New Jane Anderson Website

Evangelical · 09-04-2017, 04:54 PM

Bushnell, etc believe in an unsupported claim, a conspiracy rather, that the KJV and other translations were or are affected by Satan-inspired male-bias.

There are two questionable ideas in this conspiracy:

(1) That the translator's of the bible were affected by Satan-inspired male bias

(2) That the translation of the bible is somehow responsible for the problem of gender discrimination and that correcting the translation will fix the problem.

That it is a conspiracy is somewhat demonstrated by John's previous post where he wants me to "admit more" on the basis of ignorance:

Oh, wait a minute, in some of his later posts, I see that he is actually admitting that Jane could be right regarding the translation in Genesis 3:16 (“turning”). Although he grudgingly acknowledges the possibility of the translation change, he still doesn’t want to admit to more.

I did not "want to admit more" because I have found there is nothing more to admit and there is not provided enough evidence to convince.

Further, WHY do I (or anyone) have to ADMIT MORE? Egalitarians are quite capable of making a biblical argument in support of women without resorting to a Satan-male-bias conspiracy theory.
I think there is little correlation between the male-bias of the translators and how one interprets the verse. Are the conspiracy theorists so naive as to think that male-bias exists only in the translators and not in the readers?

Rather, I have found:

(1) No apparent correlation between bible translator gender and rendering of the word teshuqa in Genesis 3:16. In fact, all-male translation committees have translated the word in favor of Bushnell's view before.

This somewhat dilutes Bushnell's assumption that translators were biased simply for being male.

(2) Rendering teshuqa as "desire" which Bushnell et al disagrees with is found predominantly in the bibles of the Western churches.

In the early Greek translations from the Hebrew, apparently they translate teshuqa as "turning" in the Greek, which favors Bushnell's view, yet the Eastern churches are no less patriarchal than the West.
This somewhat dilutes a view that the translation of a single word in Genesis 3:16 is responsible for patriarchy in the church and that resolving this translation issue will fix the problem.

From here:
https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/phys...sis/3.asp?pg=2

Yet in Greek, the word is ἀποστροφή meaning "turning".

The translation from Greek to English is "and thy submission shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee".

Perhaps this translation from "turning" to "submission" is another conspiracy theory all on its own.

Now if we exam further the first part of the conspiracy (1).

The first is that Satan "inspired" or even translated himself, the Scripture, using man's "innate male bias".

"innate male bias" to me seems to be just a fancy term that Bushnell thought of which doesn't mean anything really. It just means "being a man", because the word innate means "inborn; natural".

I can see how it would be better for her to use this term than to write what it really means:

"Parts of the bible were translated by Satan because all the translators were men".

We can see how John places his trust in the Spirit in Jane:

When I am reading Jane’s writings, it seems that she is always referencing her relationship with the Lord and how she contacts Him for guidance in her Bible study. (She has even been disparaged for this; apparently, it’s not scholarly enough. Katharine Bushnell was even criticized for noticing cultural bias in the Chinese translation and starting with that; apparently, some have not heard of or thought of inductive reasoning.)

But does not consider that the 60 men who translated the KJV were craving the assistance of God's Spirit by prayer as they did their work:

They approached the task of translation with humility, understanding they were standing on the shoulders of giants like William Tyndale. Believers all, the Translators, according to Smith "craved the assistance of God's Spirit by prayer" as they proceeded in their work.

Finally, I just realized something ironic:

The "conspiracy theorists" ( for lack of a better word, until they can start providing evidence), believe "there is no male nor female in Christ" where it concerns female leadership.

But when it concerns the translation of the Bible it's all about those male-biased translators isn't it?

In other words, the folk that don't want to make much fuss about gender in the church, sure make a big deal out of it when it's about bible translations.

Ohio · 09-04-2017, 06:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evangelical

Bushnell, Jane, Nell and now John, believe in an unsupported claim, a conspiracy rather, that the KJV and other translations were or are affected by Satan-inspired male-bias.

The translation work of the KJV was a monument to "King James" and not King Jesus. Have you ever read the "Epistle Dedicatory" to "Your Majesty, the Most Dread Sovereign" the head of the church of England at the first page of the KJV? Look it up sometime. Talk about male ego bias with a side of alpha dog. That Dedicatory is simply pathetic.

The KJV became known as the "authorized" version. Authorized by who? God? Of course not! Authorized by the hot-headed King of England! For nearly 3 centuries the British monarchy prevented better and more accurate translations, and not tied to the Textus Receptus.

Did you know that the translators added a word to I Cor 13.5 "love is not easily provoked," with King James in mind. Who knows how many more verses were influenced by ole King James!?!

Evangelical · 09-04-2017, 06:56 PM

I find it interesting that John is trying to argue the case from his idea of what a non-Christian would say, citing them as "objective people" . Would objective intellectual people believe Bushnell over modern day female professors and experts in ancient Greek/Hebrew? Being non-Christians, would they even care? Would objective people discount my previous analysis on how verses are translated and the gender of the translators? I think objective people would appreciate the additional information I provided.

I think that all-male committees may have gender bias, regardless how small. But we are not talking about a little bit of gender bias here, but more of a conspiracy that Satan used the male-bias in men to mistranslate 46 verses (no small number) of the bible which has permeated a majority 99% of the bible versions we use today, and for which, no female experts in Hebrew or Greek have picked up on, despite being involved in the translation to some degree.

Given that it is the year 2017 and not 1960, I don't think that John's view that it would be hard for women on translation committees has much weight. The women involved are experts, some Professors of Hebrew/Greek in their own right and having attained to such a position, surely are not the "precious flowers" John implies they are. What's the probability of Bushnell being correct given that all women of the many different translation committees have not influenced the translation in support of Bushnell's view?

By John stating "proving that women were on a translation committee does not prove that the translation produced was not biased toward men" he has basically just lost the argument because it admits that a certain gender on the committee does not really prove that the translation is biased.

When Jane writes

""translations of certain words, terms or phrases were affected by all-male translation committees" it may not be the case.

There are possibly a 100 different other reasons why things are translated the way they are. It would have helped the case perhaps, to omit speculation about the cause being male gender bias, and just focus on what the proper translation should be.

It does not change the meaning whatsoever if it was written something without referring to gender:

""translations of certain words, terms or phrases were affected by bad translation committees"

I think in this day and age, to refer to anything as being caused by one gender or another could be considered gender discrimination:

e.g. "My mathematics textbook has errors in it because all of the author's were male".

I just don't see the correlation between translation accuracy and gender if both male and female are trained to the same high degree in their profession.

Evangelical · 09-04-2017, 07:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ohio

The translation work of the KJV was a monument to "King James" and not King Jesus. Have you ever read the "Epistle Dedicatory" to "Your Majesty, the Most Dread Sovereign" the head of the church of England at the first page of the KJV? Look it up sometime. Talk about male ego bias with a side of alpha dog. That Dedicatory is simply pathetic.

The KJV became known as the "authorized" version. Authorized by who? God? Of course not! Authorized by the hot-headed King of England! For nearly 3 centuries the British monarchy prevented better and more accurate translations, and not tied to the Textus Receptus.

Did you know that the translators added a word to I Cor 13.5 "love is not easily provoked," with King James in mind. Who knows how many more verses were influenced by ole King James!?!

You are preaching to the converted in regards to the KJV. Look, I don't think anyone doubts that bias can affect translations, I certainly don't. There was bias added to favor the Church of England hierarchy and ensure none of the Lutheran or Calvinist heresies were added. I know that much.

In the KJV's defense, the translators had a wide variety of views:

All were members of the Church of England, but their religious views ran the gamut. Some were ardent Puritans, others staunch defenders of the religious establishment. Some believed in pre-destination and limited salvation as taught by John Calvin, while others believed in self-determination and universal access to heaven as taught by Jacobus Arminius.

Regarding the additions in the KJV, part and parcel of translation is to add words to make it more intelligible but without changing the meaning. I think most of these additions are benign.

I can't see the real change in meaning between "love is not provoked" and "love is not easily provoked". Many modern versions choose to use the "not easily provoked" version.

The big difference is there is lots of evidence for what you are saying here, and all that happened with the King of England. Many of these biases have been removed in other, more modern versions.

But there is not so much evidence for Bushnell's views and the modern versions don't seem to do anything much with Genesis 3:16. Further, Bushnell's views involve a complete change in meaning of the text.

Either that means there is really no problem to begin with, the translation is accurate as best is humanly possible, or the translators know there is a problem but don't think it is worth fixing (complacency). I just don't think that something of such magnitude as Bushnell claims, 46 verses, begin mistranslated, would be able to escape the attention of all the male and female scholars over the years. If she is asking them to have another look at it and they won't, there is a reason why they won't do that, and I don't think it's because they are men.

And if they do find something, and change all the bibles to favor Bushnell's view, then I don't think much will change. Because "innate male bias" is in all men if it is truly innate.

awareness · 09-04-2017, 08:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evangelical

But does not consider that the 60 men who translated the KJV were craving the assistance of God's Spirit by prayer as they did their work:

They approached the task of translation with humility, understanding they were standing on the shoulders of giants like William Tyndale. Believers all, the Translators, according to Smith "craved the assistance of God's Spirit by prayer" as they proceeded in their work.

Finally, I just realized something ironic:

What I find ironic about the translation of the KJV is, Richard Thomson, translator of Genesis (Gen-Kings), sure did get inspired by the spirit, or rather spirits, as he was an alcoholic, that drank from morning all day long.

However, as I understand it, his alcoholism allowed him to do his translation work routinely, without adding biases. But maybe that's why there's so much drinking in the Bible ... you know, like alcoholic biases ... haha.

Evangelical · 09-04-2017, 09:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by awareness

What I find ironic about the translation of the KJV is, Richard Thomson, translator of Genesis (Gen-Kings), sure did get inspired by the spirit, or rather spirits, as he was an alcoholic, that drank from morning all day long.

However, as I understand it, his alcoholism allowed him to do his translation work routinely, without adding biases. But maybe that's why there's so much drinking in the Bible ... you know, like alcoholic biases ... haha.

He had a clear head in the morning to do the translation work:
At any rate, even if Thomson did drink, Paine tells us that “he arose in the morning with his head clear enough to go forward competently with the day’s work.”

http://www.febc.edu.sg/v15/article/d...manite_answers

Or no, he rather started drinking just before putting pen to paper on Gen 3:15, and stopped by Gen 3:18. The rest of Genesis is untainted by bias, only Gen 3:16, that's the only lemon.

But it raises a good point. Clearly it is the gender biases in Bushnell who only see the fact that the translators were male, and not that a particular translator may have been affected by alcohol or illness. One of possibly 100 different reasons why things are translated the way they are. And maybe the Chinese translators she observed were affected by opium, who knows?

But it's the narrative behind Bushnell's book which draws the crowd, that Satan was using men's bias to translate the bible. Remember, Bushnell believes Satan translated the bible, or a good part of it, 46 verses in fact. It was to her, Satan hitching a ride on the back of men's masculinity, salivating and giggling with sinister glee as they translated "teshuqa" from "turning" to "desire", when it may just have been alcoholic men on a bender (not that I believe that to be the case or anything).

By the way, my reference to Satan's giggling is taken from Bushnell:
"Satan could not cause that Judaizing teaching to succeed in Paul's day, but now he giggles as he has blinded ministers to try and silence God's ministry
through the female sex of the body of Christ by changing God's truth into a lie"

09-04-2017, 04:54 PM	#1
Evangelical Member Join Date: Aug 2016 Posts: 3,965	Where's the evidence? Bushnell, etc believe in an unsupported claim, a conspiracy rather, that the KJV and other translations were or are affected by Satan-inspired male-bias. There are two questionable ideas in this conspiracy: (1) That the translator's of the bible were affected by Satan-inspired male bias (2) That the translation of the bible is somehow responsible for the problem of gender discrimination and that correcting the translation will fix the problem. That it is a conspiracy is somewhat demonstrated by John's previous post where he wants me to "admit more" on the basis of ignorance: Oh, wait a minute, in some of his later posts, I see that he is actually admitting that Jane could be right regarding the translation in Genesis 3:16 (“turning”). Although he grudgingly acknowledges the possibility of the translation change, he still doesn’t want to admit to more. I did not "want to admit more" because I have found there is nothing more to admit and there is not provided enough evidence to convince. Further, WHY do I (or anyone) have to ADMIT MORE? Egalitarians are quite capable of making a biblical argument in support of women without resorting to a Satan-male-bias conspiracy theory. I think there is little correlation between the male-bias of the translators and how one interprets the verse. Are the conspiracy theorists so naive as to think that male-bias exists only in the translators and not in the readers? Rather, I have found: (1) No apparent correlation between bible translator gender and rendering of the word teshuqa in Genesis 3:16. In fact, all-male translation committees have translated the word in favor of Bushnell's view before. This somewhat dilutes Bushnell's assumption that translators were biased simply for being male. (2) Rendering teshuqa as "desire" which Bushnell et al disagrees with is found predominantly in the bibles of the Western churches. In the early Greek translations from the Hebrew, apparently they translate teshuqa as "turning" in the Greek, which favors Bushnell's view, yet the Eastern churches are no less patriarchal than the West. This somewhat dilutes a view that the translation of a single word in Genesis 3:16 is responsible for patriarchy in the church and that resolving this translation issue will fix the problem. From here: https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/phys...sis/3.asp?pg=2 Yet in Greek, the word is ἀποστροφή meaning "turning". The translation from Greek to English is "and thy submission shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee". Perhaps this translation from "turning" to "submission" is another conspiracy theory all on its own. Now if we exam further the first part of the conspiracy (1). The first is that Satan "inspired" or even translated himself, the Scripture, using man's "innate male bias". "innate male bias" to me seems to be just a fancy term that Bushnell thought of which doesn't mean anything really. It just means "being a man", because the word innate means "inborn; natural". I can see how it would be better for her to use this term than to write what it really means: "Parts of the bible were translated by Satan because all the translators were men". We can see how John places his trust in the Spirit in Jane: When I am reading Jane’s writings, it seems that she is always referencing her relationship with the Lord and how she contacts Him for guidance in her Bible study. (She has even been disparaged for this; apparently, it’s not scholarly enough. Katharine Bushnell was even criticized for noticing cultural bias in the Chinese translation and starting with that; apparently, some have not heard of or thought of inductive reasoning.) But does not consider that the 60 men who translated the KJV were craving the assistance of God's Spirit by prayer as they did their work: They approached the task of translation with humility, understanding they were standing on the shoulders of giants like William Tyndale. Believers all, the Translators, according to Smith "craved the assistance of God's Spirit by prayer" as they proceeded in their work. Finally, I just realized something ironic: The "conspiracy theorists" ( for lack of a better word, until they can start providing evidence), believe "there is no male nor female in Christ" where it concerns female leadership. But when it concerns the translation of the Bible it's all about those male-biased translators isn't it? In other words, the folk that don't want to make much fuss about gender in the church, sure make a big deal out of it when it's about bible translations.

09-04-2017, 06:56 PM	#3
Evangelical Member Join Date: Aug 2016 Posts: 3,965	Re: New Jane Anderson Website I find it interesting that John is trying to argue the case from his idea of what a non-Christian would say, citing them as "objective people" . Would objective intellectual people believe Bushnell over modern day female professors and experts in ancient Greek/Hebrew? Being non-Christians, would they even care? Would objective people discount my previous analysis on how verses are translated and the gender of the translators? I think objective people would appreciate the additional information I provided. I think that all-male committees may have gender bias, regardless how small. But we are not talking about a little bit of gender bias here, but more of a conspiracy that Satan used the male-bias in men to mistranslate 46 verses (no small number) of the bible which has permeated a majority 99% of the bible versions we use today, and for which, no female experts in Hebrew or Greek have picked up on, despite being involved in the translation to some degree. Given that it is the year 2017 and not 1960, I don't think that John's view that it would be hard for women on translation committees has much weight. The women involved are experts, some Professors of Hebrew/Greek in their own right and having attained to such a position, surely are not the "precious flowers" John implies they are. What's the probability of Bushnell being correct given that all women of the many different translation committees have not influenced the translation in support of Bushnell's view? By John stating "proving that women were on a translation committee does not prove that the translation produced was not biased toward men" he has basically just lost the argument because it admits that a certain gender on the committee does not really prove that the translation is biased. When Jane writes ""translations of certain words, terms or phrases were affected by all-male translation committees" it may not be the case. There are possibly a 100 different other reasons why things are translated the way they are. It would have helped the case perhaps, to omit speculation about the cause being male gender bias, and just focus on what the proper translation should be. It does not change the meaning whatsoever if it was written something without referring to gender: ""translations of certain words, terms or phrases were affected by bad translation committees" I think in this day and age, to refer to anything as being caused by one gender or another could be considered gender discrimination: e.g. "My mathematics textbook has errors in it because all of the author's were male". I just don't see the correlation between translation accuracy and gender if both male and female are trained to the same high degree in their profession.