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HEY GAL posted:Why? We say God is beyond plenty of other attributes, does that mean they're flaws? If a thing is true (e.g. "Jesus was a male"), why should such a true statement be avoided? God being "male" is probably as misunderstood as people confusing Man and man: the former is a race--a particular species--the latter a gender. It doesn't prevent modernists without any understanding of language to equate the two, however, and loudly proclaim that homonyms must have the same meaning, and therefore ought to be expunged. Put another way, I would submit that the problem is more about society making someone feel wrong about themselves under foolish pretenses, rather than mere facts being inherently harmful. If I say, "I'm a Red Sox fan, and because you're a Yankees fan you suck," it doesn't mean the Yankees are fundamentally bad: it means I'm an rear end in a top hat.
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Jul 20, 2015 23:17
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V. Illych L. posted:that said, i do think that fidelity of translation trumps theological content if we're talking about bible translation and composition, but getting mad at people calling God "her" or "it" seems to be missing the point if the point of a translation is not for studying the societal context in which the Bible arose, it is quite easy to argue that the use of gendered language in many ways causes the fidelity to suffer. and imo rejecting this idea out of hand is to reject the higher criticism, and to cast one's lot with the literalists
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Jul 20, 2015 23:28
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Wait, wait. "Theos" is a masculine noun in Greek, but so is "nekros." Do all corpses have dicks?
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Jul 20, 2015 23:48
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Lutha Mahtin posted:if the point of a translation is not for studying the societal context in which the Bible arose, it is quite easy to argue that the use of gendered language in many ways causes the fidelity to suffer. and imo rejecting this idea out of hand is to reject the higher criticism, and to cast one's lot with the literalists There are things like using singular they or updating man to human, and there is this almost new age rendition of the Lord's (Lady's?) Prayer. Arguably, one can't understand the narrative the Bible presents without understanding social context behind it. You can't just re-write Old Testament to fit our modern sensibilities and pretend it has always been like this. We need to understand when a change happens to appreciate it, if anything. As for literalism, more literal translations allow for a wider variety of interpretations, since they are easily understood as needing an interpretation at all. On the other hand translations verging on adaptations tend to provide their own definite hermeneutical answers. Achieving balance between those two approaches is crucial and just editing in contemporary social commentary as a part of text is not exactly a well thought-out way to go about it.
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Jul 21, 2015 00:03
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 I grew up on the NIV but I'm more of an ESV guy now.
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Jul 21, 2015 00:44
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I grew up on the NKJV, my current parish uses NIVUK as its standard text and I prefer a combination of ESVUK, NRSVAE and occasionally the Orthodox Study Bible (NKJV) for various personal study purposes. I also quote from some of the older Roman Catholic versions (DR, etc) on occasion when I want to make a cheeky point about the saints, priests, etc with my low church friends. It's great to have a variety of editions to review.
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Jul 21, 2015 01:03
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Lutha Mahtin posted:if the point of a translation is not for studying the societal context in which the Bible arose, it is quite easy to argue that the use of gendered language in many ways causes the fidelity to suffer. and imo rejecting this idea out of hand is to reject the higher criticism, and to cast one's lot with the literalists well, any bible translation has a number of potentially contradictory aims. aesthetic of language is one, literal translation is another, and localisation is a third big one - god as the father or other, distinctly masculine roles of authority, are pretty prominent in the bible. those attitudes are a major part of the heritage of the religion, and if one wishes to disavow them that's fine (a reading in which the gendering of God is taken to simply be an extrapolation of contemporary social mores onto the divine would be my own reading), but going from there to altering the direct themes of the bible is a big step to call this literalism is a philistine attitude imo - the act of exegesis is on part of the reader. it is entirely consistent to say that the translation of a work should be as faithful as possible to the original text and original intent, but that a modern reading has as good or better odds of finding Truth from that same text, perhaps more so if one accepts scripture as divinely inspired.
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Jul 21, 2015 01:06
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i thought contrasting it with higher criticism made it obvious that by "literalism" i was referring to the new kid on the block school of interpretation. that's what i intended it to mean, anyway. and i still think it's what one must inevitability bow to, at least partially, if one rejects out of hand the premises that ive been posting about regarding language also i feel like this shouldn't need to be said, but since people often read way too much into other peoples' posts, please note that im not in any way endorsing any of the wackiness that the episcogoons have been posting about in the last few days. the fact that somebody took a good idea and ham-handedly diluted and misinterpreted it doesn't somehow negate the truth of the good idea. anybody who posts on a nerd forum and who has a non-negative view of religion should appreciate that 
Lutha Mahtin fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Jul 21, 2015 01:18
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you mean overzealous activists took a good cause and turned it into self-parody? say it aint so
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Jul 21, 2015 05:59
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HEY GAL posted:and the way we talk about it is hell of latin and greek aw dammit HEY GAL you stole my best party trick (also final e should be long but that's just my indo-europeanist pedantry) but this is a very good point: all christian liturgical practices are infused with a heavy dose of indo-european, and the intellectual roots of christian theology are straight-up pagan greek. also the debate about gendered language is ridiculous because παίδιον (child) is a neuter word but most people's kids are not gender-neutral. there is no need to refer to God in the masculine in a language that has dispensed with grammatical gender. all the times that God is referred to as "He" are instances of a third-person pronoun (or sometimes a definite article) that's declined in the masculine because it needs to agree with God's grammatical gender. if you don't translate all pronominal references to a child in the NT as "it" (spoiler alert: nobody does), then there's no obligation to translate pronominal references to God as "He." this has been the latest linguistic rant from your resident cranky philologist. next up: "why your pastor's Greek is awful: a jeremiad in eighty-seven parts"
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Jul 21, 2015 10:13
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Bel_Canto posted:also the debate about gendered language is ridiculous because παίδιον (child) is a neuter word but most people's kids are not gender-neutral. there is no need to refer to God in the masculine in a language that has dispensed with grammatical gender. all the times that God is referred to as "He" are instances of a third-person pronoun (or sometimes a definite article) that's declined in the masculine because it needs to agree with God's grammatical gender. if you don't translate all pronominal references to a child in the NT as "it" (spoiler alert: nobody does), then there's no obligation to translate pronominal references to God as "He." (also it's really funny to hang out with Germans because you'll get people saying things like "It's a pretty girl" about their friends with no hint of weirdness. Like everywhere else, diminutives are neuter in german) Ynglaur posted:God being "male" is probably as misunderstood as people confusing Man and man: the former is a race--a particular species--the latter a gender. It doesn't prevent modernists without any understanding of language to equate the two, however, and loudly proclaim that homonyms must have the same meaning, and therefore ought to be expunged. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Jul 21, 2015 10:17
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Bel_Canto posted:if you don't translate all pronominal references to a child in the NT as "it" (spoiler alert: nobody does), then there's no obligation to translate pronominal references to God as "He." HEY GAL posted:this is why i prefer latin. the Tridentine Rite is way more gender inclusive than all but the foofiest newer vulgate translations. unfortunately, it's also far too modern
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Jul 21, 2015 11:05
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Paladinus posted:Isn't Deus still masculine, though? Do you use Deu or something instead? edit: and i don't go to church in latin any more since i converted to orthodoxy, which is a shame HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 11:37 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Jul 21, 2015 11:10
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Paladinus posted:In Church Slavic (and in some modern Slavic languages) дитя is actually gender-neutral. It's no surprise that this discussion is so prominent in English-speaking churches, since it wouldn't make any sense in most other languages. In Lithuanian, all words have gendered endings. I'm sure it's extremely relevant to the discussion.
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Jul 21, 2015 11:58
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JcDent posted:In Lithuanian, all words have gendered endings.
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Jul 21, 2015 11:59
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HEY GAL posted:yeah but since fireplaces are too it doesn't mean what it would mean in english, like a bunch of people upthread said I get what you're saying, but isn't it easier to think of current masculine pronouns as also meaning something different? Then again, I speak Russian, so maybe I'm too used to thinking of gendered nouns and pronouns as a grammatical convention rather than something related to actual gender. You should try attending services in Church Slavic if it's easier for you to stomach foreign/exotic masculinity is what I'm trying to say.
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Jul 21, 2015 12:17
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HEY GAL posted:this is why i prefer latin. the Tridentine Rite is way more gender inclusive than all but the foofiest newer vulgate translations. unfortunately, it's also far too modern Professor Latin and the Curious Gender
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Jul 21, 2015 12:44
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HEY GAL posted:it's probably why you care less about this than the english-native speakers in the thread Wouldn't I care more, then? We don't really have a gender-neutral option, not even an "it" equiv.
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Jul 21, 2015 12:47
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JcDent posted:Wouldn't I care more, then? We don't really have a gender-neutral option, not even an "it" equiv.
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Jul 21, 2015 12:52
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HEY GAL posted:you're used to everything having a grammatical gender, even tables and bridges and poo poo. for us (in modern english, not the earlier stuff), if something is called "he" or "she," that implies it's a living being with a real sex. Well, I'm extremely cross that you Anglo-Saxons refer to a ship as "she" when "laivas" is clearly male and what the gently caress is wr
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Jul 21, 2015 13:33
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JcDent posted:"laivas" Okay now I know where that work entered Finnish language from (laiva). Bowing out from the actual conversation since gendered language is a foreign idea here. I should read 1984 again to appreciate how subtly language affects your patterns of thought. It's double depressing to read in English compared to a translation.
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Jul 21, 2015 13:43
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Valiantman posted:Okay now I know where that work entered Finnish language from (laiva). one might even say it's double-plus depressing?
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Jul 21, 2015 14:03
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HEY GAL posted:yeah but since fireplaces are too it doesn't mean what it would mean in english, like a bunch of people upthread said Uterus is masculine in Spanish. Someone above mentioned that the fact that the idea of the trinity doesn't make any sense is one of the reasons for atheism. In my case this contributed, as well as observing that for the vast majority of believers, they actually resolved the problem of the trinity in 'heretical' ways--mostly believing that Jesus is subordinate to God and that Jesus did not exist until he was born, but also a lot of people with no idea whatsoever what the Holy Spirit is supposed to be, and explanations of it, since they are explaining something non-logical, tend to not stick with people. This connects with the gender problem because the trinity is 'the father', 'jesus', and 'the holy spirit', two of which are explicitly gendered, one of those two physically so, and only the last one neuter. The average Christian believer tends to equate God with The Father and positions Jesus as the intercessor between God and Man. The texts complicate this problem further, as Jesus equates God with The Father and identifies himself as not-God frequently, and the Old Testament does not have the Holy Spirit in it in anything like the meaning of the New Testament. For some believers, the mystery and non-logic of the trinity is the compelling beauty of it, but for a lot of other believers, they resolve the problem by treating the trinity as a hierarchy rather than a triune, and for yet others, the illogic of A=D, B=D, C=D but A=/B=/C can't be resolved in a satisfying way, especially when it seems unresolved in the text itself.
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Jul 21, 2015 15:12
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Problem which I'm sure someone will bring up: The law of prayer is the law of belief. What one prays impacts what one believes. Been recognized since the Church Fathers. How do the relevant folks respond to the idea that by changing prayers and liturgies to not offend people, you're changing deeply-rooted, essential elements of Christian theology? I mean, the sinful nature of man is a pretty important point! Edit: I should probably read the remaining page of thread before posting. Oops.
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Jul 21, 2015 15:44
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Obdicut posted:Uterus is masculine in Spanish. In the Orthodox Church, unorthodox beliefs get knocked out of you pretty quick We are the ones who sing about how Athanasius destroyed Satan taken flesh in Arius
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Jul 21, 2015 16:46
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Smoking Crow posted:In the Orthodox Church, unorthodox beliefs get knocked out of you pretty quick A lot of people probably have the expression of unorthodox beliefs knocked out of them, but actually holding onto the idea of the trinity is another matter. It takes incredibly careful semantics to even express doctrine about the trinity without actually implying a hierarchy and heresy. For example, most of the time, the word 'God' is used to identify 'The Father', which leads, even in theological statements, to an implication that the Holy Spirit and Jesus are both instruments of God the Father. In addition, the usage of the father/son relationship, to human beings, can't help but imply a hierarchy and a distinction. There's a limited number of people for whom the mystery of the trinity is an energizing thing that they can accept with joy; a lot of people who are believers struggle with the non-logic of it, others who are believers resolve it so that it isn't a mystery--instead of asserting the non-logic of it they assert a series of logical statements, where they hold both that God the Father created Jesus and that Jesus existed eternally as God (and theological statements often relate this as well). A priest friend of mine was of the opinion that human language can't actually express the idea of the trinity successfully, no matter how carefully parsed.
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Jul 21, 2015 17:17
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HEY GAL posted:I'm talking about people referring to the first person of the holy trinity (not Christ) as though it were male, and I always have been. I'm not sure what you're talking about.
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Jul 21, 2015 17:32
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Well, it was technically Aramaic, but when Jesus called God "Abba" that specifically referred to a male paternal figure.
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Jul 21, 2015 17:39
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Obdicut posted:A lot of people probably have the expression of unorthodox beliefs knocked out of them, but actually holding onto the idea of the trinity is another matter. It takes incredibly careful semantics to even express doctrine about the trinity without actually implying a hierarchy and heresy. For example, most of the time, the word 'God' is used to identify 'The Father', which leads, even in theological statements, to an implication that the Holy Spirit and Jesus are both instruments of God the Father. In addition, the usage of the father/son relationship, to human beings, can't help but imply a hierarchy and a distinction. Well yeah, God's divinity breaks logic, existence and everything else.
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Jul 21, 2015 17:47
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Ynglaur posted:Okay, I clearly misunderstood you then. Does the first person of the holy trinity (the "Father") have gender-specificity in the original Greek or Hebrew? I'm curious because I'm a horrible mono-lingual American. The Trinity, as the formal, developed concept we are familiar with, does not appear in the scriptures  But yes, often when God is referred to in the Bible with a gender, it is male. There are some passages where female and maternal language is used, though.
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Jul 21, 2015 17:49
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Ynglaur posted:Okay, I clearly misunderstood you then. Does the first person of the holy trinity (the "Father") have gender-specificity in the original Greek or Hebrew? I'm curious because I'm a horrible mono-lingual American. Grammatically yes because every noun in Greek and Hebrew is marked by grammatical gender: two in Hebrew and three in Greek. It's unavoidable in those languages.
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Jul 21, 2015 17:52
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Thanks for the responses everyone.
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Jul 21, 2015 19:04
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Thirteen Orphans posted:Well, it was technically Aramaic, but when Jesus called God "Abba" that specifically referred to a male paternal figure. Well how else are you going to relate to paternalistic 1st century Hebrew society?
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Jul 21, 2015 21:22
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The grocery store in my white bread West Virginia town now carries votive candles of St. Jude and Mary with labels in Spanish Liturgical Christianity wins again
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Jul 21, 2015 23:23
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Mr. Wiggles posted:Well how else are you going to relate to paternalistic 1st century Hebrew society? Why would God incarnate care what time period he's in?
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Jul 21, 2015 23:32
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:Why would God incarnate care what time period he's in? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvVr2uks0C8
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Jul 21, 2015 23:39
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:Why would God incarnate care what time period he's in? Because all of those pithy parables and teachings wouldn't have gone over so well had they been delivered in English?
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Jul 21, 2015 23:45
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heyo liturgi-goons, so a friend's birthday is coming up and he said that he'd really like to get a book or two of Christian thought/theology. he's a latin-rite catholic like me, though from a much more conservative background. basically i'm thinking two books, one that's maybe an all-around solid historical treatment of the subject unlikely to raise any eyebrows, and one that might be a little more out there/radical, since he's starting to explore that kind of intellectual and spiritual territory on his own. any advice from the more theologically literate?Numerical Anxiety posted:Because all of those pithy parables and teachings wouldn't have gone over so well had they been delivered in English? don't be ridiculous, the king james version says that jesus spoke english dammit
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Jul 21, 2015 23:56
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Numerical Anxiety posted:Because all of those pithy parables and teachings wouldn't have gone over so well had they been delivered in English? The authors of the synoptic gospels didn't have a problem promulgating their version of the resurrection by having a bunch of women be the first to encounter Jesus. Given the time period I don't think he would've cared so much about this principle of embarrassment either.
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Jul 22, 2015 00:05
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 The trinity is really simple - they are the points on a triangle, and none of the points are the top because it's constantly spinning (that's how it generates the universe), duh! 
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Jul 22, 2015 00:13
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