leanne

Hi, Cheryl. I’ve been following these video posts with interest and am astonished at how much comp teaching has in common with JW teaching. Really!

I’ve worked as an overseas missionary most of my life, and in the process learned several other languages. So I understand firsthand how important the grammar issues in video 4 are. In Spanish, for example, the masculine plural noun is used any time a mixed group is meant. A crowd of 99 women and 1 man would be addressed with masculine terms. So in church, unless they are talking about a women’s retreat, the nouns are always masculine. Greek works the same way. Masculine plural nouns, even ones like “brothers” and “sons” can also include “sisters” and “daughters.” “Anthropos” as you point out, means humans, and “pas” (all) and “tis” (anyone) are free of gender. Tis, for example, is the word Paul uses in 1 Tim 3 when he writes, “if anyone aspires to be an elder. . . ”

And, Cheryl, even “aner” can sometimes include women! In the video your text has it correctly–it usually means “man” but not always. Peter’s speech in Acts 2, for example, starts with the plural form of aner to address the crowd listening to him. According to three Greek dictionaries I have (Strong’s, Bauer’s and Freiberg’s) aner has as one of it’s meanings a generic idea of person or human.

These struggles with translation are part of what has fueled the recent TNIV controversy. Among many other changes, one of their purposes was to translate those masculine plurals into English in a way that communicates to English-speakers what the Greek means: males and females. And I don’t know if you’ve posted this already or not, but the TNIV is being discontinued. I’m recommending to all my friends that they get one now while they can.

On the CBE website complementarian Greek scholar Craig Blomberg has an excellent article which delves into the issues of translation and gender. Here’s the link: http://www.cbeinternational.org/?q=content/tniv-untold-story-good-translation. He holds to the complementarian position, yet favors an English translation that enables us to see what the Greek text means, just like you did in showing that the salvation verses apply to everyone, not just men.

Thanks, Cheryl, for sticking with this and pressing forward!