Anthropo-logy

     In my post on Friday I said I would write a little bit about the linguistic controversy surrounding NT Greek anthropos, which is now translated as "person" or "one" or "human being" or "[null]" or "fellow" or "telephone pole," but never simply "man," lest somebody in the pews faint and have to be revived.  The excuse is that anthropos does not mean "man," they say, but "person of indeterminate sex."  Not so.

     Here is what the NT gives us:

     Anthropos in a concrete sense, in the singular, almost always means "man," that is, "adult male," "some guy or other," "a chap."  This is probably the most common use of the word in the Gospels, unless Jesus is contrasting God with man (see below).  In the plural it can mean "men," as in "a bunch of guys," "the chaps on the street," and so forth; or it can mean "people in general," without distinction of sex or age.  In a figurative or symbolic sense, in the singular, anthropos means man as opposed to God, or man as opposed to beast; it isn't the same thing as "humanity," because that word names a collective and a quality, not a collective conceived as a unitary being.

     Aner is the word for adult male -- but you don't use it all the time.  Most of the time you use anthropos.  You use aner when you wish especially to emphasize the sex; the noun is also marked for age, strength, courage, and marital status (it means "husband" as opposed to "bachelor").

     Here's how the words would be used, in common speech:

     "Once upon a time there was a man who had two sons."  Anthropos; he's a man, but we're not focusing on his manhood; cf. Luke 15:11.

     "Daniel Boone was a man, he was a real man."  Aner; the idea is that he was big and strong and brave.

     "I saw a man walking down the street."  Anthropos; unless it's a really unusual man, as in

     "I saw a man in a polka-dot dress, walking down the street."  Aner!

     "All day long I'd yeedle-dydle-dum, if I were a wealthy man."  Anthropos; cf. Luke 16:19.

     "That man suffers from paralysis."  Anthropos.

     "Two men carried him in a litter and lowered him through a hole in the thatched roof."  Aner -- andres in the plural; they had to be big enough and strong enough to do it; cf. Luke 5:18, where the man in the litter is called anthropos and his carriers are andres.

     "Man, your sins are forgiven."  Anthropos.  Had Jesus called the paralytic aner, "(real big strong tough brave) man," he'd have insulted him; nor would it have been to the point, since anthropos does the job nicely almost all the time.

     "Who was that guy on the porch?"  Anthropos.

     "The Marines need a few good men."  Aner.

     "I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair!"  Aner.  Joseph is the aner of Mary; cf. German Mann = husband.

     "He fed five thousand men, not counting the women and the children."  Aner.

     "Once there was a man traveling from New York to Baltimore, who had a flat tire, and was waylaid by thieves while he was trying to fix it."  Anthropos; cf. Luke 10:30.

     So it is not true that the Greek understood anthropos in a sexless sense.  In its general use it corresponds exactly to English man, as in "Man proposes, God disposes," and "The best laid plans of mice and men."  In its specific use it corresponds sometimes to "person," but also, more commonly, to "man," but not to "he-man," "grown man," "real man," "warrior," "husband," et cetera, for which in Greek we would say aner, while in English we're reduced to adding an adjective or a stress, as in "He's a man."  So why not translate accordingly?  We can always keep some smelling salts in the back, next to the incense, should any feminist suddenly catch the vapors.

    

Comments

[Janis Johnson]

Which English language version of the Bible does the best job of accurately translating "anthropos" and "aner"? Overall, what do you think of the recent (2001) English Standard Version?

[Bobby Winters]

Anthony,

Ok, I am going to need a reference for this if I ever try to trot it out. Can you point me to a book or a paper? I don't want to wind up like Hypatia, as it were.

[James A. Altena]

"Which English language version of the Bible does the best job of accurately translating "anthropos" and "aner"?"

Look no further than the KJV. The 1885 RV, the original Geneva Bible, and the Douay-Rhemims versions are also equally reliable in this regard -- not to mention being preferable in many respects to "modern" translations for other reasons (such as preserving the crucial distinction between the second person singular and second person plural, whose loss in "modern" translations results in serious theological misinterpretations of various texts.)

Bravo to Tony for a superb -- and useful -- post.

[David Gray]

The Geneva Bible has just recently been published in a much more user friendly format than has been available in the past.

[Annie]

"telephone pole"...

*GUFFAW*

[Labrialumn]

Just use the Anglican Use liturgy.

Though I suppose Trautperson will have kittens.

[Dafydd]

Bobby,

You don't need a book or a paper! You just need to refer to the relevant verses of the Greek N.T.

[James A. Altena]

Dear David,

Is that truly the original Geneva Bible, or one of the modern study bibles that calls itself a "Geneva" Bible because the notes are by modern Reformed commentators? If the former, could you please provide a link to Amazon.com or an ISBN number? The only edition of which I was aware was a $100 facsimile reprint version.

[David Gray]

>Is that truly the original Geneva Bible, or one of the modern study bibles that calls itself a "Geneva" Bible because the notes are by modern Reformed commentators? If the former, could you please provide a link to Amazon.com or an ISBN number? The only edition of which I was aware was a $100 facsimile reprint version.

It actually is the original. I've had the facsimile for years and just got the new one for Christmas. It is definitely not the Geneva Study Bible.

Geneva Bible at Amazon

It appears the first printing is sold out but I believe more are due out in the next couple of months.

dave

[Tony Esolen]

Dominic,

I don't know Hebrew, but to my eye and ear the KJV (and the Catholic Douay-Rheims) are remarkably faithful to the original Greek -- without being slavishly word-for-word about it, when a word can be more accurately rendered by a phrase, or vice versa.

[Tony Esolen]

Duh -- of course Douay is a translation of the Latin, with an eye to the Greek. Still it's more faithful than what Catholics have to put up with now.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Dominic,

I'm not an expert on the original languages (I know a bit of ancient Greek), but knowledgeable people I trust tell me that (among many other advantages) the KJV reflects actual idioms and grammatical-syntactical structure of the Hebrew and Greek far more than do modern translations.

You might take a look at "Who Killed the Bible?" by Prof. Ian Robinson, very newly published by Edgeways Books in the UK. I haven't seen it myself yet, but it is highly recommended by sources I trust. It deals primarily with the "literal" vs. "dynamic equivalence" schools of translation and shows how the latter have consistently undermined the actual meaning of Scripture. The author's final conclusion (admittedly controversial to our RC brethren) is that the KJV is the only real alternative for an accurate, universally acceptable English translation of Scripture.

Just to be punctillious, I use the 1885 RV for the OT, which I think did a superb job of correcting certain deficiencies in the KJV's understanding of the Hebrew while adhering closely to the KJV text (far more so than in the inferior RV version fo the NT). I stick with the KJV for the NT. I do consult other translations (Douay-Rheims, RSV, and the old Jewish Pubication Society version of the OT).

The major textual criticism of the KJV is its use for the NT of the "Textus Receptus" rather than the modern "critical" texts, pioneered first by Westcott & Hort (and the basis of the 1885 RV NT), and now supplanted by the Nestle-Aland text. At the risk of being dismissed as an ignorant fossil by the academic cognoscenti, I belong to the dwindling minority (along with my rector, Fr. Ousley, who is fluent in Koine Greek) that believes the Textus Receptus has a superior claim to be the best Greek text of the NT, and hence all the modern translations that rely on Nestle-Aland are fundamentally flawed and inferior. (Though many modern translations do cover themselves by including the Textus Receptus material in italics, footnotes, brackets, etc.)

The colloquialism you note in most modern translations is based on two claims:
First, the KJV rendering fails to reflect and render correctly a progressivve tense aspect in the original Greek verbs. There is some truth to this (look at the 1885 RV NT to get a good sense of this in English), but the modern translations take it to a perverse extreme.
Second, that Koine Greek was a plebian dialect of common speech, not the polished Greek of Plato, Aristotle, etc. Since Elizabethan English is (allegedly) the English equivalent of the latter, translations must (supposedly) strive to reflect the former instead.

The problems with this are:
a) Elizabethan English was not as formal as the critics pretend; in particular the "thee/thou" form of address was the familiar intimate form of address, while the "you/your" form was the formal form of address for strangers and business relations;
b) the loss of the "the/thou" form eradicates the distinction between singular and plural second person address that is crucial to correct understanding of many verses. (I have never seen a modern translation attempt to address this in a systematic fashion, such as "you" for singular and "all of you" for plural);
c) the KJV translators, like the compilers of the Book of Common Prayer, deliberately (and wisely) chose an elevated literary style as a means of conveying the holiness and majesty of God, which the relative unfamiliarity of Elizabethan style further reinforces for us. The modern critics always attack this, for the simple reason that they are intersted in making God only immanent and not transcendent;
d) the modern critics pretend that the KJV is too archaic and difficult for modere readers to understand. This is a load of crap, and I rightly ought to use a much stronger word, but will refrain from doing so out of propriety.

[Judy Warner]

I own a book published by the Jewish Publication Society -- the Pentateuch in Hebrew and English, side by side. The English translation is almost word-for-word the KJV -- just a few different turns of phrase, but no major differences. It was published in 1937.

From my own rusty knowlege of Biblical Hebrew, it looks as if the KJV language follows the Hebrew closely. I also recall that when I had to study the Bible in Hebrew in high school, if I needed some help, the KJV always provided it correctly.

[Judy Warner]

Having read most of the Bible in Hebrew in my youth, I greatly prefer the KJV because it captures the poetry of the Hebrew Bible. Also, the archaic Hebrew sets it apart from Hebrew that is spoken now, as the KJV's language is set apart from modern English. Obviously the KJV wasn't written intending to be archaic, but this similarity is pleasing.

[david pence]

Dr E Thank you for an enlightening discourse. I agree in this conversation the most important "reference" is to show the various usages of anthropos and aner in the New Testament. Harvey Mansfield of harvard has written a book called Manliness. It is a very worthwhile read though its conclusions are spectacularily wrongheaded and remind us how men on ivy league campuses are suffering a kind of stockholm syndrome in their feminist captivity. --men at harvard talking about masculinity sound like some christians talking about islam who have lived all their lives in dhimmitude. Professor Mansfield dismissed the PUBLIC dimension of sex role differences and the greek notion of politics and citizenship as a masculine activity because the word used indescribing m,an as a political animal was Anthropos instead of aner. This degendered interpretation comes from a man considered a conservative and classical guru in many more circles than Harvard. Once again the italian kid from providence wins a round by an imaginative "return to the sources"

[James A. Altena]

I forgot to thank David Gray for posting his link.

[John Peterson]

This is hardly the largest problem facing those familiar with Greek who either casually refer to the Greek text or do serious translating. It is not really confusing at all, ever. It is only confused by the modern unclear-thinking PC intelligentsia.

I once read a book published by a recent Harvard graduate that used "she" as the default 3rd person pronoun. It was really, really jarring. It makes for bad writing, because it inaccurately conveys meaning, and not in any intentional way. The purposeful mistranlation of "anthropoi" has the same effect, irregardless of the PC agenda. When we hear "people," we think of individual men and women, in the modern sense, with a sense of identity and all that hooey. "Men," on the other hand, conveys unity, a common hypostasis.

[Tony Esolen]

John,

Bingo! What you say explains why "people" is NOT as inclusive as "man," since "people" denotes a hodgepodge, a variety, a collection of separate individuals corraled together for the moment. "Man" means you, me, my wife, my niece, the old guy down the street, the neighbor's baby, all conceived as one, a unity, a single hypostasis. As in Adam all sinned, so in Christ all may be reborn.

And that leads to David Pence's point above, I think. The fact is, we have arbitrarily ruled right out of the language, for political purposes, any concept of "man" as a unity, and that implies a corollary ruling out of our politics and social life any fullblooded concept of the brotherhood -- the basic collectivity of any civilization, as the family is the basic collectivity for any culture. But the apostles were a brotherhood, and Jesus was Son of God and Son of Man.

[Janis Johnson]

Since I was the one who led off this discussion I would like to express my thanks for all the helpful comments. It is wonderful to know that the KJV still can't be beat after almost 400 years. The reason I am interested in the ESV is that it sounds very close to the KJV and careful in it's gender renderings. (Here is the link I have been checking out: http://www.esv.org/translation/philosophy).

And a big thank you to Anthony Esolen for all his great posts.

[firinnteine]

The ESV, from what I've read of it (the prophets, most of the Pentateuch, a lot of the poetic parts, and nearly all of the New Testament) does seem to be fairly careful in its rendering of gender questions. Nevertheless, it has never quite fired my imagination enough for me to decide to use this particular translation long-term, once I finish reading it all.

I will probably get in trouble for this, given a much more educated and better-informed group of people carrying on the conversation so far -- but, purely from a standpoint of literal translation, the New American Standard leads the pack. It has been accused of being wooden, and probably it is, but somehow that has never bothered me -- just because, reading it, if you have any feel for other languages at all (even if your Greek was limited to a single semester of Attic, as mine was), you can tell as often as not what Paul's (or whoever's) grammatical structure was. In the occasional instance where any departure is made from the closest possible transliteration, the fact is footnoted. It is undoubtedly not the loveliest English translation, but it might possibly give you the best feel for the Greek short of a parallel NT. I like that....

That being said, the general view does seem to be that the KJV is the literary and rhetorical masterpiece of English Bible translation.

Oh yes -- the original post was excellent. :-)

[Fr. Bill]

I add my mild surprise at finding so many endorsements of the KJV. Our parish uses the NKJV for reading and singing in worship, as it preserves the “resonance” that the KJV had with pre-79 American Prayer Book without the occasional jaw-breaking syntax and out-dated vocabulary of the KJV.

Sometime last fall, a lector was suddenly ill, and I did not realize this until it was too late to recruit another lector for the Epistle. I hurriedly snatched a Bible from the front pew and entered the lectern to read. I turned to the proper place and immediately noticed it was pure, unadulterated KJV.

Nevertheless, I thought all was well until my eye (scanning ahead for those jaw-breakers), caught the text of verse 8:

For God is my record, how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ.

Try as I might, I couldn’t simultaneously maintain the reading apace while figuring out how to render the verse differently when I got to it. Must be old age. Later, of course, I saw that the NKJV had rendered the verse like this:

For God is my witness, how greatly I long for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ.

I am grateful no one in the congregation choked, nor was I struck with a fit of the giggles.

[James A. Altena]

While the NKJV is not bad (given its progenitor!), its main problem is the loss of the second person singular/plural distinction, as I noted before.

The specific passage Fr. Bill cites highlights another problem with modern translations -- loss of historical knowledge and context, which can also lead to theological distortion. In this case, how many people out there are aware that in the ancient Greek-speaking world, anatomical theory held the heart to be the seat of the will and certain intellectual functions (rather than the brain), while the bowels (intestines, liver, pancreas, kidneys) were believed to be the seat of the emotions (rather than the heart). With the "relocation" of these faculties respectively to head and heart, many people nowadays think that Scriptural references to e.g. belief in the heart refer to emotional rather than intellectual response, fueling the tendency to reduce doctrine to sentiment. Far better to educate people regaring the actual beliefs of the ancient world than to disguise them with the kind of "translation" that changes "bowels" to "affection."

In any case, I don't find any "jaw-breaking syntax" in the KJV. I'll take its occasional difficulties over the defects of other versions any day.

As for the NASB, I haven't looked at it in some 20 years, so what follows should be taken with some caution. But I vividly remember being part of a college Bible Study group on the book of Hebrews, whose members had everything from the KJV to the New Jerusalem Bible. About one verse every chapter, the NASB had a translation that stood in flat contradiction in meaning to every other version in the room -- if the other versions had "X" the NASB had "not X", and vice-versa. The experience bred in me a distrust of the NASB that has remained with me ever since. And it too has the same singular/plural problem as the NKJV, in any case.

[Bill R]

The NASB was thoroughly revised in 1996. As a translation, it is (as Fr. Bill notes) rather wooden. But I haven't encountered the contradictions that James describes. Indeed, I often use it to get the most literal sense of a passage, comparing it then to more felicitous translations. But conformity to the general sense of other respected translations has never been a issue. The NASB's antecent was the old ASV, a revision (19th century, I believe) of the KJV. It was not a wholly new translation.

[Bobby Winters]

>>>And it too has the same singular/plural problem as the NKJV, in any case.<<<

An easy solution to this would be to translate the Bible into Southern English. We would solve the problem by using you/y'all. It would aid in the cause of bringing Christianity to my ancestral people... ;)

Seriously, Is there any translation that even come close to the KJV in its power and music?

[Judy Warner]

Bobby, although I wouldn't advocate putting "y'all" into a biblical translation, I find the word so useful that I, born and raised in Philadelphia, have made it part of my everyday vocabulary. Were I true to my roots I would say "youse" instead of "y'all," but "youse" is an ugly word and not immediately comprehensible nationwide the way "y'all" is.

[coco]

"Man, your sins are forgiven." Anthropos. Had Jesus called the paralytic aner, "(real big strong tough brave) man," he'd have insulted him;

Jesus could have been speaking Greek to a stranger: I imagine this would have been common enough at the time.

Does Aramaic have the distinction?

English has man (anthropos) and used have wer and wight: the former has interesting (IMHO) connections with proto-Irish *wera (deduced from later forms: modern fear) and Latin vir.

And of course wer is still found in werewolf!

[Christopher Hathaway]

There is very good reason to suppose that Jesus did most of his teaching in Greek, not Aramaic.

[Reid]

Let me add my thanks to Antony Esolen for the informative post. It is delightful to come to Touchstone and find scholars giving away helpful scholarship that I would have a hard time even knowing where to buy elsewhere.

Christopher, can you suggest where one might look into the idea of Jesus teaching in Greek?

[coco]

Yes please, Christopher! I second Reid's request. I'm very interested to know what evidence there is for His teaching in Greek.

[Tony Esolen]

Coco,

That's a nice observation. I should have said, "If Jesus had been presented as saying "aner," he'd have been presented as insulting the man" -- there would have been an unintended bit of irony. Now I don't know any Aramaic, not a shred of it. Anybody out there who can help us here?

Also: you are quite right about OE wer (= Latin vir, OI fir, ModI fear.) Odd thing is that OE wer was used roughly as Latin homo, so that if you had to pay money for the slaying of somebody, it was "wergild," not "manngild" or "gumagild". I've noted in past posts that there's a funny sliding from one sort of term to the other -- that is, the word meaning "adult male" comes to mean "adult male, but also anybody," and the word meaning "adult male, but also anybody" comes to mean "adult male". The former seems to have happened in OE to the progenitor of vir, fir, wer. The latter happened in Latin to homo, although it is just possible that homo itself is the result of a previous shift in the former direction (cf. OE guma = warrior, cognate with homo).

[kate]

Speaking of Aramaic, right before Christmas I read an article originally published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about a few congregations of Turkish Christians in the Twin Cities who still speak a dialect of Aramaic and use it in their liturgy. They are Maronite Catholics, I believe. Anyone interested in reading it could probably find it by searching the paper's archives.

[coco]

Tony,

By Guma!

I like that connection with homo...I thought that "vir" had always played the role of "aner". But as you imply, language is a slippery thing.

[Tony Esolen]

Coco,

Are you also a logophile? "Guma" is a great word. It means "warrior" or "man," but then its meanings narrow, so that it comes to mean "the man you have tend your horse or your person," or "the man who is marrying that bride over there." Not sure how the latter developed. Anyhow, perhaps because of confusion with "bride-", a parasitic r got itself ensconced in the word, obscuring its etymology: GROOM. So we really should be talking about the BRIDEGOOM and the BRIDE, though that does sound kind of GOONISH and GOOLISH.

[coco]

Tony,

How could a Christian not be a Logo-phile? :)

Being forced to be bilingual in elementary school gave me the opportunity to engage in comparative linguistics at a tender age. Then when Latin was superadded (with its fascinating Indo-european connections) I became an amateur philologist (of sorts).

Never got as far as Aramaic (took a detour through Welsh) which is why I'm keen to know what was the likely spoken language recorded in much of the NT.

Apparently, one of the real authentifiers for gospel accuracy is how carefully Pilate's sloppy Greek is recorded. I wonder also what can we deduce from Jesus' replies?

[Fr. Erik Richtsteig]

Kate,

The Maronites are not Turkish but Lebanese. Their liturgy contains the venacular (English here, Arabic in Lebanon), Syriac, and Aramaic.

[Christopher Hathaway]

I can only recommend to you Ray Selby's Jesus, Aramaic and Greek, and that even I haven't read. I read a review of it, which was enough to convince me, for it caused me to look at the Aramaic words and phrases in the NT and ask myself why they are there. All scholars will say that these are words spoken by Jesus, and this seems entirely logical. What isn't logical (and not having read Shelby I don't know if he makes this specific point) is, if Jesus taught in Aramaic and those teachings were then translated into koine Greek, why were those few words left in Aramaic, sometimes with the definition added in Greek? It is highly unlikely that talitha koum and raca were part of an early Christian liturgy. The logical explanation is what Shelby proposes: that Jesus taught primarily in Greek, which by that time had supplanted Aramaic as the lingua franca of the marketplace, and that these words were spoken in Aramaic either because of the location (Aramaic having become more a household language, as Welsh is in much of Wales today) or because of the suubjet matter.

That Jesus taught in Aramaic seems to be one of those universally agreed upon ideas in academia, which then gets translated to the rest of the world that never cared that much to have an opinion, yet without any real proof. It is "proved" by constant assertion.

[coco]

Sounds eminently reasonable, Christopher. Thanks for the reference.

[coco]

authentifiers

Touchstone has carefully recorded my sloppy English :)

[kate]

Fr. Erik Richsteig, Just to set the record straight, I know that Maronites are usually Lebanese as I lived in Beirut in the 60s, but the article in question identified most of the congregants as immigrants from southeastern Turkey. Presumably, there are/were some Maronite communities in Turkey as well as Lebanon.

[Ethan Cordray]

Tony, your comment about the sliding meaning of "wer" reminds me of certain other comments. Do you think this phenomenon might be related to the way "guys" is replacing "men" in common parlance today?

I think what bothers me is not so much that the meaning of "man" is shifting to be more exclusively gendered, it's that the shift has been caused and massively accelerated by a political movement that seeks to suppress the whole linguistic element of a semigendered universal masculine (to make up my own grand-sounding term for it). Yet, powerful though they may be in the classroom, the schoolyard is outside their dominion.

Also, register this Missouri boy's vote in favor of standardizing "y'all." While we're at it, can we bring back "ain't" as a contraction for "am not"? Such a neglected and maligned word, yet so strong it refuses to die.

[Bill R]

"Such a neglected and maligned word, yet so strong it refuses to die."

Ain't it the truth?

[Bill R]

And just so my part of the country (the Far West) isn't neglected, don't forget "howdy" ("How do you do?") Or, if you want to be formal: "Howdy Do?" Or VERY formal: "Howdy doody?" ;-)

[Wolf Paul]

Dr Esolen, as always your comments are refreshing and stimulating!

A few comments from a native German speaker:

-- of course we don't have the man/anthropos/aner problem in German in quite the same way as in English, since male human being = "Mann" and human being in general = "Mensch". Of course it is still up to the translator to make the call in any given situation whether to translate "anthropos" as "Mann" or "Mensch"; in Luke 5:18 of course both the bearers and the patient are called "Mann". Of course this fact does not prevent the liberals and feminists from producing such farces as a "Bible in Just Language" which plays stupid games with gender and sex referring to both humans and God (never referring to the devil as female, of course). Curious note for the logophiles here: in Austrian colloquial German "das Mensch" means "the girl" (this is of neuter gender, as is the proper word for "girl"; the proper gender of "Mensch" is masculine ("der Mensch").

-- on BRIDEGROOM and GUMA: the word survives without the extra R in both German and Dutch: Braeutigam (the ae is actually an a-umlaut; bride is Braut) and Bruidegom. The words go back to middle high German "guma" or "gome" derived from lat. "homo" just like in English. Unlike in English, the word has not survived in either German or Dutch in the non-bridal sense of "groom" or "grooming".

-- on the distinction of singular and plural second person: that, too, is not a problem we have in German, and that is in fact one reason why at first glance there is not as much difference between a German text from, say, Luther's day (once the spelling has been modernized) and and a contemporary one. "Du" (you singular) and "ihr" (you plural) have not changed.

On the use of the Southern idiom in translating the Bible: I guess that would involve "y'all" = you singular, "all y'all" = you plural, and "y'all's/all y'all's" = yours ?? :-) :-)

[James A. Altena]

My example of a perfectly ungrammatical grammatical sentence:

Me ain't got none.

(Instead of: I don't have any.)

[Judy Warner]

The reason I started using "y'all" is precisely the popularity of "you guys." I think it is a horrible expression, combining a sometimes inappropriate informality with a weird kind of gender neutrality that makes a previously very masculine word into an all-purpose one. So two years ago I made a New Year's resolution never to say "you guys" again, but to replace it with "y'all." As a result my speech is just a bit more elegant.

[anna]

Coming back to this site after six months, the very first article I read was interesting; but the last sentence was amazing in revealing bias, in its childish oneupmanship and its sheer potential for dividing Christians into groups. I am surprised that no one noticed. We may talk of Christ all we want, but that unloving comment ruined all.

[William Tighe]

In Latvian, the common word for "man" or "people" is cilveks; "virs" means "husband."

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>In Latvian, the common word for "man" or "people" is cilveks; "virs" means "husband."<<<

"Cilveks" is a loanword from Slavonic (chelovek = man, mankind); virs is obviously a Latin loanword.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>So two years ago I made a New Year's resolution never to say "you guys" again, but to replace it with "y'all." <<<

Beats the Pittsburgian "Yizz".

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Coming back to this site after six months, the very first article I read was interesting; but the last sentence was amazing in revealing bias, in its childish oneupmanship and its sheer potential for dividing Christians into groups. I am surprised that no one noticed. We may talk of Christ all we want, but that unloving comment ruined all.<<<

Oh, dear! Anna has the vapours, again. Fetch the smelling salts, m'dear!

[anna]

No, that one was through the heart. Smelling salts won't suffice.

[James Kabala]

Would "virs" necessarily be a Latin loanword? Latin and Latvian are both Indo-European languages, after all. I don't know how, if at all, Latvain fits into Grimm's Law and all that, but considering the decided lack of contact between Latvians and classical Romans and subsequently the extreme lateness of Latvian Christianization, a common ancestry strikes me as more likely than a borrowing from Latin.

[Christopher Culver]

Virs is a native Latvian word, inherited from Proto-Indo-European separately from Latin.

Grimm's Law doesn't apply to Latvian, but rather only to the Germanic languages.

[Tony Esolen]

I agree with you, James K: I think it's a parallel and not a loan. You don't usually borrow words for "man" and "woman".

Wolf, thanks for the comments. Latin homo is not the source of OE guma: they are true cognates, both deriving from the same IE root.

For what it's worth, when I was a kid in Lackawanna County, PA, "ye" was in regular (substandard) use among children. I don't know if it still is.

Anna, every time I have to sing a castrated hymn in church I grit my teeth for the sheer clumsiness and foolishness of it, and I can't help being made aware that you can use almost any word in church BUT man. You'll pardon me my satire, then. Aside from that, I do believe that on every important issue of our day -- basically questions of human life, and the purpose of human life; then the secondary questions about human liberty -- feminism has either gotten them wrong or has set us up to get them wrong. On all the human life issues they have played right into the hands of the technocrats, who will soon be bringing us, what shall I call it, humanufacture. That's for starters. It's been a disaster. See Anne Gardiner's article in this month's issue on Margaret Sanger....

[Bobby Winters]

>>>For what it's worth, when I was a kid in Lackawanna County, PA, "ye" was in regular (substandard) use among children. I don't know if it still is.<<<

As we are talking about words, I've loved the word "Lackawanna" since the first time I saw it. Lack-a-wanna seems to describe a condition a lot of students (and other people) suffer from.

[david pence]

Getting back to anthropos. It seems as Christians we should be especially defensive about habits of language which allow all persons to be represented by a single male reference. Isnt that who Christ is-the one man who is the new Adam who stands for all humanity. In fact we might say that the purpose of redemption is to save humanity from a fallen world so we might become reordered as Mankind in the new man Christ. It is in Christ that there is "neither male and female"--as I think Lee Podles says both males and females take on a rathar masculine identity- sonship.

[anna]

Well, Tony, Thank you. I can understand your frustrations, and share something like them; only in my country, its the other way around. Men do everything in public life, whether at politics, business, or church. Women are expected to help, run the show, and do a lot of the work, but the persons called on stage, acknowledged or thanked will only be men. So i can understand your frustrations if in your country you feel men are being side-lined, even if it is for the first time in a thousand years.

I do think, though, that maybe that should make you more gentle with feminists, rather than the other way around, since in fact you share the same concerns...that one sex is suppressing the other and making mistakes which are costing the church dear; in fact, driving people away from Christ.

The reality is that there is no enmity between us. We are all one body. For men to resort to satire, as you did, and for women to resort to the vapours, as you suggest is surely not getting anyone anywhere. That only hardens positions. Both genders have to work together, for the spread of the gospel and to reflect Christ.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I do think, though, that maybe that should make you more gentle with feminists, rather than the other way around, since in fact you share the same concerns...that one sex is suppressing the other and making mistakes which are costing the church dear; in fact, driving people away from Christ.<<<

The difference, of course, is that feminists falsely believe that men are oppressing women, when, in fact, the exact opposite is true today. As to whether the innate patriaricalism of the Church is helping or hurting, why is it that those ecclesial communities that have most closely associated themselves with feminism--by ordaining them to the ministry, by adopting inclusive language, by blessing alternative marital arrangements--have all suffered serious declines in membership. By the same token, why is it that active membership in the patriarchical Churches remains predominantly female, when, supposedly, male hierarchy is a female turn-off?

[Eilis ni Mhurchu]

On the subject of the plural you - in Newfoundland to this day "ye" is in common use. I heard it used just last evening a couple of times at a meeting I attended. Also 'yeer' for "your", plural. It's probably more common among those of Irish descent but is used fairly broadly in certain areas regardless of the background of the speaker.
Elizabeth Murphy

[John Vaskov]

Stuart

FYI, the "h" was restored to the spelling of Pittsburgh in 1911. And that would be "yinz" (or "yunz" or "y'nz"). Not easy to spell, but there's always an "n".

[bob Smietana]

Dr. Esolen,

Would you then object to translating "anthropos" as "person" in the specific cases when that would be the most accurate representation?

[bob Smietana]

Dr. Esolen,

Would you then object to translating "anthropos" as "person" in the specific cases when that would be the most accurate representation?

[bob Smietana]

Dr. Esolen,

Would you then object to translating "anthropos" as "person" in the specific cases when that would be the most accurate representation?

[Tony Esolen]

Bob,

A good question. Yes, I would object, on the grounds that "person" never really is the most accurate rendering, not in Scripture. At least, I can't think of any places offhand. For instance, let's take the saying, "Let your light shine before men." Here, clearly, is a case where "anthropos" means men, women, children, anybody and everybody. But English "people" doesn't cut it. It's OK; a tad familiar; not eloquent. But it stresses the variety, as in "all kinds of people," not the unity, and certainly not the implicit contrast between "man" or "men" and God. "Human beings" is awkward and its noun is abstract; "men" has the advantage of being concrete and unifying. "Persons" is legalese. "Humans" is a sci-fi plural, recently invented; the contrast is with "Klingons," not with God.

Or this one: "What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." Again, "person" is legalese, and also not quite right in this context either, since there are angelic persons and demonic persons and divine persons. "No one" is indefinite, and loses the stark parallelism and contrast between God and man: "What therefore GOD hath joined together, let no (mere mortal) MAN put asunder." "Human being" is abstract, and a dodge; it does not bring before the mind a clear image of a single man, an concrete exemplar of the collective human race. It does not recall Adam.

Consider:

"Not by bread alone doth man live, but by every word that cometh from the mouth of God."

"Not by bread alone doth mankind live, but by every word that cometh from the mouth of God." (Replacement of concrete term by abstract collective; unitary sign is lost).

"Not by bread alone doth humanity live, but by every word that cometh from the mouth of God." (Introduction of abstract quality used as a collective noun; unitary sign is lost, as also the strong parallelism between singular man and singular God).

"Not by bread alone does a person live, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (concreteness, collectivity, and parallelism lost; confusion with human and other sorts of persons)

"Not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (same as above, though slightly less awkward)

"Not by bread alone does a human being live, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (collectivity lost, and parallelism muted; needless abstraction introduced)

"Not by bread alone do people live, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God"
(unitary sign is lost -- MAN; a flat colloquialism is introduced, compromising the proverb; also the unintended notion of variety creeps in)

"Not by bread alone do we live, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God"
("We" is both too inclusive and too exclusive -- seeming to include Satan here, and seeming to exclude whoever happens not to be in the audience of the text)

So I can't think of an instance in Scripture in which there is, linguistically, rhetorically, and theologically, an acceptable substitute for unitary-collective-concrete "man".

[david pence]

dr e i dont know that I have ever heard the argument about "person" being too big a word because it includes the divine as well as human and robs so many texts of the important distinction of man and God. That seems very important. Somwhere I seem to remember an argument that angels are not really "persons" and we call them beings but not persons. I accepted that argument as having something to do with "per sona" coming from a mask and therefore not applicable to angelic beings. Of course how could that be since we call the father and holy spirit "persons" This reminds us how much our language about the person developed in conversations and disputes about Christ,and the Trinity. Is there some tradition of not referring to Satan as "person"?

[kate]

Dr. Esolen,
Thanks for your original posting and the most recent comparisons of the nuances of meanings that make substitutions for Man problematic.

Perhaps I'm stating the obvious, but it seems to me that the distinctions you are identifying are
particularly difficult to convey to those who are completely immersed in an individualistic sensibility. It's hard to escape that sensibiliy in our culture, but I know that I understand the distinction you are elucidating, in part because I was raised on the Old Testament story of God's dealings with Israel. Not much individualism there.

As a woman, would I like it if the word for Man did not coincide with the word for a male Man? Probably, but if wishes were horses...

By the way, I generally use a capped Man and a lower-case man to distinguish the usages. But then, I'm still partial to caps for the various pronouns and adjectives for God.

[Bobby Winters]

Kate,
The use of Man appears--to me at least--to be an elegant solution.

[Judy Warner]

All afternoon after reading Tony's last comment this old song has been running through my head:

Remember, O thou man,
O thou man, O thou man!
Remember, O thou man,
Thy time is spent.
Remember, O thou man,
How thou art dead and gone,
And I did what I can:
Therefore repent!

-- Thomas Ravenscroft, 1611

And of course the alternatives:

Remember, O thou person, Remember, O thou human being, etc.

[Tony Esolen]

Judy,

You got a couple of laughs out loud from me with that! Gosh, even what was politically chic at the time, Godspell (and I actually sort of like Godspell), would have to be revised -- that old hymn from Scripture won't do:

Turn back, O human
Turn back, O person
Turn back, you fink
Turn back, turn back
Turn back, all here
Turn back, back, back

David,

I agree with you that the subtle poison of individualism shows up here too. If we say, "Man doth not live by bread alone," that brings up in a single concrete image the notion of the whole human race, without regard to anybody's particularities. The turning away from the natural law, or the forgetting that there even is such a thing as the natural law, is at the same time a denial that there is such a thing as "man," rather than a congeries of individuals: Bobby Sue, Elmer, Lord Snigsworth, Kwai Chang, and Louise.

[James A. Altena]

OK, Tony, I can't resist -- is it "aner" or "anthropos" for when Arnold Schwarzenegger says "girly-man"?

[John Peterson]

"OK, Tony, I can't resist -- is it "aner" or "anthropos" for when Arnold Schwarzenegger says "girly-man"?"

Of course it's aner.

[Bill R]

And James, is it "aner" or "anthropos" for "Alpha Male"?

[firinnteine]

Incidentally, the historically Christian ancient people of Iraq, the Assyrians (also called Chaldeans or Chaldo-Assyrians) speak some version of Aramaic.

[Anna]

Stuart,
The membership question is interesting...I can't answer it because thats a local issue in your country. Its not the same in mine. In mine, neither men nor women change churches over gender issues/ patriarchy, because barring a few( which are also doing very well, very active) almost all the churches are that way, anyway! Women keep going to church, but more often use their gifts outside of the formal church structure in informal groups, house fellowships. Para-church movements, and the pioneer mission field are places where they are allowed to work without any restriction.

Once again, i can't speak for your country, but in my country, in my experience, both Christian and non-Christian women, especially college-educated and aware ones
are definitely turned off by what they see as the Christian God favouring men. I struggled with this myself for years.

I have had any number of discussions on this issue since i am actively involved with student ministry. Its very difficult to explain away male-only clergy, male-only Heads of families, male-only passages in the Bible..."anthropos" and all that...

I can only wonder...Is God calling only men? is it so very wrong to be inclusive (whenever possible) so as to draw those many lost women to Him, too?

[James A. Altena]

So, John Peterson, an "aner" is a "girly-man"? What an honor! :-)

Dear Bill,

Re: alpha male -- someone will have to look up for me the Greek words for "dog" or "wolf" first.

[Bobby Winters]

>>>Once again, i can't speak for your country, but in my country, in my experience, both Christian and non-Christian women, especially college-educated and aware ones
are definitely turned off by what they see as the Christian God favouring men. I struggled with this myself for years.<<<

Let's just put all of the church/institutional factors aside for a moment and concentrate on what is clearly present in nature. Women have the babies. Not all women do, but no men do. The burden of childbearing is on the women. That is there whether you believe in the Christian God, a non-Christian God, or no God. That is reality. One gender--simply by the nature of biology--is burdened.

Is this God favoring men? Is this God testing those who he loves? It's just the way it is.

[Beth]

"One gender--simply by the nature of biology--is burdened."

Personally, as the mother of 5, I never considered motherhood any more of a "burden" than providing for a family . . .

I don't know about cause and effect here, but considering motherhood a burden has been part and parcel of the problem of feminist America -- to do and be what one is called to do and be is never a burden. It may involve hard work or giving up other things one would like, etc. And every calling involves suffering of one kind or another, since we live in a fallen world. But it's not a burden unless you choose to see it that way.

[Gene Godbold]

I think Beth's got it right. Though, as a husband, I do feel for my wife having to bear and birth the kids (our eighth is due in early September). There is a toll on her body in the form of bone-weariness, reflux, varicose veins, etc. I'd relieve her of them if I could.

[Bill R]

"(our eighth is due in early September)"

May God truly bless you and your wife, Gene. Your quiver is full!

[Bobby Winters]

>>>Personally, as the mother of 5, I never considered motherhood any more of a "burden" than providing for a family . . .

I don't know about cause and effect here, but considering motherhood a burden has been part and parcel of the problem of feminist America -- to do and be what one is called to do and be is never a burden. It may involve hard work or giving up other things one would like, etc. And every calling involves suffering of one kind or another, since we live in a fallen world. But it's not a burden unless you choose to see it that way.<<<

Beth,
I am glad that you have a positive spin on it here, but it's a burden. God said so. Read Genesis. The burden of child rearing is part of Eve's curse, just like having to work for a living is Adams. I like my job and I whistle a happy tune, but having to work for a living is a burden.
Christ was called to die on the cross and as he carried it down the road, it was a burden. Positive mental attitude will take you a long way, but denying reality isn't going to help the debate.

[Bobby Winters]

"rearing" should be "bearing" in the above

[Judy Warner]

>>>"rearing" should be "bearing" in the above<<<

Exactly. Bearing a child is a painful burden, but rearing a child may not be.

[Donna Marie Lewis]

Of course, if women really were serious about making sure men shouldered their half of the child raising burden, it would be simple. Only change the kid's diapers/feed them/do laundry/etc. when it is your turn. If the man doesn't do his share, the kid screams all night/starves every other day/has no clean clothes/etc.
You see, unlike, say, workers on strike, most mothers don't have the detachment to let the chips fall where they may when they don't do what they are supposed to. (Not that there haven't always been mothers who've done just that...heck, one of my own great-grandmothers deserted her husband and her 2-year-old daughter to run off with another man back in 1900...)
I believe there was a couple recently who startled their divorce attorneys with their custody battle. You see, neither one of them wanted the kids. I haven't been able to track down how that played out, but, given current trends, we may be seeing more of this in the future....

[Beth]

I was not entirely clear in my post, I think.

Yes, there are burdens associated with motherhood, but there are also burdens associated with husbanding. The problem, it seems to me, lies in suggesting that motherhood is a burden but men don't bear burdens. Also, the word can be used in various ways and it is usually (not I think as you intended it) used to mean a very bad thing that no one should have to endure and which is unfair. The feminist message from Friedan on has been "women are unfairly burdened with motherhood and should be free like men to do the good stuff!"

In that sense, motherhood is not a burden. In the sense that there is difficulty associated with motherhood, yes, of course, just as there is difficulty associated with providing for a family. *Everyone* is burdened as a result of the curse, not just women.

[Bobby Winters]

>>>The feminist message from Friedan on has been "women are unfairly burdened with motherhood and should be free like men to do the good stuff!"<<<

Let me modify this to say instead "and should be free to be men."

[aceinn]

Not that there haven't always been mothers who've done just that...heck, one of my own great-grandmothers deserted her husband and her 2-year-old daughter to run off with another man back in 1900...) Teresa Mary of Scranton PA did not know that, she was told her father, Mark Esolen, died when she was two years old.