From:  (Andrew Bromage)
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian
Subject: Re: NIV - gender-specific (pity!)
Date: 26 Nov 1998 21:13:17 GMT

G'day all.

 () writes:

>But why would it be a pity?

>We should be working to obey God and keep Him "happy" not feminists,
>women, wives who push for a feminist/female makeover (reconstruction)
>of the Church and of Christianity and might believe they're hard done
>by, despite the evidence, or feel a false call to leadership or
>ministry, for example.

The reason why it's a pity is one of accurate translation.

English was once a male-default language.  It is no longer.  Therefore
if the original authors intended to refer to all people (or all the
congregation of a church or whatever), to translate it accurately you
need to use a modern English equivalent, that is, gender-accurate
terms.

I disagree wholeheartedly with the term "gender-inclusive" with regards
to translations like the NRSV (there are others, which introduce non-
gender-specific language where it is clearly not wanted).  It implies
that a gender was excluded previously, either in the originals (which
is not true) or in previous translations (which is also not true since
the language was different then).

Cheers,
Andrew Bromage