Gender in the Bible

Well, before we can even start talking about gender in the Bible, we have to talk about gender in language.

English language has gendered, singular subject (nominative) pronouns, like ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’, so masculine (m), feminine (f), and neuter (n), and similarly for object (accusative) pronouns ‘him’, ‘her’, ‘it’. But our English articles and verbs don’t have to change (‘the boy’ & ‘the girl’, ‘he walks’ & ‘she walks’) and nor do our plural pronouns (‘they’ and ‘them’ don’t change whether you’re talking about the boys or girls soccer team, or the mixed-sex team).

Hebrew language has masculine and feminine genders, but no neuter (similar to French). It affects nouns, verbs, articles, and pronouns, so even to ask ‘What is your name?’ you have to get the (single) word for ‘name/your’ correct to match the sex of the person you’re asking. For groups, ‘they’ will differ for the male and female soccer teams, and the mixed team will use the masculine form. Because the rules of the language insist that verbs have to be marked masculine or feminine, then ‘he created’ doesn’t need a separate pronoun like English does (so you’ll see ‘he_created’ in the OET Literal Version, indicating that it comes from a single Hebrew word). Because there’s no neuter, all inanimate nouns are assigned a male or female gender, e.g., ‘table’ and ‘heart’ are masculine, but ‘truth’ and ‘hand’ are feminine.

Koine Greek has masculine and feminine and neuter genders (like German). It affects nouns, adjectives, articles, and some pronouns and participles.‘Table’, ‘heart’, ‘land’, and ‘hand’ are all feminine. If you ask ‘Who did that?’ the words will change if you’re asking the male or female soccer team, and you’d use the masculine form for the mixed team.

So what about ‘Those(m) being_strong(m) don’t need a doctor.’ (Mrk 2:17a) The subject is masculine so does it only apply to men? No, Greek grammar says that although it’s marked masculine, it can apply to mixed-groups, and common-sense confirms that we can accurately translate this as ‘Healthy people don’t need a doctor’.

The Open English Translation has no agenda with respect to gender other than these two guidelines:

1. We try to accurately determine what the original language grammar specifies, as well as what ambiguity is contained in a specific grammatical construction.

2. We look at how mainstream, modern English is changing, and don’t feel bound to traditional language for tradition’s sake, e.g., if a word like ‘mankind’ is becoming ‘humankind’ or ‘humanity’ more often now, we believe that we can handle that without any theological compromise.

Robert Hunt, July 2024