A fundamental feature of biblical Hebrew is how it is a binary-gendered language—the whole of it is mainly written lexigraphically in either masculine or feminine. Both the nouns and verbs are constructed accordingly. There are no gender-neutral nouns, with the exception of a few “common noun” constructs which themselves are not always clear. There are no equivalent words for “it” or “that”. Other languages such as Arabic (and all the Semitic languages), Spanish, French, and Italian are also binary languages. This is in direct contrast to many Asian languages which are “genderless” such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Persian, and the Austronesian languages. In the middle are the ternary (three-part) Indo-European languages which have the masculine, feminine, and a neuter. This includes biblical Greek, Old English, German, Czech, Old Irish, and Slavic languages. A few languages have more than three noun classes such as Swahili which has eighteen. Our Modern English dropped the grammatical gender of Old English and now uses only the (three) gendered pronouns. This creates a challenge when one wants to translate a binary language into a ternary one. How does one translate a feminine plural verb into an English verb? It is even more challenging to translate a binary-gendered language into a genderless language.
The Bible texts have always suffered agenda-driven translation practices and cover-up. In 2007 a new translation of the Bible was presented to the already crowded world of Bible translations entitled The Inclusive Bible. In the introduction they freely admitted their agenda for “refreshing” the language to “spot clean male pronouns” under the belief that the Bible needed to meet the guidelines of political correctness for our era. They wrote that “a few passages have been retranslated based on scholars and activists. ” Of their Hebrew translation they shamelessly wrote that it was “carefully crafted to let the power and poetry of the language shine forth. ” What did they know of the “power and poetry” anyway? This “careful crafting” led to changing the Kingdom of God to “Kindom of God” to reflect a collectivist political theory and to express their opposition to the “classist” notion inherent in “kingdom”. Father God was changed to “Abba God” or “Loving God” to protest “the patriarchy”. These are direct, conscious changes to the text.
“And don’t call anyone on earth your ‘Mother’ or ‘Father. ‘ You have only one Parent—our loving God in heaven. ” Matt. 29:3 Inclusive Bible
An anti-family agenda seems to shine through more than “power and poetry”. How does such openly fraudulent practice by scholars become published? Why would such “scholars” spend ten years to hijack and re-create an ancient text in this manner? Is it perhaps because today’s “scholars” are the new soothsayers and prophets of a new collectivist religion?
Even those driven by the same agendas can’t seem to agree on the essence of the Hebrew language. In Good News For Women, a widely circulating Christian evangelical book of the late 1990s, the “power and poetry” of the Hebrew language was deemed not as shining, but oppressive:
We should note that the ancient Hebrew language was an expression of the patriarchal culture.
These agenda driven “scholars” believe that the ancient text should be adapted or re-worked into their modern progressive way of thinking, i. e. “relevant-ized” or “refreshed”. This only obscures the real text and manipulates people’s understanding. The author both affirms and denies a divine inspiration at the same time by saying,
We cannot conclude, simply because the Bible was written under divine inspiration, that the languages in which the Bible was written were themselves created under divine inspiration. These languages were as male centered as the cultures they reflected and by which they were created.
Which one is it? Either the language is inspired and so the writ also, or nothing is. According to such an idea, the ancient language must be done away with and a “relevant message” somehow adapted from it. This is not only unscholarly, but also fraudulent. But this is not new. This practice of agenda-driven translation fraud didn’t begin with the Left in the 1980s. Every single translation since the canonizing of the scriptures by the first Nicene councils under Emperor Constantine have been a product of some level of agenda-driven malpractice. These agendas are what have created tradition, and these traditions are what became the gold-standard of translation methodology and practice ever since.