[B-Greek] Interesting Critique of BDAG

Ann Nyland accuratebibles at ozemail.com.au
Wed Jan 14 18:07:52 EST 2004


Poythress' coauthor Wayne Grudem ( "The Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy:
Muting the Masculinity of God's Words") also commented on Louw-Nida. Here is
some noteworthy background to their commentary on BDAG and Louw-Lida. In the
above book, Poythress and Grudem state that God ordained languages with
grammatical gender in order to endow it with male "nuances". They state that
words which are of the masculine grammatical gender in Greek (or Hebrew)
have male "nuances". They claim that masculine grammatical gender is
expressing an important theological principle which they coin "male
representation". Grudem and Poythress state that ANQRWPOS refers to both
males and females, but when the referent is a man, they claim ANQRWPOS takes
on a male "nuance" and in such an instance, ANQRWPOS must be not be
translated as "person, mortal". They say that ANQRWPOS is not used when the
referent is a woman, as the author would have chosen GUNH instead.

In his debate with Mark Strauss over the TNIV, Wayne Grduem stated, "When we
're talking about human beings, grammatical gender generally matches
biological gender", and, "Masculine pronouns are used to refer to masculine
people in Greek. Feminine pronouns are used to refer to feminine people in
Greek. So, when we're talking about pronouns referring to persons,
grammatical gender is very important, because it matches biological gender."

BDAG.

(The following appeared on the CBMW list of "TNIV translation inaccuracies"
and in their Journal.)
"In fact, in line with 'political correctness' in language, the new BDAG
Lexicon has already added 'Parent' as a definition of pater when used of God
the Father (with no new evidence to support this new definition."

"brother (adelphos, singular) changed to (fellow) believer (5)
The BDAG Lexicon, p. 18, lists 'brother, fellow
member, member, associate' as possible meanings for
adelphos, but all the singular examples listed refer to male
human beings. The earlier BAGD Lexicon, p. 16, did not give these meanings,
and the new BDAG Lexicon (2000) gives no new examples or new arguments to
justify these new meanings that it proposes.

Grudem in his debate with Mark Strauss over the TNIV states that in the BDAG
listing for ANHR, none of the 28 instances given by BDAG can be used
inclusively of women. He states, "I looked up every one of those. . . I
looked at all the ones in classical Greek literature and extrabiblical. They
're all 'man'" (This is incorrect.)

Louw-Nida Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains.

Quote by Wayne Grudem, "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.' .. 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."

"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."
(These two under "Can Greek 'Aner' Sometimes Mean 'Person'? No, Says Dr
Wayne Grudem.")

Ann Nyland

----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Weiss" <eweiss at gte.net>
To: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 6:19 AM
Subject: [B-Greek] Interesting Critique of BDAG


> For those of us who don't have access to this journal, is it online? If
not, can you summarize Poythress's comments? All I know of Poythress is that
he and Wayne Grudem have criticized in a book the gender-neutral approach to
Bible translation, and the TNIV in particular.
>
> Eric S. Weiss
> eweiss at gte.net
> http://www.geocities.com/papaweiss1/index.htm
>
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
> B-Greek mailing list
> B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek




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