Is the biblical God a persona beyond gender?

In this post, I discuss the conclusions of an article by David E. S. Stein entitled:

“On Beyond Gender: Representation of God in the Torah and in Three Recent Renditions into English,” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues 15 (2008) 108-137

I thank David for sending me a copy of his article. Below the fold, I answer “No” to the question posed in the title of this post. I am convinced David would answer "No" as well. Nevertheless, we differ about the degree to which the “No” must be qualified, and the implications of a qualified "No" for the work of translation and interpretation today.

The thesis of David’s article is that a (mostly) gender-neutral translation of the Torah’s God language better conveys the degree to which gender is germane to the Torah’s description of God than does a translation which renders יהוה with Lord and uses the masculine pronouns “he-his-him-himself.”

His premise:

(1) It is almost never the case that gender is germane to the persona of God the Torah offers her readers.

His conclusion:

(2) The use of (mostly) gender neutral God language conveys that fact with less distortion than would rendering יהוה with Lord and using “he-his-him-himself.”

The logic of the argument is unassailable. Its premise, nonetheless, is open to criticism. I suggest a replacement premise, (4), and a corresponding conclusion, (5), below.

It is possible that I have worded (1) in a way David would not be comfortable with. Perhaps he wishes only to say that:

(3) It is not the case that gender is germane to the person of God as the Torah conceives of God if all the relevant texts are taken into account.

(1) and (3) differ from each other in important ways. Persona refers to ways God is described in the texts, not the way God necessarily is, outside of metaphor, in essence, according to those same texts. There are texts in the Torah which relativize all language used of God. Exodus 3:14, אהיה אשר אהיה, comes to mind. So far as I can see, however, God’s reflexive self-definition in Ex 3:14 did not lead the Torah to avoid describing God most everywhere else in more specific and less reflexive terms, gender-specific terms included.

I have no objection to (3), but here is a more helpful premise, or so it seems to me, more in line with the sensibilities of the ancient authors, though not with those of some modern readers:

(4) The biblical authors did not avoid gendered language in their descriptions of God or any other god. Gender-specific, personal and a-personal expressions are all applied to God, and gods in general, in the Bible. Nevertheless, insofar as gendered personhood is ascribed to God or any other god, it is not ambiguous, undetermined, or under-determined.

The “social gender” of Israel’s God, though not of some non-Israelite deities such as the unnamed “Queen of Heaven” (Jer 7:17-18; 44:17), is masculine. But – an important caveat – Israel’s God is not sexed.

Once again, God’s “social gender” is masculine, but – another important caveat – not without a feminine remainder. That is, God is occasionally described in language fit for those of female gender, not male.

If (4) is on target, one might conclude as follows:

(5) A measured but still frequent use of gendered God language in Bible translation – calibrated according to context and target language considerations on a passage-by-passage basis - conveys the facts with less distortion than would avoiding the masculine pronouns “he-his-him-himself” entirely and supplying instead the allegedly non-gendered stand-in, “God,” and/or resorting to circumlocutions.

Let me exemplify.

(5) means translating a verse like Genesis 2:2 as follows:

וַיְכַל אֱלֹהִים בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה

וַיִּשְׁבֹּת בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי מִכָּל־מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה

On the seventh day, God finished the work he had been doing, and on the seventh day stopped all the work he had been doing.

I assume that David would argue, though he does not discuss the example in the article cited above, that to so translate distorts the degree of “genderedness” the Hebrew instantiates. On its part, The Contemporary Torah, one of the translation efforts David offers as a model, supplies “God” in brackets and resorts to circumlocutions:

On the seventh day God finished the work that had been undertaken; [God] ceased on the seventh day from doing any of the work.

I find the translation unsatisfactory on several levels. But I admit that the translation it revises, NJPSV, with its thrice-repeated capitalized “He” in which “He” is also fronted (against the source text) in the second half of the complex sentence, “over-masculinizes” the Hebrew:

On the seventh day God finished the work that He had been doing, and He ceased on the seventh day from all the work that He had done.

In my judgment, the translation of Gen 2:2 I offer, in which “he” occurs twice in embedded relative clauses, does not “over-masculinize.” NJPSV’s thrice-repeated use “He,” however, with “He” moved up with the effect of granting it greater prominence than it has in the Hebrew, “over-masculinizes” indeed.

But The Contemporary Torah on its part botches Gen 2:2 in the attempt to offer a contemporary audience “an opportunity to encounter its God more directly” (109), that is, a God to whom male-gendered language is attached with great difficulty. Let me clarify.

In Gen 1:31 and 2:2-3, what God made/did (עשה) is what God “sees,” “finishes,” and “stops.” This is obscured in The Contemporary Torah. A majestic string of active verbs with God as implicit or explicit subject stretches from 1:1 to 1:31 and again from 2:2 to 2:3, in the latter case, with two passive verbs, in 2:1 and 2:4, acting as bookends. The strings are undone by The Contemporary Torah at 1:31, 2:2, and 2:3 for the sole purpose of avoiding masculine pronouns.

Furthermore, 2:2b is so radically made over from a syntactic point of view that the deliberate syntactic parallelisms across 2:2-3 are washed away:

ַיְכַל אֱלֹהִים בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי    מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה

וַיִּשְׁבֹּת בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי   מִכָּל־מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה

כִּי בוֹ שָׁבַת               מִכָּל־מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר־בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים לַעֲשׂוֹת

On the seventh day, God finished      the work      he had been doing,

and on the seventh day stopped     all the work      he had been doing. . . .

for on it he stopped                        all the work of creation God had been doing.  

To be sure, the mention of “God” in 2:3 seems misplaced and the syntax otherwise difficult, but a discussion of the crux lies beyond the purposes of this post.

Further Musings on the God Language of the Bible

There are contemporary confessional contexts that relate well only to a non-gendered God. It is or should be well-known that a major Protestant denomination, the United Church of Christ, came close to deciding to officially adopt a hymnal in which references to God thought by some to be masculine or patriarchal in a negative sense, “Lord,” for example, had been stricken. It is or should be well-known that a movement to eliminate references to God as “Father,” insofar as it trigger memories of bad fathers, or is otherwise suspect, has had a certain impact in some circles.

People come down on the issues in opposing ways. Some want everyone to relate only to a non-gendered God, and seek to revise worship materials and the Bible accordingly. Some wish to maintain that the biblical God is presented in gendered and non-gendered ways, and that the Bible’s gendered descriptions of God, masculine and feminine, convey essential truths that are obscured by translations and worship materials which aim for “gender neutrality” in their representation of God language.

I actually don’t think The Contemporary Torah succeeds in offering a contemporary audience the possibility of encountering a rigorously degendered God. The word “God” itself, used throughout The Contemporary Torah, is freighted with masculinity in English. Indeed, unlike אלהים in Hebrew, “God/god” is gender-specific in English, used as a rule of male deities in English, with another gender-specific term, “goddess,” used exclusively of female deities.

Personally, I consider that result felicitous. That’s because there is something spiritually unhealthy in the contemporary tendency to relate only to a non-gendered persona of God. The tendency has no basis whatsoever in the Bible or tradition, and for that very reason, drives a deep wedge between the Bible and tradition on the one hand, and contemporary spirituality on the other. Of course, that is just what the doctor ordered according to a number of vocal thinkers.

So far, except in Unitarian-Universalist settings and a few very liberal Jewish and Protestant contexts, it does not seem to be the case that the de-gendering of God has caught on. At the same time, there is more awareness than before that God per se as it were is not inherently masculine or inherently feminine. It’s nice to see that traditional teaching re-emphasized today.

Is the biblical God a persona beyond gender? No, but gender insofar as it is ascribed to God by the biblical authors cannot be taken to imply that God is an inherently male or female deity. The biblical authors thought of their God in all of the following categories: gender-specific, personal, and a-personal. Specific truths are conveyed in each case. We do well, should we choose to situate ourselves in the slipstream created by biblical tradition, to emulate in our own God language the range and variety of categories and social constructs through which God is described in the Bible.

Comments

[David E. S. Stein]

Because you raise several overlapping points, John, I am going to make several piecemeal responses.

First, my view of the “confessional context” of the publishers of my translation work is rather different from yours. The drive for gender-sensitive language in liturgy and devotional study comes from congregants at least as much as from religious leaders.

I think back to the last four cities where I have lived and been a member of a synagogue, in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Columbia (Maryland), and Los Angeles. Those assembed in worship or study, when called upon to read aloud an English passage from a prayer book or biblical lection that refers to God via “He” and “the Lord,” on the fly and in unison de-gender the text as they speak. (These are Reconstructionist and Conservative synagogues, and I know that similar values pertain in Reform synagogues as well.) This is “mainstream” American Judaism, representing the plurality, if not the majority, of English-speaking Jewish congregations in the USA and Canada.

My point is that the publishers of gender-sensitive prayer books and Torah commentaries are not leading such emphasis on gendered language, they are following it.

In the religious world that I inhabit, the English word “God” is NOT a male term. Quite honestly, I was shocked that you claimed it to be such. I cannot recall anyone ever hearing anyone say that before—at least not in the Jewish world, where for decades I have followed discussions about gendered language. Rather, the word “God” is always understood as equivalent to the Hebrew word elohim, which (outside of kabbalistic settings) is not a gendered reference.

In practice, the existence of a female counterpart term, “goddess,” is not germane to the meaning of “god”—especially when capitalized. This linguistic phenomenon can be explained in terms of Nida’s componential analysis: The word “god” has a meaning-component that refers to role, and a separate meaning-component that refers to gender. In many usages, the second component remains latent, in that the term is used without regard to gender. This is the case also with many other terms in English that have female counterparts: actor, ancestor, author, aviator, etc.

[JohnFH]

David,

Thanks for illuminating comments.

Considerable cultural differences are in play here. In my context, a diverse Protestant context, it is very unusual to hear anyone de-gender the text on the fly unless they attended a seminary where they have been taught to do so. To do so is not part of a shared cultural background.

Your distinction between actual and latent is important. But I'm not sure that a binary understanding captures the facts on the ground.

The masculine persona of the deity in a passage like Gen 2:2, both in Hebrew and in an English translation like mine, is not particularly overt, but is not completely absent either. At least, that is how the text comes across to me.

It seems to be the case that for some contemporary readers, even lightly gendered God language is thought to be toxic, unless, perhaps, the gendering is feminine.

A translation like The Contemporary Torah will no doubt be welcomed by such readers, who are also likely, as you say, to think of "God" as a non-gendered word.

I welcome the Contemporary Torah in any case, in particular because of your extensive and thoughtful notes and discussion of the translation choices.

But a de-gendering spirituality is virtually absent in my context, where among the more popular worship songs are praise pieces in which God is addressed with the same ardor and in the same language a woman might address a man in a love song. Ultimately, this goes back to a particular reading of the Song of Songs. This way of speaking of God, not to mention the ubiquitous practice of referring to "God" as "Father," "Lord," and "King," are vital pieces of the background against which any reference to "God" is made.

In short, by metalepsis, "God" is a word freighted with all kinds of social constructs, "the Lord is my shepherd," "the Lord is my Rock and redeemer," "who nurses them with honey from the crag," "Our Father who art in heaven," and so on. It is not easily decoupled from this background, and, to be clear, it is a good thing that such is the case.

In Catholic, Orthodox, and most evangelical settings - that is, among most Christians - a reaction against the de-gendering tendency, both vertical and horizontal, has set in.

Beyond the odd English that de-genderers occasionally indulge in, the problem is larger. It has to do with a perception that de-gendering vectors a wider and deeper agenda that amounts to a radical relativization of traditional theology in the name of a new theology whose contours are dictated by cultural trends which are in considerable tension with traditional emphases on several fronts.

In short, I would position myself in what might be called a radical center able to fully appropriate the range of language applied to God in the Bible and tradition, yet cognizant of contemporary cultural developments which make it more important than ever to emphasize that God in essence is beyond gender and beyond all qualification by human language.

In Christian theology, this is known as the apophatic tradition. So long as that tradition is not allowed to supplant the biblical tradition (which is apophatic only in fits and spurts), it can be a correcting influence.

[David E. S. Stein]

A second response:
Your essay, in my opinion, conflates at least two separate issues: which translation methodology is best, and how well CJPS succeeds in carrying out its stated methodology. Your essay, after dismissing the need for gender-sensitive God-language, then proceeds to judge CJPS by other standards. I do not find that particularly fair or helpful.

For your test case, you selected a Hebrew passage (Gen. 2:2) whose genre lies between prose and epic poetry. The way that the message is conveyed by that passage (its register and its rhythm and its diction) are relatively more important than in the usual prose passages of the Torah. Your example thus places unusual emphasis on how the NJPS/CJPS methodology fails to convey such literary features in the source text. But Gen. 2:2 is not a representative example of the Torah text as a whole.

Your essay claims that CJPS (the translation found within The Contemporary Torah) “botches” its rendering of Gen. 2:2–3 on the grounds that the translation does not reproduce the string of active verbs and syntactic parallelisms of the Hebrew. But such a critique is like expressing disappointment in a checkers player for not abiding by the rules of chess. Yes, the board looks the same for both games, but the enterprise is rather different.

Yes, in translation the goal is to transfer meaning from biblical Hebrew to contemporary English, but NJPS and CJPS are playing the translation game by different rules than you are. NJPS is a “thought-for-thought” translation, responding to the question, “How would one express this thought in contemporary English idiom?” Preservation of Hebrew syntax in the English rendering is not one of the rules of that game, at least not for the translation of prose.

[David E. S. Stein]

A third initial response:
Part of the motivation toward a gender-accurate translation of the Torah has been a drive to identify with our Jewish ancestors. That is the paradox in the title The Contemporary Torah: what is “contemporary” is a keen desire to read the Torah as the text’s original audience perceived it, to look at God and the world through their eyes. This is not an academic or antiquarian interest. Rather, it is a matter of personal identity. Our passion is fueled by that identification.

Soldiers, in a day-to-day basis in the field, tend to be more motivated by concern for their buddies—fellow soldiers in their unit—than by more abstract causes for war. Likewise, it is easier for me to be motivated by devotion to my (personal) family members than by devotion to (impersonal) concerns such as global warming. And so yes, it is much easier to pray to a deity (or intermediary) with a human face. The “person” in a “personal” God excites devotional commitment, and such personhood seems to require ascription of gender.

For many praying Jews I know, however, relating to God as a person is anathema. I hear 2 reasons for this. In general, it is inherently misleading to pray to any one conception of the deity, and thus it is done only briefly, heuristically, and in passing. In particular, the concept of God as a male figure simply stops the conversation, choking off the ability to speak. Presumably, this reaction is due to experiential associations of maleness with abuses of power, but the reason seems less important than the phenomenon itself.

In the Jewish world that I inhabit, gender-sensitive God-language correlates not with devotional malaise but rather with a restoration of devotional passion. This language gives us a God that (or whom) we can pray to again.

[David E. S. Stein]

A 4th initial response:
We seem to be talking past each other with regard to what we mean by God-language.

I distinguish between the text’s simple personifications (“God spoke”) from its metaphoric ascriptions (“God is our father”).

In your view, to personify God at all might seem to bring in train an assignment of gender. However, in the Hebrew Bible, various inanimate entities are occasionally said to “speak” or “see,” but gender does not seem to be at issue. In my view, such personification does not rise to the level of explicitness that requires (or even warrants) a gendered rendering into English.

In saying this, I am following the general rule for English idiom, that (unlike Hebrew) gender is not specified unless it is germane.

With regard to metaphoric ascriptions that the Bible applies to God, you seem to be suggesting that when specifically gendered terms are used in the Hebrew, I am against conveying their gender in translation. I hasten to disabuse your readers of this notion.

The translations I worked on were careful to preserve the social gender of the metaphoric vehicle (lord, father, etc.). Indeed, my article in Nashim takes pains to defend that practice to a feminist readership that is not necessarily sympathetic.

My article also discusses ancient usage of metaphor and views of gender, from which I conclude that in the ancients’ usage of personal metaphors, they regularly distinguished between the social gender of a metaphor’s vehicle and that of its tenor. Therefore I concluded that the Bible’s composers could not have relied on its ancient audience to have construed gendered metaphors as necessarily implying that God is a gendered being.

In other words, by calling God “lord,” the text did not mean to say: “imagine God as a male being.” (If that were the point, it would have had to be stated more explicitly.)

When the Torah’s characters called God “lord” (or “father”), it meant: “I relate to this deity (in some ways) as I relate to a human lord (or father).” The gender of the imagery is relevant because gender mattered in that society’s social roles. But such imagery does not reflect on God in any essential way.

When I apply a sports metaphor to the behavior of other people, it does not mean that they must therefore be athletes. Likewise, for the Torah’s characters to call God “lord” or “father” does not mean that “God is male.”

For purposes of devotional study, I find it worthwhile to convey the metaphoric ascriptions in translation, because of the information that is thereby conveyed about the thought categories of the original audience. As I wrote earlier, part of the purpose of such study is to identify with our ancestors.

[J. K. Gayle]

Considerable cultural differences are in play here. In my context, a diverse Protestant context, it is very unusual to hear anyone de-gender the text on the fly unless they attended a seminary where they have been taught to do so. To do so is not part of a shared cultural background.

John: (1) "de-gender" is quite a loaded term. Sounds like "to un-gender" or "to neuter," which are vacuous words that reminds us of Sigmund Freud's term "Penisneid." Freud's a masculinist, and his pointing to the "lack" is not too different from Stein's insistence that the Torah lacks something in God. (Yes, we noticed how you gendered Torah "her" in the first premise--clever!)

(2) I don't think either Anne Carson or Anne Lamott attended seminary (either Jewish or Christian). Both are facile in discussions (and translation) of the scriptures and of God, never going "beyond gender." In fact, each works out in helpful ways the various implications of God as male, as female, as the plural One making us, male and female, in his image.

[J. K. Gayle]

Mr. Stein,

What do you think of Judith Plaskow's work? What might she think of yours?

[David E. S. Stein]

My 5th and perhaps final response to this essay:
Now I will address the main issue regarding God-language that I raised in my article. John, I admire your ability to make explicit in translation how biblical Hebrew communicates its message—its literary features. So let’s look more closely at your example (Gen. 2:2), where you perceive a subtle male overtone, and for which you offer an alternative rendering.

GENDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE HEBREW WORDING

The first question is, whose eyes are reading this passage? In my translation work, and in my article in Nashim, I situated myself as looking over the shoulder of the Torah’s composer(s), trying to imagine which assumptions about the audience were in mind. In choosing words carefully, the composer(s) had to ask: What reading conventions would this audience bring to bear upon the text? What shared cultural understandings would go without saying? Only after addressing these issues did I attempt to decode the meaning of the Hebrew text.

So, then, in Gen. 2:2 what textual aspects would have reliably induced the text’s original audience to perceive a male overtone? As I argued in more detail in my article, my answer is: Nothing.

Masculinity has meaning only with regard to a corporeal body, interpersonal interactions, and cultural roles. All of those factors are muted, if not conspicuously absent, in the opening story of Genesis.

• No bodily clues point to divine maleness.

• There is no counterposition of divine gender with the gender of other beings. (If anything, God’s gender is equated with both the masculinity and femininity of humankind, in 1:27.)

• The activity involved, namely, organizing and assigning roles, would not have been viewed as a peculiarly male activity. (The administrator of an Israelite household was typically a woman; and the household was the locus of economic production in that society.)

• Initiation of an organized cosmos was not particularly associated with maleness. (Biblical authors were capable of conceiving and expressing Creation in terms of explicitly feminine imagery, as Psalms 90 attests: “Before the mountains were born / And the earth was brought forth via labor.”)

Indeed, the deity presented in the opening story is utterly beyond all conventional categories, even regarding ancient Near Eastern deities. This depiction implicitly seems to argue against any ascription of gender to this deity.

(Now, it may still have been the case that God’s maleness was a given—that it simply went without saying. In the absence of an explicit statement, that point cannot be proven either way.)

TRANSLATION INTO ENGLISH

So how shall we render our Genesis verse into English?

You propose (in part): “God finished the work he had been doing.” Hmm. This fails to render a pronominal suffix directly into English. Doesn’t the word melakhto literally mean “his work” rather than “the work”? If using male pronouns is okay, why not go all the way? I do not understand your reason for wanting a rendering that is (in my words) “masculine—but not too masculine.” Apparently you are making some trade-offs. Please clarify.

In any case, your proposed rendering must employ the pronoun “he” either as a male pronoun or as a generic pronoun.

If you intend “he” as a male pronoun, then I would say that you have overinterpreted the text, ascribing gender where the text gives no warrant for doing so.

Or if you intend “he” as a generic pronoun, then that usage would be happily in accord with standard English and even with NJPS. (See the note on the copyright page of the JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh: “masculine terms for God such as ‘He’ should be understood as gender neutral unless the imagery of their context requires otherwise.”)

However, the gender implication of that “he” is ambiguous. Further, that “he” will be misperceived as intentionally male by a sizable proportion of readers. For contemporary readers (regardless of their own theology) tend to believe that the Torah intends to refer to a male deity.

Precisely to avoid such ambiguity and its attendant misreading, CJPS eschews the generic use of male pronouns.

The lack of a pronoun (CJPS: “God finished the work that had been undertaken”) is ambiguous in a manner akin to the Hebrew wording: it is no more specific or explicit about the deity’s gender than is the original text. This wording allows the reader to construe the deity either without gender—or, if you insist, as (subtly) male.

Other gender-sensitive or gender-accurate translations (such as NRSV, NLT, and TNIV) likewise avoid the generic use of male pronouns—but only with regard to human beings. They still retain “generic” male pronouns for God. As I argue in my article, such usage ironically makes God seem more male than ever.

The approach of CJPS is rather to allow English readers to construe references to the Torah’s deity via the same grammatical clues as for references to human characters.

This is, after all, how the original Hebrew operates. Hence my claim that a rendering whose God-language is gender-neutral by default offers English readers a less distorted view of gender in the original text.

In mid-May 2009, I will gain copyright permission to post a copy of my article online. I plan to let you know when that occurs.

[David E. S. Stein]

Quick response to J.K. Gayle, regarding my view of Judith Plaskow’s work:

Professor Plaskow’s work is important and inspiring, though I believe it addresses a different question than my recent work.

I have been most interested in recovering the Hebrew text’s original meaning, to the extent that is possible. If I understand Dr. Plaskow’s work correctly, it is more in the service of drawing direct implications for Jewish social and organizational life today.

That difference in goals seems to led us to differing assumptions that we each bring to our plain-sense reading of the Hebrew text.

[JohnFH]

David and Kurk,

Thanks first of all for a great discussion.

Re David' second response. I like the analogy, in which I would be expressing disappointment because the translators behind NJPSV and CJPS are playing checkers whereas I was expecting a game of chess. Checkers, after all, is rather boring.

It's true that I judged NJPSV against a standard that did not exist at the time: sensitivity to questions related to the "genderedness" of language, both in the source text and in translation. But so did those who produced CJPS. They judged it by a new standard and found it wanting. Thus the adaptation, which follows a new set of rules.

I concur with the judgment that led to the adaptation. I have some issues with the resultant product, but only in terms of David's 2008 article. As he himself notes therein, he ups the ante so to speak with respect to the claims made for CJPS in CJPS.

It remains true that CJPS succeeds far better than NJPSV in giving a modern-day Conservative-Reformed-Reconstructionist audience "an opportunity to encounter its God more directly." I certainly do not want to deny that.

To be sure, I continue to have my doubts about the degree to which "God" is a gender-neutral term in the English language (in this, I am in the good company of some very clear-thinking feminists).

Perhaps it is the case that I stacked the deck by choosing Gen 2:2. I am tempted to use CJPS Deut 4:34-37 and 26:17-19 as further examples of what happens when masculine pronouns in reference to God are avoided at all costs.

Re David's third response. Wow. What a beautiful defense of the notion of praying to a "that" rather than a "who." But if "that" is the new standard by which prayers are to be judged, then it seems to me that the prayers in the Bible and in the prayerbook are of heuristic value only, to be replaced, sooner rather than later, by prayers to a "that."

I have attended services in a variety of Reformed and Conservative synagogues, but do not remember prayers to a "that." Perhaps I am misunderstanding.

Re David's fourth response. No, I did not mean to suggest that CJPS fails to reproduce metaphorical language, with or without a gendered component, in its adaptation of NJPSV.

But David correctly notes in CJPS that "when a character addresses God as "lord" (e.g. Gen 18:27; Ex. 5:22), the maleness of the imagery is germane" (404). The only oddity here is that "lord" is left uncapitalized, whereas other ascriptive terms, gendered and ungendered, are capitalized ("Warrior," "Rock," "Father," etc.). It could be that David explains this decision somewhere, but if so I have overlooked it.

Now the question is, when, in the confession of faith reproduced in Deut 26:8, the Israelite head-of-household confessed that "יהוה freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, with an outstretched arm, and great power," is that to be read as a metaleptic allusion to the actions of the "Warrior" of Exod 15?

I would think so, in which case, I'm not sure it is "almost never the case" that gender is germane to God's persona in the Torah. "Mighty hand," "outstretched arm," "great power" - these evoke the figure of a warrior.

To avoid misunderstanding, yes, I too can't recount the events celebrated in Exodus 15 without also narrating the famous midrash in which God weeps for "my people Egypt" who are bumps on a log at the bottom of the sea. I too am rather PC when it comes right down to it (but I am trying to hide that side of me a bit for the purposes of this discussion).

But I do think the gendered God language in the Torah should never be a conversation-stopper, but a conversation-starter. I'm actually convinced David concurs, though he might be thought to imply otherwise.

Re David's fifth response. I agree with David if he means to say that the difference between the translation I offer of Gen 2:2 and that of CJPS is tiny compared to the difference of both compared to NJPSV. That's because we basically agree. He is right: I offer a rendering that is as lightly gendered as possible without removing every trace of genderedness. That's how the Hebrew text comes across to me, not without gender, but with gender muted down to a 1 on a scale of 10. I hope that is sufficient clarification.

I also agree with David that many other recent translations over-masculinize, not just NJPSV. Here, of course, both of us are talking chess, and we might both be accused of holding these translations to standards foreign to the intentions of the translators.

But I prefer chess. Checkers is boring. I'm looking for more partners with whom to play a great game of chess. Anybody game?

Well, I know Kurk is game. I am unfamiliar however with the translation efforts of which he speaks. In any case, I imagine that Lamott sees her work as a modern Targum, not as an attempt to be gender-accurate to the original.

[tiro3]

John,

"I offer a rendering that is as lightly gendered as possible without removing every trace of genderedness. That's how the Hebrew text comes across to me, not without gender, but with gender muted down to a 1 on a scale of 10. I hope that is sufficient clarification."

How does one mute gender, or how is one lightly gendered. I can understand muting the importance of gender, but do not see how one can mute gender itself.

David Stein,

"In other words, by calling God “lord,” the text did not mean to say: “imagine God as a male being.” (If that were the point, it would have had to be stated more explicitly.)

When the Torah’s characters called God “lord” (or “father”), it meant: “I relate to this deity (in some ways) as I relate to a human lord (or father).” The gender of the imagery is relevant because gender mattered in that society’s social roles. But such imagery does not reflect on God in any essential way."

I believe this accurately reflects the intentions of Scripture. God as Creator has elements that are immensely beyond our understanding. We should be careful of making God seem to much like that which He created out of nothing. :)

[JohnFH]

Hi Tiro,

Nice of you to chime in here. I would reiterate that, according to streams of tradition within both Judaism and Christianity (the apophatic tradition), God per se is beyond gender.

In the case of Gen 2:2-3 and more generally in the first creation account, I do hold that the "social gender" of God that is often enough quite germane is severely muted or completely absent. Two non-fronted "he"'s in embedded relative clauses in my view approximates that in English.

The theological point David makes, in which essence and metaphorical ascription are distinguished, is an important one, but can also be overdone. For example, if too much stress is placed on the fact that God is "our Father in heaven" only within the limits of human language, it might be thought that one could just as well refer to God as "our grandfather" or "our aunt" in heaven or by no language of family association whatsoever. Of course, this does not follow.

In short, God language such as "Father," "Warrior," "Refuge," etc. conveys essential truths even if God is each of these things only by analogy.

[Iyov]

Hi David --

Great to hear from you as always. Of course, you are a fantastically hip Jewish figure -- if I recall correctly, you were the only male contributor to the fascianting The Torah: A Women's Commentary. As someone out on the bleeding edge of translation, perhaps your experience is not typical?

As you know, the liturgy refers to both male and female aspects of the Divine. But as you know, American Judaism is moving torwards more traditional liturgical forms (even the Reform Jews I know daven out of the ArtScroll). And, reflecting the Hebrew gender, most English translations mostly use the masculine form. This is even true of the Conservative Siddur Sim Shalom and the Reform Gates of Prayer.

But ultimately, most of the Jews I know pray in Hebrew, and those prayers are still to Avinu Malkeinu.

[Peter Kirk]

John, I think that in your comments on Genesis 2:2 you are confusing general principles with some peculiarities of the English language; that is, you are confusing exegetical and translational issues. Sure, the Contemporary Torah rendering of this verse is not good English, but that is because English, unlike almost every other language, lacks a 3rd person singular pronoun which does not specify natural gender. (Hebrew, Greek, Latin etc pronouns specify only grammatical gender.)

I was working on a translation of the Bible into a language in which pronouns are not gendered at all, and there is no grammatical gender. In our published rendering of this verse there is nothing gendered at all (in fact there are not even any ungendered pronouns), except for the word for "God" which may be perceived as male. The same is true of both the old and the new Turkish translations, in a language with similar characteristics. Even in a fully gendered "pro-drop" language like Russian it would be quite possible to translate this verse without anything specifically gendered (although the published Russian translation uses one pronoun with grammatical gender referring to the grammatically masculine word for God). Would you suggest that there is something inherently lacking in such translations? I wouldn't.

If we can agree on this principle, that it is not essential to refer to explicit maleness in this verse, we can then work on how best to render it in English, whether in our specific dialect of the language we can use for example "he" without misleadingly overspecifying the natural gender of the referent.

[Sue]

Cree and related languages do not have grammatical gender either. I think it is better to leave aside a discussion of the gender of pronouns altogether.

Let's move away from grammatical gender to either names or passages and functions. The earliest name of God that I ever knew was "L'Eternel" not gendered in my mind. Adonai is gendered but in a relational way, not in a biological way. I think we also need to acknowledge that the "strong arm" for many will be the arm of a mother, sister or friend.

As far as the Hebrew is concerned, Israel is portrayed as the son, the servant, and the spouse of God. On a metaphorical level the different passages lend themselves to gender in a variety of ways. However, it is often multi-layered as God becomes the mother of her daughter Zion, and the husband of Israel. The gender of both God and the people are not fixed.

(English translations confound the issue even more by using "son of my womb" instead of "child of my womb" in Deutero-Isaiah.)

What do you think of Mayer Gruber's work in this area? I have found it helpful.

[J. K. Gayle]

>John, Okay, let's play chess (where there's a queen and king and knights and other neutered pieces) instead of checkers (in which each is the same until the kings are crowned). :) Yes, Lamott is not a "translator" in our usual sense of that word.

>Mr. Stein, Thanks for validating Plaskow's work (and I appreciate Iyov's mention of your editorial work with her material in The Torah: A Women's Commentary, although you were not a contributor to that book, were you?)

In "Facing the Ambiguity of God" (an essay in The Coming of Lilith), Plaskow writes:

It is entirely legitimate and even essential for a new community [i.e., of women theologians and linguists and literary scholars and rhetoricians] finding its voice to speak and write about God by drawing upon its own most fundamental experiences. In a profoundly misogynistic culture that has ruthlessly exploited the natural environment--and that has linked women with the natural world on many levels of practice and discourse--feminist metaphors for God elucidate long-buried dimensions of divinity. These metaphors are not just political correctives to dominant modes of seeing and being; they arise from and refer to real discoveries of the sacred in places we had long stopped looking to find it. (134).

which is not unlike what Mayer Gruber writes (below).

>Peter, I wonder if one reason English is a language with gender "peculiarities" (i.e., specificity on certain pronouns) is because of the masculinist cultures it has evolved in. Why aren't translators (into English) more easily allowed the agency to bend the rigid rules, to "overtranslate" if you will, now and again? Why can't the English pronoun system be flaunted against what Plaskow shows to be "a rich array of images for God focusing on female, natural, and nonhierarchical metaphors [that . . . ] depict God as source, wellspring and fountain, mother and womb of life. . . Shekhinah, Goddess, all that seeks life; earth, moon, lover, friend--and so on" (134)?

>Sue, Thanks for mentioning Gruber. Here's how he sounds some like Plaskow (in his "Women’s Voices in the Book of Micah" findable by google):

The reticence to pay attention to the voices of previously unrecognized women in Hebrew Scripture reflects the phallo-centric thinking from which both men and women in modern western society suffer. Objectively, the stubborn refusal to accept new data concerning women in antiquity makes no more sense than the refusal to accept new etymologies that were unknown to the older dictionaries of Biblical Hebrew that preceded the deciphering of Akkadian and Ugaritic and the discovery of ancient Phoenician and Aramaic texts in the course of the last two centuries.

Clearly, Gruber is talking about women silenced from the scriptures while Plaskow (above) is talking about God as "ambiguous"--and both are looking at evidence against the male-only tradition (which is, Gruber says, "what Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza calls malestream biblical scholarship").

[Peter Kirk]

Kurk, I don't think English evolved in a more masculinist culture than most other (modern, at least) languages. The reason for its unusual status is that it lost its grammatical gender but became essentially frozen before the next step (taken in other languages like Persian which have lost grammatical gender) of losing gender distinctions in pronouns. So the remaining pronominal gender distinctions became reanalysed as relating to natural rather than grammatical gender.

[JohnFH]

Peter, Suzanne, and Kurk,

Thanks for bringing into the discussion a knowledge of a variety of other languages and an appreciation, in Kurk's case, for the pathos of an author like Judith Plaskow.

We have on the one hand, a source language and a source culture (not to be confused) that revel in mapping things in a variety of ways. Thus we have things that are fit for eating and things that are not, things that are holy and things that are common.
It is also a language and a culture that knows of gods and goddesses. The God of the biblical authors clearly belongs to the former class. I am not about to budge on that piece of baseline information.

Since I imagine we are around a coffee table, with Suzanne, Peter, Kurk, David Stein, and Iyov present, I would also add at this point, just to liven up the conversation, have you read your Mary Daley? I assume that some of you have. She is the philosopher (indeed, she was still a Christian at the time) who pointed out that the God of the Bible is a "male mother" - that is, a motherly figure in many ways, viewed of course through a son's eyes.

And yet, I would add, it is still the case that the God of the Bible is presented to us predominantly through metaphors in which maleness (as a social construct, not some sort of absolute) is germane, sometimes very, often in a muted way only, occasionally through an overt feminine remainder, in which God's motherliness is expressed directly, but more often through a covert remainder, and last but not least, to echo Mary Daley, through a primary covert identity which is motherly. I hope I am not being too obscure.

Suzanne's point remains valid, that God's social gender in the Bible lacks a biological component. It is purely relational. Oops, maybe not. Is the God who nurses us and writhes the mountains into existence a sexual being or not? Is God sexual precisely insofar as he is feminine?

Have to love that last sentence.

It was David's late lamented teacher, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, with whom I fondly remember having dinner one night in Madison, and discussing Playboy magazine (she brought it up), who liked to make the point that the God of the Bible is masculine but not sexed.

Perhaps it needs to be added: the God of the Bible is nevertheless sexually feminine, not in terms of coitus and whatnot, but in terms of birthing and nursing. How one refers to this depends on how one defines related and overlapping terms like "sex," "biology," and "social gender."

I have been trying hard not confuse translational and exegetical issues, to which one must also add: "pastoral" issues. Still, all three need to be addressed. That is, if you have a congregation for whom a gendered God is a conversation-stopper, perhaps it only makes sense to produce a CJPS Torah, so that the congregation can appreciate the Torah in all her glory without the distraction of masculine pronouns referring to the Torah's God.

However, my point is that God is gendered in the Torah to a greater degree than David wishes to acknowledge, and that most people will get that even if they read the Torah in CJPS colors. If that is the case, the genderedness of God in the Torah needs to be a conversation-starter, not a conversation-stopper.

Furthermore, what's wrong about being boldly gendered in thinking about our relationship with God, as in the traditional interpretation of the Song of Songs, or as we find in the Kabbalah?

Perhaps the answer for everyone really is, in those cases, there is no problem.

In that case, I would suggest that the only real issue here depends on the fact that modernity typically lacks a positive concept of authority and hierarchy and maleness, too, insofar as maleness is socially conjoined with the exercise of authority, hierarchy, and so on. Overtly I mean, not covertly (if there is such a thing as socially constructed gendered authority, and I think there is, you don't get rid of it by pretending there isn't. It just becomes covert).

My own response to this modern aporetic dilemma is to work out positive concepts of authority and hierarchy and conjoin them socially to roles typical of, respectively, males and females in our culture.

In light of this response, it should be clear that I cannot but resist tooth and nail attempts to degender God and overlook differences that social gender encodes (not absolutely, but typically), for the good of males and females, not to mention humanity per se.

Not to mention the poet in me, which seethes in rebellion at all attempts to eliminate difference.

Whether or not our fathers and mothers in the faith described for us in the Torah referred to their God as "lord" or "Lord," "father" of "Father," "warrior" or "Warrior" probably misses the point. However, if one of the terms is to be capitalized, a case can be made that they all should be capitalized.

In any case, the truths these terms convey need to be brought out. Both in translation, exegesis, and in "la cura d'anima," the care of the soul.

If it is thought that the terms just mentioned convey lies, fine. Just say so. Let's cut to the chase - something Plaskow is not afraid to do.

I would reply to Plaskow that terms like "Lord," "Father," "King," "Refuge," "my Go'el" (how do you translate that? "my Redeemer" seems so weak) are, to play off of Picasso, terms of art. But, as Picasso noted,
"Art is a lie which tells the truth."

Many languages, it is true, are not equipped to represent the fine grain of genderedness to be found in the Hebrew.

I am on record as favoring more gender representation in English translation than has usually been the case. That means using feminine pronouns in a number of passages in which Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly are spoken of. That means retaining masculine pronouns when Israel's God is spoken of, though I agree that a one-to-one mapping distorts matters. Thus my translation of Genesis 2:2 in which maleness is muted but not completely absent.

BTW, in my translation, does "he" mark grammatical gender only, or both grammatical and social gender? A straight-up "yes / no" answer may not be appropriate. I believe the same is true for the Hebrew.

In short, the game of chess of which we are speaking is possible from Hebrew to English and from Hebrew to any language, but the options available for mapping are limited in some target languages and ample in others.

I'll admit a bias. I love gendered language. For example, I love Italian. One of my most pleasant memories from my son Giovanni's early childhood was going through Italian vocabulary items, all of which are rigorously gendered, and watching his face light up with disapproval and joy each time I took an item and misgendered it. I would say, "banano," and he would squeal with laughter and correct me, because of course he had, at age 3 or 4 already, encoded it all perfectly. "Papa', non e' cosi'. E' banaNA." Not "mammo," but "mamma," and so on.

If we all spoke Italian, this discussion would have a very different flavor.

Or, as Iyov suggests, if we stuck to Hebrew, the conversation would take a different turn altogether.

[Sue]

I believe the equal function of woman must be protected first in order to have any open discussion of gender.

[JohnFH]

Every human culture and subculture in existence routinizes functions along gender lines. To be sure, rarely is the routinization absolute, but it is nevertheless very real.

The routinization is cultural, legal, religious, indeed, a combination thereof. Routinization from one direction is sometimes in tension with routinization from another direction. In that tension most people live their lives the world over.

Equal function is a myth.

It is a powerful myth, one with intended and unintended consequences.

The myth is of recent vintage. Perhaps it will age well. I'm not so sure.

So far, the influence of the myth has had mixed results, precisely for women, but also for men and children. Plenty of feminists admit this.

If I am being asked to subscribe to the myth as a basis for a discussion of gender, the discussion is closed as far as I am concerned. In that case, Suzanne, you have landed on the wrong blog.

I happen to have an egalitarian marriage in the sense that my marriage is construed by the parts as a reciprocal authority arrangement with unequal functions by mutual consent.

I happen to be a pastor in an egalitarian church in which equal function is protected by church law but unequal function obtains according to routines that have already led to an unhealthy level of feminization of the church on some levels. An unintended consequence, to be sure, but a very real one.

I am happy to converse with anyone on the subject of gender, whether they be ideological egals, non-ideological egals, or complementarians of whatever flavor.

Belief or unbelief in egalism is not a prerequisite to participating in the discussion.

[Sue]

Since I imagine we are around a coffee table, with Suzanne, Peter, Kurk, David Stein, and Iyov present, ....

Let me express my regrets.

I would also add at this point, just to liven up the conversation, have you read your Mary Daley?

Yes, I have.

[JohnFH]

Mary Daley I consider to be a very clear thinker, though I admit I have not read her later works.

It certainly make sense that in the end she kissed the Judeo-Christian heritage goodbye. When all is said and done, one cannot serve two masters.

[Carl Kinbar]

I am having a difficult time dealing with the stark alternatives of a gendered (fully or lightly)or a non-gendered God. IMO, ONE factor in this discussion is the impetus to depict God as clearly and uniformly defined player, gendered or not, in a religious metanarrative. Note these comments by Walter Brueggeman in "Praying the Psalms", p. 69:

"We need to recognize two things about God’s self-presentation in the Psalms and in the entire Bible. First, there is no single, coherent picture of God... [r]ather, there are various sketches and disclosures in different circumstances. Each such disclosure is offered on its own and makes its own claim. And each such sketch must be fully honored on its own without being reduced to a generalized portrait… Second, every presentation of God is filtered through human imagination. The God presented in any sketch is not untouched by human interest, human need, and human wish."

(Note Peter Schafer's book on feminine images of God from the Bible to early Kabbalah.)

Even as “each sketch should be honored on its own”, perhaps it would be useful, in translation and practice, to highlight pluriform, rather than uniform, conceptions of God that fit within the varieties of God’s Biblical self-disclosure as filtered through human imagination.

[JohnFH]

Carl,

As an exegete I am committed to defending singular texts from the dirty mitts of systematicians (theologians of various flavors, atheists, it doesn't matter of what sort) who distort the texts for their own purposes.

That's why I am in favor of emphasizing both masculine and feminine images of God in the Bible and tradition.

The contrary underlying assumption often seems to be that if it is a masculine image, the maleness should be played down, thought of with embarrassment, or otherwise diminished, but if it is a feminine image, it should be played up and assigned an importance it did not have at the time.

As a systematician - yes, that's something I am too, in preaching and teaching for example - I know I have to generalize often. Generalized portraits also have a role to play, as I suppose Brueggeman would also admit. For example, in a confession of faith like that found in Deuteronomy 26, we expect a generalized portrait, and that is what we are given. The composite is important in its own right. Within that composite, the image of God as warrior is very strong.

Let's get the generalized portraits right as well.

[Carl Kinbar]

"As an exegete I am committed to defending singular texts... Let's get the generalized portraits right as well."

That's a "both/and." Sounds right to me.