TIS and grammatical gender (Was Re: [B-Greek] 1 Timothy 5:8

Iver Larsen iver_larsen at sil.org
Sat Jan 17 03:41:43 EST 2004


[Ann:]> You said, "However, the genders of these words don't really
> matter as I see
> it." Yes, I think that's a vital point both for the initial
> question, and in
> general for persons who are unaware of languages other than English and
> think Greek grammatical gender has biological male or female "nuances" in
> the New Testament. Thus, in my view, it cannot be overstated to the public
> at large that Greek assigns grammatical gender to persons,
> things, concepts, and in fact to all nouns, adjectives, and pronouns, and
that the
> grammatical gender can be at odds with biological gender.

Yes, many of these problems are caused by the fact that English has lost
gender marking in its noun system, and only retained it in the pronoun
system. German has retained most of its gender system, and knowing that a
girl (mädchen) is neuter should help people to understand that grammatical
gender does not equate biological gender, although there tends to be
correlation for words where biological gender is applicable, i.e. "man" is
masculine, "woman" is feminine in such languages, etc.

> We have spoken about Poythress and his BGAD review - here is a quote from
> Poythress's sometime coauthor Wayne Grudem about 1 Cor. 14:28 which hinges
> on TIS which he apparently (as far as I can tell) sees as "male-specific".
>
> Grudem states, "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."
>
> Here is the Greek: EITE GLWSSHi TIS LALEI, KATA DUO H TO PLEISTON
> TREIS KAI ANA MEROS, KAI EIS DIERMHNEUETW; EAN DE MH H DIERMHNEUTHS,
SIGATW EN
> EKKLHSIA, hEAUTWi DE LALEITW KAI TWi QEWi.
>
> It is interesting that he sees a "male-specific example" here in
> the Greek.

He is probably looking at hEIS which is grammatically masculine as opposed
to the feminine MIA and especially hEAUTWi rather than the feminine hEAUTHi
as the quote suggests.

Grudem's statement as quoted indicates that he has little or no training in
translation principles. One really needs to distinguish sharply between
exegesis (discovering as best as one can what the author intended to
communicate to his original audience) and translation (re-expressing that
meaning to a new audience in their language as accurately and clearly as
possible.)

Greek language and culture of the NT is asymmetrical when it comes to gender
references. IF Paul had written MIA instead of hEIS and hEAUTHi instead of
hEAUTWi, he would have been specifically talking about women to the
exclusion of men. However, by using the grammatically masculine terms hEIS
and hEAUTWi he is speaking generally and NOT excluding women from inclusion
in the intended reference. That, to me, is as far as exegesis goes.

When it comes to translation, if hEAUTWi DE LALEITW is translated as "let
him speak to himself", then the TRANSLATION in Modern English excludes
reference to women (it would have done so much less half a century or more
ago, because the English language and culture has changed dramatically the
last 100 years.) Therefore, such a translation communicates the wrong
meaning in modern English, and is consequently inaccurate. The simplest way
to accurately represent the general nature of the reference is to use the
English inclusive plural pronouns, and this is common practice among
professional Bible translators today.

Grudem is probably talking about a different kind of "translation", the kind
that attempts to represent the Greek in "special English" which needs to be
interpreted in light of Greek structure. This special English is mainly used
in classrooms - or on b-Greek - where English speaking students are talking
about a Greek text using this peculiar language. It might be understood
within the walls of that classroom, but not by ordinary speakers of the
common English language. For many centuries, Bible translations have been
using this special English, which is fine if the book is kept within the
classroom and directed to speakers of special English, but it is not fine,
when such Bibles are put into general circulation in the churches and
beyond.

Iver Larsen
SIL translation consultant




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