Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 05:1 (Spring 2023)
Article: Testing Egalitarian Translation Theory In Matthew’s Gospel: A Response to Jeffrey Miller, “A Defense of Gender-Accurate Bible Translation”
Author: Ray Van Neste

Eikon 5.1 (Spring 2023) p. 76

Testing Egalitarian Translation Theory In Matthew’s Gospel: A Response to Jeffrey Miller, “A Defense of Gender-Accurate Bible Translation”

Ray Van Neste

Ray Van Neste is the Dean of the School of Theology and Missions at Union University.

The debate over the use of gendered words in Bible translation has been significant and has raised numerous important and valuable questions. Despite the rhetoric at times, everyone agrees that context must guide our translation of any word and that we must pay attention to meaning and connotation in the receptor language.

The third edition of Discovering Biblical Equality includes a new chapter on this topic, “A Defense of Gender-Accurate Bible Translation,” by Jeffrey D. Miller. To make his point, Miller focuses on the subtitle of a book published by Wayne Grudem and Vern Poythress in 2000, “Muting the Masculinity of God’s Words.”1 Miller notes that the Bible was produced in patriarchal cultures and contains “considerable androcentric language” (473). He seems to take for granted that this is something we will want to overcome in translations, without raising the question of what is merely cultural and what is God’s design. God did of course choose the times and cultures in which to inspire Scripture. These are complex issues which must be dealt with and not merely assumed or skirted.

Eikon 5.1 (Spring 2023) p. 77

At the heart of the chapter is a comparison of the number of times ἀνήρ (“man, husband”) occurs in the New Testament (NT) with how many times “man” or “husband” show up in English translations. Whereas there is no great discrepancy between the occurrences of γυνή (“woman, wife”) in the NT and of “woman” or “wife” in English translations, there is a large increase of “husband” or “man” over the occurrences of ἀνήρ. This is taken to demonstrate that most English translations have inserted masculine references where they are unwarranted. Thus, translations like the NIV are actually restoring the less gendered realities of the Greek text.

I think this approach misses the more important, deeper issues of translation theory. Miller’s chart showing the number of occurrences of “man/husband” in English translations, however, seems to make a strong point. Why do these English words show up three to five times more often than the Greek word ἀνήρ? Miller suggests several reasons, including that translators often wrongly translate ἄνθρωπος as “man” when it should be translated witho...