Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 15:2 (Spring 2001)
Article: Book Review God As Mother: A Translator’s Challenge
Author: Anonymous

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Book Review
God As Mother: A Translator’s Challenge

Reviewed by Kim Pettit, who is managing editor of publisher development resources for Cook Communications Ministries International, and CBE chapter coordinator in Colorado Springs. She is especially interested in cross-cultural and translation issues because of her mixed heritage (Canadian-Salvadoran).

Jacob A. Loewen’s recent book The Bible in Cross-Cultural Perspective covers a multitude of subjects—heaven, earth, the afterlife, the spirit world, exorcism, among them. Of particular interest to Priscilla Papers readers is chapter 9, “Images of God: Male, Female, or Both” (pp. 109-16). It is packed with wonderful information regarding inclusive language. Here are excerpts:

In the West, one controversial worldview issue concerning the nature of God in the Bible and in Christian faith focuses [on] male and female metaphors for God. When my wife and I became missionaries to the Waunana, we were pleased not only because the people had only one God, but also because he was male, like our own God. Even after I had become a translation consultant . . . I felt that translators should use a masculine name for God. Not until I came into contact with the Peve (Chad, central Africa)—for whom the only deity was a female God, with no alternative—was I forced to rethink my position and study the Scriptures on this issue.

The word for God in Peve literally means “our mother” (Venberg 1971:68-70). If we are to take this name for God seriously, expressions like “our father in heaven” should be translated as “our mother in heaven” in the Peve language. But is this possible?

The missionaries answered “No!” and insisted on using “our father in heaven” in their preaching and in the translation of the Scriptures. To the Peve this was something like having the missionaries insist that they call their own mothers “father,” or their own sisters “brother,” or their own daughters “son.” What kind of foreign nonsense was that? The Peve refused to accept either the missionaries’ message or the Scriptures. A male God was a foreign deity, and they wanted to have no part of him.

In many Bantu languages a similar kind of linguistic violence has been perpetrated on the Spirit of God. . . .Once the local church became independent, widespread reaction arose against the grotesque distortion which foreigners had imposed on their language.

On the other hand, missionaries have sometimes seemingly succeeded in changing God’s sex. Mawu was a female deity in Ewe and other related languages in Ghana, Togo, and Benin, but under German missionary influence she was converted into a male. . . .

As a Bible Society representative, I could not escape the responsibility of knowing for my...

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