[B-Greek] 1 Pet 2:17 Knowing when a noun is gender-inclusive

Iver Larsen iver_larsen at sil.org
Sun Apr 20 04:42:50 EDT 2008


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kenneth Litwak" <javajedi2 at yahoo.com>
To: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: 17. april 2008 22:31
Subject: [B-Greek] 1 Pet 2:17 Knowing when a noun is gender-inclusive


>  I'm sure we all know about the issue of gender
> inclusivity/neutrality in translation.  I am wondering
> about a specific example in terms of what it might
> indicate.  In 1 Pet 2:17, Peter says to love the
> )ADELFOTHTA.  This word means "brotherhood."  One
> might be tempted to offer a gender-inclusive
> translation like "love all the members of God's
> family" but there is a potential problem.  In both
> Jewish and Greco-Roman culture in the first-century
> A.D., the status of women was pretty low (as
> exemplified in 1 Pet 3:1-7, with lots for a wife to do
> and hardly anything for a husband to do).
>
>  Do we actually have any good reason to think that
> nouns like this in the first century were
> gender-inclusive or is that only our 21st century
> agenda?  Does brotherhood really mean all members of
> God's family or does it actually mean "all male
> members of God's family"?  I know all about the
> generic use of words like "man" and I am sympathetic
> to using the actual word of the text in translation
> but I wonder if we can legitimately go beyond that in
> interpretation.    Would Polybius or Josephus or
> Aristotle have thought that )ADELFOTHTA actually
> referred to males and females in any context?  Thanks.
>
> Ken Litwak

I would say that there are several questions here that need to be kept separate.

First, the linguistic and translation "gender-war" is indeed a feature of the 20th and 21th century, 
especially in the Western, English-speaking countries. This is partly caused by some deficiencies in 
the English language, where there is no (longer) a common, simple, everyday word for a "human being" 
or for a "sibling". The word "man" is being or has been redefined as well as lots of compounds with 
"-man".

Second, we need to separate exegesis from translation. Exegesis asks the kind of questions you are 
asking: How would a Greek speaker of the time understand the word? But such questions make little 
sense without a context. People then were not used to looking up in a dictionary to check the range 
of meanings indicated by various glosses. Those glosses are a scientific and academic extrapolation 
from actual uses in various contexts.

Take for example the word ADELFOKTONIA. Liddell-Scott glosses this as "murder of a brother or a 
sister". The range covers both. Now look at BAGD which for the same word says: "fratricide (of 
Cain)". In that context, Cain killed his brother, but if he had killed his sister, the same Greek 
word would be used.

It is the same with ADELFOTHS. It is used in the Maccabees in the context of soldiers and armies, 
and in that context it refers primarily to men, but that is not from the word itself as much as from 
context. In patriarchal societies it is normal to have references to women implied. This is where 
the cultural difference comes in. In those societies a particular word may well linguistically or 
primarily refer to men, but this does not necessarily mean that women are excluded, especially if 
the word is in plural. The women are often understood as included, even though not mentioned 
explicitly. However, in current Western societies, women feel excluded if they are not explicitly 
included. Since the English language has changed, a modern translation would need to use an 
inclusive term in 1 Pet 2:17 and 5:9 in order not to communicate en exclusiveness that was not 
intended in the original text.

I don't know what you mean by "using the actual word of the text in translation". Do you want to 
translate 2:17 as "You should honor everybody, show love to the ADELFOTHS and FOBEISQE God."  As 
soon as you translate, you really cannot talk about "using the actual word". The "actual word" is a 
Greek word.
I assume you do not want to say "brethrenhood" or "siblinghood", and "brotherhood" would be more 
exclusive than the original text implied. It is therefore not correct that ADELFOTHS means 
"brotherhood". That is why BAGD glosses it as "fellowship".

Iver Larsen
Translation consultant 




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