whispered to myself, knowing, as the words trotted through the fain hope in my mind, that I'd uttered the certain jinx formula. The saying, pride goeth ... before a fall ... is condensed from the second collection of the Book of Proverbs, 16:18 - Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. It's attributed to Solomon. If he did say it, Solomon was a man who knew horses intimatley well; much better than I did ...

This is from the monumental novel, Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, page 692, published in 2003 and there are rumours that it was to be made into a movie with Johnny Depp in the lead role. What other translation of the Bible would Depp cite - really ??

Although I fully support modern translations of the Bible, the literary importance of the King James Bible should not be ignored.

Faithful in little ...

‘Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.' Luke 16:10.

This is in response to T.C.'s post on Dan Wallace's recommendation on a Bible version. I might have resisted commenting on his post except that I believe that the NET Bible is a translation which should never be recommended to a woman. I don't think women need to be exposed to this level of misogyny. Some of the notes misrepresent the original so seriously that I hope that my own daughter never discovers that this Bible version exists.

But I won't go into that tonight. I want to look at the simple inaccuracy of one note. Here is one of the notes for Romans 16:7.

6:7 Greet Andronicus and Junia,⁶ my compatriots⁷ and my fellow prisoners. They are well known⁸ to the apostles,⁹ and they were in Christ before me.

My remarks are in blue.

8tn Or “prominent, outstanding, famous.” The term ἐπίσημος (epishmo") is used either in an implied comparative sense (“prominent, outstanding”) or in an elative sense (“famous, well known”).

This is open for debate. It is not a "fact" that there are two contrasting uses of this word.

The key to determining the meaning of the term in any given passage is both the general context and the specific collocation of this word with its adjuncts. When a comparative notion is seen, that to which ἐπίσημος is compared is frequently, if not usually, put in the genitive case (cf., e.g., 3 Macc 6:1 [Ελεαζαρος δέ τις ἀνὴρ ἐπίσημος τῶν ἀπὸ τής χώρας ἱερέων “Eleazar, a man prominent among the priests of the country”]; cf. also Pss. Sol. 17:30).

The commentator says "frequently, if not usually." We can conclude from this that is would be at least equally likely that the dative would be used for a comparative notion. In fact, there are times when the genitive and the dative are used synonymously.

ὁ δὲ μείζων ὑμῶν Matt. 23:11 (genitive)
the greatest among you

ὁ μείζων ἐν ὑμῖν Luke 22:26 (en plus dative)
the greatest among you

When, however, an elative notion is found, ἐν (en) plus a personal plural dative is not uncommon (cf. Pss. Sol. 2:6).

Pss. Sol. 2:6 has not been shown to contain an "elative" use of the word ἐπίσημος.

Although ἐν plus a personal dative does not indicate agency, in collocation with words of perception, (ἐν plus) dative personal nouns are often used to show the recipients.

ἐπίσημος is not a word of perception.

In this instance, the idea would then be “well known to the apostles.”

There is no support for this.

See M. H. Burer and D. B. Wallace, “Was Junia Really an Apostle? A Re-examination of Rom 16.7,” NTS 47 (2001): 76-91, who argue for the elative notion here.

Mike Burer and Dan Wallace are fully aware that their argument is not supported by the facts. I look forward to seeing if the note for this word is altered when the NET Bible undergoes a revision. In the meantime, the authors have not responded to those who have countered their article, Bauckam, Epp and Belleville.

I feel strongly that even if a commentator knowingly misrepresents only a few verses of the Bible, he or she should not be trusted on the rest of the Bible.

Plans for a Vancouver CBE group

Barb Orlowski emailed me recently with this notice proposing a chapter of the CBE for Vancouver,

There's been a buzz among the local members of Christians for Biblical Equality since Dr. Barb Orlowski enquired about a chapter in the Vancouver and Lower Fraser Valley area. Since there are no local chapters at the present time there is keen interest in exploring the possibility further among those who are connected with CBE. If you would like to explore with us, please contact Barb.

Christians for Biblical Equality is an organization of Christians who believe that the Bible, property interpreted, teaches the fundamental equality of men and women of all racial and ethnic groups, all economic classes, and all age groups, based on the teachings of scripture as reflected in Galatians 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

For more information about CBE, visit their Website at www.cbeinternational.org.

To connect with someone locally and find out how things are unfolding, please email Dr. Barb Orlowski in Langley: orlowski@telus.net. Or phone her at: 604 - 534 - 7870.

Subservient to men

Sometimes people wonder when a woman bristles. But it is clear that some complementarians do think that women are to be subservient. At Parchment and Pen, Michael, (I assume it is the blog author who wrote this) writes,

Egalitarianism: Theological position held by many Christians (contra complementarianism) believing the Bible does not teach that women are in any sense, functionally or ontologically, subservient to men. Women and men hold positions in society, ministry, and the family according to their gifts, not their gender. The principle of mutual submission teaches that husbands and wives are to submit to each other equally. Prominent egalitarians include Doug Groothuis, Ruth Tucker, William Webb, Gorden Fee, and Linda Belleville.

Imagine that! Terrible, isn't it to think that some Christians do not think of women as subservient to men. Shocking.

But men who write things like this are still treated as great buddies by many egalitarian men.

What I am looking at right now

I am at a teacher tech conference right now. Here is what we have just watched.

Update: Crap, just as I posted this, I noticed that the keynote speaker had said my name and everyone was staring at me. It turned out that she had a long quote from one of my articles on special needs students and udl up on the screen.

I do have some unpublished articles as well. I have had a lot of non-writing projects on the go lately but I do need to get back to writing some day.

Salander

I have just finished reading the trilogy and viewing the first two movies in Stieg Larsson's series. I have noticed many basic misunderstandings from those who have only seen the movies. I haven't much time but here are some central themes in the books.

Lisbeth Salander is a young woman who suffered from several kinds of abuse as a child. Her father caused her mother lasting physical and mental injury in front of Lisbeth. Lisbeth was later institutionalized and restrained with a straitjacket for months on end. All her appeals to social workers and psychologists were unacknowledged since the Swedish government did not want a record of her father's existance. Lisbeth is not just an example of what happens as a result of abuse, but of what happens as a result of unacknowledged abuse.

Lisbeth is declared incompetent because she does not answer questions posed to her by the psychiatrist during a psychiatric evaluation. This raises the very real issue of how to tell the difference between selective mutism, low verbal IQ and Aspergers. While the story makes clear that Lisbeth is on one level a genius, we don't know for sure if she is selectively mute because of trauma or if she really is an individual with Asperger's syndrome.

Lisbeth is called bisexual by some reviewers of the movie. This completely overlooks the fact that Lisbeth has an constant attachment and desire for the main character, Michael. He is, on the other hand, unable to return her love since he is promiscuous. Ultimately, he feels that he is too old for her, but he may consider settling down with a woman who does not appear until the third book.

Lisbeth engages in sexual activity with a female friend with the understanding that this is an expression of physical intimacy and tenderness that she is in need of and has not experienced from her parents. She is not bisexual in the sense of desiring a female life partner.

I know too many children who have experienced some measure of the abuse that Lisbeth Salander suffered. The series was a fascinating read for me. The movies seem to leave out anything at all that I found interesting in the book. The character of Lisbeth Salander is very well protrayed, but the complexities of her life are drawn too sketchily to get a sense of her morality.

Eat, Pray, Love, on the other hand, is a much better movie than a book. Actually, they are both rather appalling, but I wanted to see what some other people are reading and viewing. I was rather amused to find that an earnest complementarian quoted from Eat, Pray, Love recently to prove that biblical womanhood is written in our hearts. The truth is that I don't eat pasta, I don't like to chant, and being run over would NOT be my preferred way to meet a guy. Sheesh.

ad hoc

Sometimes I really miss the Better Bibles blog and its commenters.

Has Hebrew gender usage influenced English?

Jim Hamilton asks this question in his post, Was Gender Usage in the English Language Shaped by the Old Testament in Hebrew?

I am quite open to considering that biblical usage has affected our language so I am willing to consider this. Jim opens his post with this context,

I’m not presenting a thesis here, just making some observations and posing a question. In the guidelines for a dictionary article I’m in the process of writing, I read this:

In particular, articles should avoid referring to “man” (likewise “mankind,” “men,” “he,” “his” and so on) generically. Language often regarded as patriarchal should be modified to avoid giving wrong impressions.

Jim then discusses the use of the Hebrew word adam in Gen. 1 - 5, where it is used to refer to both men and women, to refer to the human race, and to refer to an individual person. (I have to ask, at this point, if the Hebrew word adam can refer to "a man" as a single male human being? If anyone can offer an example, that would be great.)

Next, he presents some thinking out loud on this topic. He makes some good points.

So let me rehearse some things we know, and then I’ll me ask my question: We know that William Tyndale’s translation of the Bible profoundly shaped the English language. We know that many, many users of the English language—people whose use of it is/was widely imitated by others, authors, poets, and such—were profoundly shaped by the use of the English language in the Bible, not least the stately King James. Knowing these things, here’s my question:

Was the generic use of the masculine (man, he, him, etc.) urged against in the quote above something that entered the English language because man is spoken of this way in the Hebrew of Genesis 1–2?

And having asked my question, I have another observation. Earle Ellis once explained that he quit the NRSV translation team once he realized that the translation was being driven by an egalitarian agenda. He noted that more literal translation philosophy results in the thought patterns and language uses employed in the Bible shaping the language of the target-culture, whereas more dynamic equivalent translations risk the target culture setting undue boundaries around the renderings of Bible translators.[1]

How shall a man respond to these things? He can be shaped by his culture, or he can speak and write the way the biblical authors did. If it was good enough for them . . .

Regarding the influence of Tyndale's translation, I would agree that it has had enormous influence, but I have also found that in certain cases, it has not had the influence that some people attribute to it. For example, an editor of the ESV told me that "propitiation" was in the Tyndale translation. However, it is fairly common knowledge that Tyndale created the word "atonement" to translate those Greek words that are normally translated as "propitiation" in the King James Bible. The use of the word "propitiation" was wrongly attributed to Tyndale's translation.

So, I am curious to see how Tyndale translated the Hebrew word adam. Usually, it is translated as "man" or "Adam." However, in Numbers 31 adam is translated as "women" because it refers to a group of all females. In the King James Version and subsequent Bibles, adam is translated as "persons" in Numbers 31.

Just this brief discussion provides some data. I will summarize as much relevant information as I can from this and other language resources.

The Hebrew word adam can be translated into English as

- a man
- Adam
- a human life
- persons
- women

I assume that it can also refer to a group of men, but I cannot come up with a reference for this.

The English word "man" can translate the following Hebrew words,

- adam
- enosh
- geber
- ish

So, right away, one can see that there is enormous difficulty in mapping Hebrew into English.

I believe the following is also useful information. In Hebrew, Greek, Latin and German, there were different words for "man" referring to human beings, and "man," a male/citizen. I personally think that we are better off in modern English with both "human being" and "man.."

Hebrew - adam/ish, geber
Greek - anthropos/aner
Latin - homo/vir
German - Mensch/Mann

Finally, I personally would go first to German and Middle English to find out the precedent of the word "man" in Tyndale's translation. In Luther's translation, of course, adam is translated by the word Mensch. I know that it might seem that the English word "man" is closest to the German word Mann, a male. However, that is not the case. In German, the word for "someone" is quite simply man, a person, a human being, a somebody, an indefinite pronoun referring to a person.

And in Middle English, of course, there is man, also "someone," an indefinite pronoun, as in German. For a male person, there is the word wer/were. And that is how we know that a werewolf is a male human being who transforms into a wolf at night.

If God had wanted to call the human race after male human beings, he would have needed to use a word designating maleness in Hebrew, and this might have been translated as were by Tyndale in an effort to be specific. We might have retained the word were in English, if the attribute of maleness had been considered important to the early translators. The human race might have been called were, which is just a little bit better than being called has been.

Somehow, I am in favour of asking the kind of questions that Jim Hamilton asks, but I find the research does not lead to simple answers. Or does it? Am I a man? Yes, I am a "somebody." Am I a woman? Yes, a stereotypic woman, in fact. Am I a were or a has been? No, but I will be some day, in the manner of all human beings.

Update: This is my response to Denny Burk's response to Jim Hamilton's discussion. I don't know whether Jim will publish my comments but this is what I posted on his blog.

Next, I would like to respond to these points of Denny Burk,

Usually, a linguistic justification goes something like this. “We can’t use generic masculines because language has changed, and we don’t want to confuse readers. Modern readers are likely to mistake generic “he” as a signifying only males. Therefore, we cannot use it.”

This justification at least has the merit of being linguistic, though I think it is profoundly wrong.

My research indicates to me that the following men mistook the generic "he" pronoun in 1 Tim. 5:8 for a reference to males only - Dennis Rainey, Russell Moore, Robert Sagers, Stuart Scott, John McArthur and Owen Strachan. It appears not only readers of the Bible are confused but also expounders of the Bible are confused.

I think feminists were right to argue that patriarchy is embedded in language (though I think they were wrong to attempt an artificial expunging of the usage). Masculine terms are routinely used in a generic sense in scores of languages, and I think the usage probably stems from a patriarchal impulse that originally informed the language. It’s ish then a derivative ishah. It’s man then a derivative womanor (womb-man).

To be parallel to Hebrew, we would need to see adam and adama as a parallel to "man" and "woman". However, adam and adama, are parallel to "human" and "humus", as Robert Alter translates them, in order to perserve the literalness of the Hebrew. Alter is commited to translating literally in order to reveal the meaning and the form of Hebrew, its poetry and rhythm.

I wouldn’t press any deep anthropological points as if men are therefore the “default” sex. But I do think that the name and its derivative reflects a patriarchal sense. That adam would stand for both man and woman is not surprising in this kind of a linguistic world. But it’s not just Hebrew. The phenomenon occurs in numerous languages.

Hebrew has four words which English translates as "man" and Greek, German and Latin have two words. English is much better able to indicate the Hebrew pattern if we use "human being" for adam, and "man" for ish. It is not a perfect match, but closer than simply using "man" for four distinct Hebrew words.

Jana Chapman Gates on Complementarianism

Gates has written an article for Christianity Today on complementarianism - Woman as Folly. Denny Burk has written it off as caricature. I thought it was relatively mild.

However, it is interesting that Denny Burk jumped to the conclusion that Gates reported that the teaching she was exposed to said that women were more prone to sin. Here is what Gates wrote,

The speaker on the DVD said these verses showed that women should appreciate the desire of men to analyze and provide counsel. But I had a hard time moving beyond the underlying premise, at least as I heard it: Women are foolish.

But Burk misreads her article and writes,

Gates’s article is interesting, but it is ultimately not that helpful. Mainstream complementarians are not making the case that women are more prone to sin than men.

And that is not what Gates said. She said that mainstream complementarians are teaching that women are not as able to analyze as men. Here is Tom Schreiner on male and female differences. I think his views here are fairly mainstream.

because of the different inclinations present in Adam and Eve. Generally speaking, women are more relational and nurturing and men are more given to rational analysis and objectivity.

Complementarians are saying that men are more analytic than women. Complementarians also believe that men have the right to make decisions for women. Two plus two .... as they say. I would suggest that Denny analyze Gates' article a little more carefully.

Thomas Schreiner, “An interpretation of 1 Timothy 2: 9-15: A dialogue with scholarship” in Women in the Church: A Fresh Analysis of 1 Timothy 2: 9-15 Eds. Andreas Kostenberger, Thomas R Schreiner and H. Scott Baldwin (Grand Rapids: Baker Book Houser, 1995) 145-6.

The Bible and its Traditions

Jim West has blogged about a new set of reference works called La Bible et ses Traditions. I noticed that Jim passed on a list of resources. Since I have many additional resources, I felt that perhaps I should list them here.

Studylight
Greek New Testament
Look Higher (200 Bible translations)
The Greek Text of the Orthodox Church
Septuagint
NETS
German Bible Portal
French Bible Portal (godieu)
Hebrew-English Bible
Hebrew with Rashi
Calvin's Latin commentaries and translation
Erasmus Center for Early Modern Studies
Peshitta
Gothic Bible
Geneva Bible
Julia Smith's Bible
Hekman Library

That's a start. This does not include lexicons, etc. I'll see what I can do.