The gender-inclusive bible.

Psalm 8.4 KJV

What is man, that thou art mindful of him?

and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

 

Psalm 8.4 NLT

…what are mere mortals that you should think about them,

human beings that you should care for them?

If you grew up with a King James Version, as I did, you’ll notice lots of verses refer to “man,” “men,” “sons,” “fathers,” “husbands.” They address men. Talk about what men do and what men oughta do. Refer to the promises God made to men—curses upon evildoing men, blessings upon God-fearing men. Men men men.

With some exceptions (and I’ll get to them in a bit) most of us Christians are agreed these verses don’t only refer to men. They refer to anyone who follows or seeks God; anyone whom he interacts with. Or not.

Unless a verse refers to specific men, like Abraham or Moses or David or Simon Peter, or unless a verse refers to the specific male-only duties of husbands and fathers, it should rightly be interpreted as gender-inclusive: These commands, proverbs, promises, and instructions apply to both men and women.

So when the LORD commanded, as is phrased in the KJV—

Leviticus 19.3 KJV

Ye shall fear every man his mother, and his father, and keep my sabbaths: I am the LORD your God.

—this doesn’t mean, even though it clearly says אִישׁ/ish, “man,” we gotta assume it only applies to men… and women are exempt from this command. And if a woman so chooses, she can dismiss her parents and skip sabbath.

Properly, ish refers to any human being—whether a man or woman. Even though there’s a different word for woman—the feminine form of ish, אִשָּׁה/ishá. God nevertheless expects the same of women as he does men.

But if that’s what ish properly means, why not just translate it “person,” and clear up any doubt? And in fact this is what many bible translations do—going with “each of you” rather than “every man.” (Although you notice a lof of ’em split the difference, and still refer to “his” mother and father.)

Amplified. “Each of you shall respect his mother and his father, and you shall keep My Sabbaths; I am the LORD your God.”

CSB. “Each of you is to respect his mother and father. You are to keep my Sabbaths; I am the Lord your God.”

ESB. “Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father, and you shall keep my Sabbaths: I am the LORD your God.”

ISV. “Each of you is to fear his mother and father. “Observe my Sabbaths. I am the LORD your God.”

MEV. “Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father, and you will keep My Sabbaths: I am the LORD your God.”

NASB. “Every one of you shall reverence his mother and his father, and you shall keep My sabbaths; I am the LORD your God.”

NET. “Each of you must respect his mother and his father, and you must keep my Sabbaths. I am the LORD your God.”

NIV. “Each of you must respect your mother and father, and you must observe my Sabbaths. I am the LORD your God.”

NLT. “Each of you must show great respect for your mother and father, and you must always observe my Sabbath days of rest. I am the LORD your God.”

NRSV. “You shall each revere your mother and father, and you shall keep my sabbaths: I am the LORD your God.”

Believe it or don’t, a lot of these translations do not consider themselves gender-inclusive. As you can tell from the ones which still use the masculine pronoun “his” to describe “every one of you,” figuring it’s more accurate than “your” or “their.” And figuring, probably incorrectly, it’s still generic enough in the present day. Yet even so, y’notice all of ’em translated ish as “everyone,” instead of the literal “man.” Because the verse doesn’t solely apply to men.

The gender-inclusive translations want to make it crystal clear that such verses apply to everyone regardless of gender. So they intentionally drop the pronoun “his” in favor of gender-neutral ones, like the singular “they.”

Psalm 1.1 KJV

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,

nor standeth in the way of sinners,

nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

 

Psalm 1.1 NLT

Oh, the joys of those who do not

follow the advice of the wicked,

or stand around with sinners,

or join in with mockers.

Or they’ll swap out the third-person “he” for the second-person (and more personal-sounding) “you.”

Leviticus 5.5 KJV

And it shall be, when he shall be guilty in one of these things, that he shall confess that he hath sinned in that thing:

 

Leviticus 5.5 NLT

When you become aware of your guilt in any of these ways, you must confess your sin.

Whatever makes it most obvious these scriptures are addressed to all.

“I stand at the door and knock.”

Revelation 3.20.

Revelation 3.20 KJV

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

This’d be Jesus speaking.

When I was a little kid, I was told Jesus lives in my heart.

I didn’t then understand the difference between one’s physical heart, the blood-pumping muscle/organ in one’s chest; and the spiritual heart, the center of one’s soul. That “Jesus lives in my heart” means Jesus takes priority over all. Arguably the spiritual heart is a metaphor, and Jesus living in it is definitely a metaphor. You wanna talk persons of the trinity who live in you, look to the Holy Spirit.

But you know how literal-minded a kid can be. Tell ’em “Jesus lives in your heart,” and they’ll wonder whether there’s a little tiny Jesus, physically inside their chests. And of course that’s not what they meant. Or at least I surely hope that’s not what they meant; you never know about some adults.

I was told Jesus lives in my heart because I let him in there. ’Cause for those who don’t have Jesus in their hearts, he’s standing at the door of these hearts, knocking. (Unless you’re Calvinist, in which case you believe Jesus already has the key, and comes in whenever he darn well feels like it. Yet some of ’em still talk about Jesus knocking on our hearts’ doors.) Anyway, won’t you let him in?

And of course kids would let him in. Who’s gonna leave Jesus outside, all alone, forced to live in our pancreas instead? Why, he might get attacked by our antibodies. Or get digested; won’t that be embarrassing.

Silliness aside, anyone who’s read Revelation 3 knows this passage isn’t about evangelism. It’s not an invitation to pagans, but Christians.

Sadducees: The secular power of religion.

SADDUCEE 'sæd.ʒə.si noun. An ancient denomination of the Hebrew religion which upheld the written Law alone, and denied the supernatural and the afterlife.

[Sadducean .sæd.ʒə'si.ən adjective.]

Protestants seldom know this history, so let me fill you in.

John bar Simon was the head priest and king of Judea from 134BC to 104BC. He was a member of the Hasmonean family; his dad was Simon Maccabee, one of the Maccabees who freed Judea from the Syrian Greeks (the “Seleucid Empire”) in 167BC. His dad had become the first head priest after the temple was restored, and since he was functionally the head of state, he was also recognized as Judea’s king. The Hasmoneans ruled Judea till the Romans deposed them in 41BC and gave the throne to Herod bar Antipater.

John’s also known as John Hyrcanus. He got his nickname Hurqanós/“from Hyrkania” after defeating the Syrian general Cendebeus, and since it’s probably an inside joke which was never recorded, we don’t know why he was called that. He’s known as a great general who doubled the size of Judea to include Samaria and Idumea. He’s also known as the king who forced the Idumeans (i.e. Edomites) to become Jews and be circumcised. And Pharisees remember him ’cause he quit the Pharisees and become Sadducee.

Y’see, when there’s no such thing as a separation of church and state, religion and politics are the same thing. Most Judeans were Pharisee. So were the priests. So was their senate. Sadducees, in comparison, were just this little tiny sect of Jews with some rather faithless beliefs:

Acts 22.8 KWL

For Sadducees say there’s no resurrection, nor angels, nor Holy Spirit,

and Pharisees profess them all.

We don’t know how much, or even whether, Hyrcanus believed as Sadducees did. He didn’t join them for religious reasons. He joined ’em because Pharisees had pissed him off.

Two prominent Pharisees, Eleazar bar Pokhera and Judah bar Gedidim, had publicly declared (right in front of him, according to one story), “If Hyrcanus is really a righteous man, he oughta resign the head priesthood, because we heard his mother had been a captive in Modin under the Syrians”—implying one of those Syrians had fathered him instead of Simon Maccabee, thus making Hyrcanus unqualified to be hereditary head priest. Hyrcanus ordered the claim to be investigated. Once proven untrue, he demanded his false witnesses be thrown out of the senate, just as they wanted him thrown out of office. Dt 19.18-19 But Pharisees in the senate ignored the Law and only had them whipped. So in his ire, Hyrcanus quit the Pharisees.

And to really stick it to ’em, he joined the group Pharisees considered their mortal enemies, the Sadducees. And ever since, he and the head priests who succeeded him—all the way up to Annas and Joseph Caiaphas in Jesus’s day, all the way to the last head priest, Fannias bar Samuel, in 70CE—were Sadduccee. Ac 5.17

These godless kids these days.

Psalm 14

Amár navál belibó/“The fool said at heart” (Latin Dixit insipiens) is by David, and we number it at 14.

Commentators figure it’s a lament: David, or Wisdom (i.e. the Holy Spirit) mourns the fact kids these days don’t follow God anymore. Not like “our righteous group,” Ps 14.5 the dor/“age group” (KJV “generation”) David’s in, which he deems more devout than the younger set. Back in his day people followed God, took his side, knew where their help came from, and expected God to rescue ’em yet again. In comparison, this generation is hopeless, nihilistic, cynical, faithless, and godless.

Basically, the same lament every generation has about the next one. Well, with one exception: The people from this generation, who gang up with the previous generation about their peers and successors. That’s a phenomena I’ve seen quite often lately. My parents are “baby boomers,” I’m in what marketers call “generation X,” and those coming of age right now are called “millennials”—and way too many of the preachers my age are wringing their hands over the younger generation. They’ve believed the myth that things used to be better when they were kids. Used to be better in their parents’ day.

Nope, they haven’t read Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes 7.10 KWL

Don’t say, “Why were the old days better than these days?”

You don’t ask this question out of wisdom.

It’s a really good book for deflating know-it-alls.

Anyway, Psalm 14 kinda wanders in the direction of this false nostalgia. I remind you the psalms don’t actually rhyme. Just the same, let’s put a little iambic tetrameter on it.

Psalm 14 KWL

0 To the director. By David.

1 The foolish think God isn’t here.

They wreck. They do no good. They sneer.

2 From heaven, the LORD looks to see

if any child of Adam be

astute enough to seek God out.

3 But all of them are turned about.

They’re twisted. They do nothing good.

Not one of them 4 knows what they should.

Their every act is sin; when all

eat bread, it’s not the LORD they call.

5 There’s no respect; no holy dread.

God’s with our righteous group instead.

6 Ashamed to help the poor, are you?

Because the LORD’s their refuge, true?

7 Was rescue sent from Zion’s hill?

Who got this aid for Israel?

The LORD will set his people free.

May Jacob—Israel—have glee.

Relevance, and blogging on current events.

Earlier this year something happened in the Christian blogosphere. I won’t say what; you’ll see why in a moment. I’ll simply say I have a few readers who were looking forward to me writing one of these Rants about it, but instead I didn’t write any Rants for three weeks. (Had other things I wanted to cover.) When I finally returned to Ranting, the issue had passed, the Christian blogosphere had moved on, and for the most part so had they.

Well, until recently. At church yesterday—

SHE. “I remember when [that issue] happened. I waited to see what you were gonna write about it.”

ME. “I wrote nothing.”

SHE. “You have no opinion?”

ME. “I have an opinion, but it didn’t provoke me enough to write a whole blog post about it. I don’t think I even tweeted about it.”

SHE. “You gotta feel it before you post it.”

ME. “I don’t gotta feel anything. It’s not about whether it makes me happy or mad. It’s about whether it draws people to Jesus, or drives people away.”

SHE. “Well, but you gotta comment on current events in order to stay relevant.”

Yeah, that last comment provoked this Rant.

A few years back, on one of my previous blogs, I started to post some of my old newspaper columns. Didn’t take me long before I stopped doing it. The main reason was these columns aren’t relevant. They were, back when I originally wrote ’em. But time passed, and their relevance faded, then vanished.

News is relevant because it’s new. It’s stuff we haven’t heard yet, or stuff we only just heard about and are processing. But once we’ve processed it, it’s not news anymore. Doesn’t matter if the story’s continuing; doesn’t matter if there’s new data coming in: Once the news audience has collectively decided it’s done with the story, it’s old news. It’s time for the news media to move on.

This is a fact which really irritates reporters. Particularly when they’re trying to tell the story—and they’re not done yet! Like reporters who covered the Afghanistan War, who couldn’t get their stories aired or published because the news media was too busy with the Iraq War. Or even when they weren’t busy with the Iraq War, but to them the Afghanistan War was old news, even though it’s still going on.

Wait, did you forget the Afghanistan War is still going on? That’s right, it’s still going on. But you don’t care about that; you want me to get back to my point. So I’ll move on. Even though it’s still going on.

See, the short attention span of the news-watching public means that nothing in the news is gonna remain relevant for long. It’s gonna be really, really relevant when it first happens. It’ll remain relevant for maybe a week or two; often a month at the most. And then the public will move on. The media will follow. ’Cause contrary to conspiracy-theorist belief, the media goes where the audience wants ’em to. Not the other way round.

So if I decided the way to make TXAB relevant was to keep up with, and blog on, current events, it’d certainly work. Plenty of Christian bloggers do it.

But it’d also mean that everything I write is quickly disposable. It’ll be relevant, but only for a week or two. That’s its lifespan. Then it’ll sit in the archive, where nobody’ll read it, ’cause nobody’ll need to.

Hyperbole. So I don’t have to explain it a billion times.

You saw what I did there, right?

Hyperbole /haɪ'pər.bə.li/ n. Deliberate exaggeration: A claim not meant to be taken literally.

[Hyperbolic /haɪ.pər'bɑl.ək/ adj.]

You may not be so familiar with this word, but you’ve seen examples of it all your life. And that’s not hyperbole.

Humans use hyperbolic language to get attention. You might not think much of the statement, “I had to clean a lot of dishes.” You pay a little more attention to, “I had to clean a truckload of dishes.” The exaggerated image gets attention. May even inspire a mental image of a literal truckload of dishes. May even strike us as funny, horrifying, sad, irritating; like most acts of creativity, it runs the risk of pushing the wrong buttons.

Of course some hyperboles are so overused, they get no reaction anymore. They’ve become clichés. “I worked my fingers to the bone” probably horrified someone the first time they heard it—“No, really? Ewww”—but nobody bothers to flinch at it anymore. Not even if people claim, “I literally worked my fingers to the bone.” Usually no they didn’t.

Humans have always used hyperbolic language. Nope, that’s not a hyperbole either: We really have. We find it in every culture. We find it in the bible. Even God used it.

Amos 2.9 KWL

“I destroyed the Amorite before their very eyes,

whose height was like that of cedars, strong like oaks.

I destroyed their fruit above, and root below.”

So, do you imagine the Amorites were literally as tall as cedar trees? After all, God said so. And surely God doesn’t lie…

See, that’s the problem with hyperbole and biblical interpretation. Too many people take the scriptures literally. They figure if God’s word is nothing but truth, Jn 17.17 the scriptures oughta be absolutely valid in every instance, and contain no exaggerations whatsoever. ’Cause liars exaggerate, but God’s no liar. Tt 1.2 And if these two ideas (“liars exaggerate” and “God’s no liar”) are equivalent, it logically follows God doesn’t exaggerate. Ever.

Neither does Jesus.

Luke 14.26 KWL

“If anyone comes to me yet won’t ‘hate’ their father, mother, woman, children, brothers, and sisters,

or even their own soul, they can’t be my student.”

See, I put “hate” in quotes, ’cause Jesus doesn’t literally mean hate; middle easterners used that word when they spoke about things which took lower priority. Top priority was “loved.” Lower priorities might’ve also been loved, but in comparison to that top priority, they weren’t loved as much; so “hated.”

This is one of those examples, like “working my fingers to the bone,” where the exaggeration is such a cliché, middle easterners thought nothing of it. Problem is, our culture doesn’t. To literalists—particularly members of cults—this means they’re to cut themselves off from their families entirely. Divorce spouses, abandon children, have nothing more to do with anyone from their past. Don’t honor parents; Ex 20.12 hate them. In so doing, the cult can gain greater control over their followers.

This is why I had to add quotes. The NLT went with, “You must hate everyone else by comparison.” Lk 14.26 NLT That works too.

The wealthy, their crimes, and their coming judgment.

James 5.1-8.

This next bit of James was directed to the specific people of James’s day.

Problem is, not every Christian has understood this. You know how we humans are; we wanna make everything about us. So we’ve looked at this passage and tried to figure out how it applies to us and the people of our day. Especially the people of our day, since rebuke and judgment are involved: We definitely want those bits to apply to other people.

Since James dropped a reference or two to Jesus’s second coming—an event which’ll take place at any time, a belief Christians have held since the beginning, and even Jesus’s first apostles watched out for it, as Jesus instructed—historically we’ve interpreted this bit as an End Times reference. It’s not really. In the New Testament, “the last days” doesn’t refer to the End Times, but the Christian Era. Ac 2.17, He 1.2 The “first days” were before Christ; the “last days” are after God’s kingdom has come near. As historians call ’em, BC and CE. And in these last days, we’re to live like the kingdom’s arrived—not like it hasn’t, and never will.

So when James rebuked the people of his church for living the same old lifestyle during “the last days,” he meant they weren’t acting as King Jesus’s followers should. Whether today or during the End Times. That should be our takeaway as well: If you’re wealthy, do try not to behave like these people.

And do try not to read this passage through your End Times filter. Read it for what it says.

James 5.1-8 KWL

1 Come now, wealthy Christians: Lament loudly about the sufferings which you’re going through.

2 Your wealth has decayed. Your clothes became moth-eaten.

3 Your gold and silver have tarnished. Their poison will be your testimony:

It’ll eat your flesh like fire. You stockpiled for the last days.

4 Look at the wages of the workers who reap your fields—withheld by you, so they cry out.

The reapers’ roar has entered the ear of the Lord of War.

5 You all lived comfortably, luxuriously, on the earth. You fed your hearts on the day of slaughter.

6 You all condemned, murdered the Righteous One, who doesn’t resist you.

7 So be patient, fellow Christians, till the Master’s second coming.

Look, the farmer awaits the land’s precious fruit,

patient about it till they can get early- and late-season rain.

8 Be patient yourselves as well. Strengthen your minds:

The Master’s second coming has come near.

Okay. In James’s day, the wealthy Christians in his community were suffering. In part because their wealth had come to nothing. And more suffering was coming—because they’d ethisavrísate/“accumulated wealth” (KJV “laid up treasure”) instead of doing what they were supposed to be doing with it: They weren’t paying their employees.

Some people use this verse to knock the rich in general; to promote a little class welfare. This isn’t about all the wealthy; it’s not James knocking the rich for being rich. James got on their case because their workers were suffering, and crying out to God. So this is a prophecy from James, who’d been told by the Holy Spirit why the wealthy in his church were losing their money: God was judging them for their evil.

Yes, evil. It’s against God’s Law to not pay your employees. In fact the Law stipulates we have to pay ’em the same day they worked. None of this saving up till payday, like we do nowadays.

Deuteronomy 24.14-15 KWL

14 Don’t tyrannize needy and poor employees,

whether relatives, or foreigners who live in your land or within your gates.

15 Give their wages that day. Don’t let the sun come down on them first.

For they’re poor. They carry their soul in their hands.

Don’t let them call the LORD about you, and let it be sin upon you.

The unpaid reapers Jm 5.4 had told God on their bosses. This triggered Kyríu Savaóth—which is a half-translation, half-transliteration of YHWH Chevaót/“the LORD of Armies” (KJV “LORD of hosts”), our God when he’s about to do battle. These people’s ruin was God’s judgment on their misdeeds.

In that day. Not in the End Times. God isn’t always gonna wait till the End to open up a can of whup-ass. The cycle of history happens over and over again for this very reason.

Hence if the wealthy exploit the poor in this generation, there’s every chance God may take away their wealth again. It may not be the End Times… but it’ll definitely feel like the End Times for these people.