In recent decades, the issue of gender in Bible translation has produced a considerable amount of controversy.1As a career Bible translator,2 having served over twenty years in Papua New Guinea, I have seen this issue produce confusion—particularly among English-speaking Bible readers.3Many of the books and articles that have been written about gender in Bible translation focus primarily on abstract philosophical ideals—sometimes presented in generalities.4 This article will refrain from arguing translation philosophy; instead, it will present verifiable evidence that will test the validity and relevance of some of the philosophical ideals that have been proposed.The goal of this article is not to add fuel to the ongoing debate about gender in Bible translation, but rather to help defuse it. The article will attempt to humbly and graciously present well-defined facts that will neutralize misperceptions and create common ground for a unified pursuit of the truth about this crucial issue.

For the record, I am a conservative evangelical with a high view of God’s Holy Scriptures, and I am a complementarian.5 But the demonstrable truths presented in this article will stand on their own merits regardless of my personal doctrinal positions.

The article will begin by reviewing the practice of “gender-neutral” (also called “gender-inclusive” and “gender-accurate”) translation,6 and it will explore why the translators of our English Bibles have been using this technique for over six-hundred years.7 Then the article will examine the difference between grammatical gender and semantic gender—demonstrating that one of the main reasons the gender debate has been so prominent in the English-speaking world is that most native English speakers have a deficient understanding of the distinction between grammatical and semantic gender. This is because their mother tongue, English, is not a gender-based language like Hebrew and Greek are. The article will then use concrete examples to prove that some of the issues at the center of the gender debate in English are not relevant to many languages around the world. Finally, the article will show that in recent years, all of the most popular modern English translations, literal8 as well as nonliteral, have taken major steps toward increased gender inclusiveness.

For the past several years, the discussion about gender in translation has been mostly quiet, but many of the misperceptions have never gone away. In 2022, Vern Poythress revisited this latent debate with an article in the Westminster Theological Journal entitled “Gender-Neutral Bible Translations, Some Twenty Years Later.”9 In his article, Poythress reaffirmed positions he and Wayne Grudem presented more than twenty years ago, when the gender debate was at its peak.10 I will comment on a few points from Poythress’s 2022 article, but first I will review key issues related to gender in Bible translation.

1. Gender-Neutral Translation

The discussion about gender in translation focuses on the words “man/men,” “father(s),” “brother(s),” “son(s),” and the masculine pronouns “he,” “him,” “himself,” and “his.” When these terms occur in the Hebrew and Greek texts of Scripture, translators sometimes use corresponding masculine terms to translate them into English and other languages. But in other cases, translators replace masculine Hebrew and Greek terms with gender-neutral terms. A gender-neutral term is one that is neither exclusively masculine nor feminine but includes both genders. Table 1 gives an example of masculine versus gender-neutral translation in Matthew 4:4.

Table 1: Masculine and Gender-Neutral Terms in Matthew 4:4
ESV11	Man shall not live by bread alone	Masculine Form
CSB12	Man must not live on bread alone
NIV 201113	Man shall not live on bread alone
NLT14	People do not live by bread alone	Gender-Neutral
GW15	A person cannot live on bread alone
CEV16	No one can live only on food

As we approach the issue of gender in Bible translation, it is important to keep in mind that the translators of every major English version, including the most literal ones, translated many masculine Hebrew and Greek terms as gender-neutral terms—not only in places where English grammar rules require it, but also in places where the translators simply chose to do so.

Table 2 shows a few places where the ESV translated masculine terms in Hebrew and Greek with gender-neutral words in English. A representation of the common masculine definition of each Hebrew and Greek term is included in parentheses under the ESV gender-neutral terms. This chart is by no means exhaustive; it is a small sampling of the many gender-neutral renderings in the ESV.

Table 2: Gender-Neutral Terms in the ESV
Exod 2:11	Moses … saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. (brothers)
Num 36:5	The tribe of the people of Joseph (sons)
Num 1:16	The chiefs of their ancestral tribes (fathers’)
Matt 12:31	Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people (men)
Jas 3:8	No human being can tame the tongue (man)

Tables 3 and 4 give a sampling of places where the NASB17 and the KJV18 translated masculine terms in Scripture with gender-neutral terms. Again, a representation of each masculine Hebrew and Greek term is included in parentheses under the gender-neutral terms.

Table 3: Gender-Neutral Terms in the NASB (1995)
1 Chr 7:5	Their relatives among all the families (brothers)
Mark 8:27	Who do people say that I am? (men)
Luke 18:11	I thank You that I am not like other people (men)
Table 4: Gender-Neutral Terms in the KJV
1 Chr 12:29	the kindred of Saul (brothers)
Prov 6:12	A naughty person (man)
Ezek 44:25	they shall come at no dead person to defile themselves (man)

2. Why Do Translators Use Gender-Neutral Terms?

To correctly understand the gender discussion, we need to know why translators sometimes exchange masculine terms in Hebrew and Greek for gender-neutral terms in English.

Consider the KJV translation of Ezekiel 44:25 in Table 4 above: “they shall come at no dead person (םדָאָ ’ādām)19 to defile themselves.” What is the rationale for this rendering? Clearly, the seventeenth century KJV translators were not concerned with political correctness20 as it relates to gender. So why did they translate the masculine Hebrew word ’ādām with the gender-neutral English word “person”? The answer is simple. The priests who were mentioned in this chapter were not only supposed to stay away from dead men, but also from dead women. The reason the KJV translators replaced this masculine word with a gender-neutral term is because the context speaks about men and women collectively—not just men. That is the main reason behind every gender-neutral rendering in nearly all major English versions.

Apparent exceptions among major English Bible translations can be found in the NRSV21 and the CEV.22 Mark Strauss wrote: “Some versions, like the NRSV and CEV, tend to introduce inclusive language in a broad and comprehensive manner, sometimes even when the original authors were likely referring to men.”23 We will see an example of this practice by the NRSV and CEV later in this article.

Poythress and Grudem voiced their agreement with the practice of substituting gender-neutral words for masculine words in the following statement (restated in Poythress’s 2022 article): “Of course I agree with removing male-oriented words when there is no male-oriented meaning in the original Greek or Hebrew text.”24

Just over a decade ago, when the NIV released its revised 2011 edition, it quickly became a target of criticism by those who opposed various forms of gender-neutral language in Bible translation.25 In the NIV 2011, the translators changed many masculine words from the NIV 1984 edition to gender-neutral words.

However, an objective analysis will show that the NIV 2011 does not use gender-neutral terms in contexts where men are exclusively in focus. When the NIV translators changed a masculine term to a gender-neutral term, it was because the context applies to both men and women. Consider the following example of a change from the NIV 1984 edition to the NIV 2011 edition:

1 Timothy 2:4

NIV 1984: [God] wants all men to be saved
NIV 2011: [God] wants all people to be saved

Every believer would agree that God wants women as well as men to be saved. With that in mind, it seems reasonable to say that the gender-neutral NIV 2011 wording more closely reflects the intent of the verse, even though Greek uses the masculine term ἄνθρωπος (anthrōpos).

The ESV translators agree with the NIV translators on this gender-neutral substitution. The ESV made the same change in this verse (and many others) a decade earlier, replacing the word “men” from the RSV26 with the gender-neutral word, “people”:

1 Timothy 2:4

RSV: [God] desires all men to be saved
ESV: [God] desires all people to be saved

Since the ESV and NIV translators agree that “people” is a superior translation for anthrōpos in this context, why was it ever translated “men” in the first place in translations like KJV, RSV, and NIV 1984? It seems apparent that when those earlier versions were produced, the English word “man” carried a more inclusive (i.e., gender-neutral) meaning than it does now. At that time, the words “man” and “men” were more commonly used to mean “mankind.” As D. A. Carson observed, “Most translators judge that a number of English words have become more gender-specific in the past few years.”27

When the translators of the ESV and the NIV substituted “people” in place of “men” in 1 Timothy 2:4, they were not driven by “pressures to avoid ‘politically incorrect’ expressions.”28 They simply determined that the word “man” in present-day English no longer communicates the same measure of inclusiveness that it did in the past. This verse is a prime example of the kind of context Poythress had in mind when he mentioned “translating statements that express general truths, applicable to both sexes.”29

In the New Testament, these general, gender-neutral truths often use the masculine Greek word anthrōpos. Translations that adopt “a general gender-neutral policy”30 will normally translate anthrōpos as “people” in these contexts. And translations that do not have a general gender-neutral policy often translate anthrōpos as “man” or “men.” But no translation is totally consistent in the way it applies its stated goals. Table 5 shows a few places where the gender-inclusive NIV 2011 translated anthrōpos as “man,” even though the contexts apply to both sexes:

Table 5: anthrōpos Translated “Man” in Gender-Neutral Contexts in NIV 2011
Matt 4:4	Man shall not live by bread alone
Matt 19:26	With man this is impossible
Mark 2:27	The Sabbath was made for man
Acts 24:16	I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man
2 Cor 8:21	do what is right … in the eyes of man
Gal 6:7	A man reaps what he sows

Even though the NIV 2011 translated anthrōpos as “man” in all six verses in Table 5, the NASB 2020 translated it as “people” in four of them (Matt 19:26, Acts 24:16, 2 Cor 8:21, Gal 6:7), and the ESV replaced the RSV term “man” with the gender-neutral term “one” in Galatians 6:7. So in these cases, the ESV and/or NASB are more gender-neutral than the NIV 2011. We will see more examples of this later in the article. Every fair and balanced treatment of gender in Bible translation should acknowledge instances like these where a nonliteral version reflects a masculine form from the source text while some literal versions do not.

In Table 6, we see a few of the many instances where the ESV translated the masculine Greek term anthrōpos with a gender-neutral term in English:

Table 6: anthrōpos Translated “Person” in the ESV
John 3:27	A person cannot receive even one thing
Acts 10:28	I should not call any person common or unclean
Rom 10:5	The person who does the commandments
1 Cor 2:14	The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit
1 Cor 11:28	Let a person examine himself
Jas 1:19	let every person be quick to hear

3. Do Gender-Inclusive Bible Versions Blur the Lines Between Men and Women?

When the gender debate was reignited after the release of the NIV 2011, some serious accusations were made which spawned rumors that are still repeated to this day. The NIV translators deserve to be judged fairly, based on real evidence. Were they trying to methodically obscure the differences between men and women in Scripture for the sake of political correctness?31 If so, they did not do a very thorough job of it. Consider the following three examples:

1 Corinthians 14:34–35 (NIV 2011)

34 Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. 35 If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

Titus 1:6–9 (NIV 2011)32

6 An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. 7 Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. 8 Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. 9 He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.

Ephesians 5:22–24 (NIV 2011)

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

There are various opinions on how these verses should be interpreted and applied. But the NIV translators did not translate opinion; they faithfully and accurately translated what the Greek text says.

In the example of Titus 1:6–9 above, most English translations that identify as gender inclusive appropriately reflected the Greek masculine forms like the NIV 2011 did, including NLT, GW, NIrV,33 GNT,34 and ERV.35 However, two major versions stepped outside of the norm of gender-accurate translation practice. The NRSV translated about half of the masculine terms in these verses as masculine, and half as gender neutral; the CEV translated all the masculine terms in this passage with gender-neutral terms.

4. Replacing the Generic “He” with the Indefinite “They”

One complaint that has been raised about the NIV 2011 and other gender-inclusive translations is that they often use the pronoun “they”36 to represent a singular antecedent (e.g., “person”). This is done to avoid using the masculine generic “he”37 in contexts that the translators determine are “applicable to both sexes.”38 Consider these examples:

James 1:14 (NIV 2011)

but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire
singular plural plural
antecedent pronoun pronoun

Ezekiel 18:21 (NIV 2011)

But if a wicked person turns away from all the sins they have committed
singular plural
antecedent pronoun

Many English grammarians tell us this is acceptable usage today and is becoming more widespread.39 But the indefinite “they” is not new to the English language by any means. Wayne Leman (Wycliffe Bible Translators) has compiled a list of examples40 where some of the earliest English translations of the Bible used a typically plural pronoun such as “they,” “them,” “their,” “themselves” to refer to a singular antecedent. Consider the following examples from the King James Bible (1611) and the Tyndale New Testament (1526):41

Philippians 2:3 (KJV 1611)

let each esteeme other better than themselues42
singular plural
antecedent pronoun

Matthew 18:35 (Tyndale 1526)

except ye forgeve with youre hertes eache one to his brother their43 treaspases.
(hearts) singular plural
antecedent pronoun

Even though present-day English often uses the indefinite pronoun “they” to represent a singular antecedent, it still has an unnatural ring to some readers; so I understand why some authors and translators avoid it for stylistic reasons.

Some translators retain the generic “he” to reflect the “individual and personal sense”44 that may be indicated by the singularity of the pronoun. A valid case can be made for implementing this approach on a verse-by-verse basis, in contexts where the individual/personal sense is indeed part of the intended meaning. However, objections to the indefinite “they” based on gender alone seem ill-defined and elusive. I have never heard a clear, compelling explanation of how replacing the generic “he” with the indefinite “they” in contexts that apply to both sexes “suppresses male-oriented meanings in the original.”45 What is the specific “male-oriented meaning” that has been “suppress[ed]”or “erase[d]”?46 If a biblical author uses a masculine grammatical term in a statement that is “applicable to both sexes,”47 does that mean the statement applies slightly more to males than it does to females? This leads us to the next point in our discussion: I am convinced that much of the fog that hangs over the gender discussion arises from a failure to clearly distinguish between grammatical gender and semantic gender.

5. Grammatical Gender Versus Semantic Gender

I believe one of the main reasons there is such widespread confusion about the use of gender-neutral forms in Bible translation is that most native English speakers do not have an intuitive sense of how grammatical gender works in Greek and other gender-based languages.

Grammatical gender in Greek is basically a classification system. Every Greek noun falls into one of three classes: masculine, feminine, or neuter. Generally, nouns that are semantically “male” like ἀνήρ48 (man) are classified as “masculine” grammatically, and semantically “female” nouns like γυνή (woman) are classified grammatically as “feminine.” But most Greek nouns that are “masculine” grammatically are not “male” semantically. If this sounds confusing, it is because of our limited English perspective. In English, “masculine” almost always equals “male,” and “feminine” almost always equals “female,” but not so in Greek.

If we were to reflect every masculine and feminine Greek pronoun in our English translations, it would sound a bit odd. Consider these examples:49

Matthew 5:29

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear him out

Matthew 5:30

if your right hand causes you to sin, tear her out

Of course, there is nothing inherently “male” about an eye or inherently “female” about a hand. Table 7 gives more examples of Greek nouns listed according to their class. The first three nouns across the top of the table, “man,” “woman,” and “child,” make sense as “masculine,” “feminine,” and “neuter.” But the rest seem arbitrary in their gender classification.

Table 7: Masculine, Feminine, and Neuter in Greek
Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
Man – ἀνήρ	Woman – γυνή	Child – παιδίον
Bread – ἄρτος	Leaven – ζύμη	Wheat Flour – ἄλευρον
Flute – αὐλός	Harp – κιθάρα	Cymbal – κύμβαλον
Tooth – ὀδούς	Tongue – γλῶσσα	Mouth – στόμα

English is peculiar among Indo-European (IE) languages in that it does not have a comprehensive gender classification system like Greek.50 Some IE languages, including German, Russian, Latin, and Greek, have three genders. And some, including French, Spanish, and Italian, have two genders. Native speakers of these languages have an intuitive sense of gender classification that most native English speakers lack. Consider John 1:1–4 in French, along with its semi-literal English translation:

Table 8: John 1:1–4 in French with a Semi-Literal English Translation
French [51]	English translation [52]
1Au commencement, la Parole existait déjà. La Parole était avec Dieu et la Parole était Dieu. 2Elle était au commencement avec Dieu. 3Tout a été fait par elle et rien de ce qui a été fait n’a été fait sans elle. 4En elle il y avait la vie, et cette vie était la lumière des êtres humains.	1In the beginning, the Word already existed. The Word was with God and the Word was God. 2She was in the beginning with God. 3Everything was made by her, and nothing that was done was done without her. 4In her there was life, and this life was the light of human beings.

The English translation of these French verses sounds almost blasphemous to the ears of many native English-speaking Christians, because to English speakers, masculine equals male and feminine equals female.53 But that is not how it sounds to the ears of a native French speaker. French grammar requires that the feminine pronoun elle (meaning “she” and “her”) be used here since the corresponding noun, la Parole (the Word), is classified as feminine.

When I have explained this example in public settings with native French speakers present, their response has always been the same. They have said, Wow! I never noticed that before. You are right, that is what it says. I have been reading this passage my whole life and I never saw it that way. That is because native French speakers do not perceive the feminine grammatical pronouns “she” and “her” (elle) in this passage to be semantically female. Since their heart language is a gender-based language (unlike English), they intuitively understand that masculine is not the same as male, and feminine is not the same as female.

Native speakers of koine Greek in the first century had the same intuitive sense about grammatical gender as present-day native speakers of French and nearly all Indo-European languages other than English. Even English speakers who have studied koine Greek as a dead language from the pages of a book will never have the same intuitive sense that was shared by those in the first century who grew up speaking koine Greek as a living language. Native English speakers who learn koine Greek, including scholars, will gain a cognitive understanding of the distinction between grammatical and semantic gender, but not necessarily an intuitive sense.

I am convinced that one of the main reasons there is confusion and division over gender in Bible translation among English-speaking Christians is that most native English speakers wrongly perceive Greek and Hebrew “masculine” forms as being equivalent to “male.” Some authors seem to use the terms “masculine” and “male” interchangeably, as if there is no difference between them. And some well-meaning Christians have suggested that reducing the number of masculine grammatical forms in our English translations “eliminates male-specific meaning” from Scripture.54 This notion results from viewing the Hebrew and Greek texts through English eyes, presuming that “masculine” is equivalent to “male.”

6. Translating Gender in Other Languages

Poythress made the following statement in his 2022 article: “In our book [The Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy], Wayne Grudem and I conducted the discussion with examples from English Bible translations, rather than any other language…. But the principles are relevant to any language in the world.”55

Based on over forty years’ experience working with many languages all around the world, I must respectfully disagree. An important factor that is often excluded from discussions about Bible translation is the fact that English and koine Greek are both Indo-European languages; they are distant cousins within the same family. As a translator translating the Bible into a non-Indo-European language, the Lamogai language of Papua New Guinea, I faced challenges that translators translating into English would never imagine, because the Lamogai language functions very differently from Greek and English.56

There are over 7,000 living languages in the world today, and only 448, or 6%, are classified as Indo-European.57 That means 94% of the world’s languages are not related to Greek in the way English is. If we base our understanding of New Testament translation entirely on what is involved in translating from Greek to English, or any other Indo-European language, that is a very limited view of the worldwide linguistic landscape.

There is not space here to give a detailed explanation of the challenges involved in translating gender in Lamogai.58 I will mention just a few points which show that some issues at the center of the gender debate in English are not relevant to the Lamogai language. The issues I will describe briefly are pronouns, man/men, brother(s), and son(s).

1. Pronouns. Lamogai has no masculine or feminine pronouns. Every Lamogai pronoun is inherently gender neutral. The Lamogai subject pronoun ye means either “he” or “she.” The object pronoun –e means “him” or “her,” and the possessive pronoun ilo means “his,” “her,” or “hers.”

2. Man/men. The English word “man” has two distinct meanings: It can denote a singular male individual (a man), or it can refer to people in general (mankind, humanity). Our English word “man” is semantically similar to the Hebrew word ’ādām and the Greek word anthrōpos. Both ’ādām and anthrōpos can be used to convey the same two meanings as the English word “man”: a singular male individual (a man), or people in general (mankind, humanity). Lamogai does not have a single word that carries both of these meanings. The Lamogai word for a singular male individual is tou (a man). It cannot be used in a general sense for “mankind” like the English, Hebrew, and Greek words, man, ’ādām, and anthrōpos. It always refers to only one man. The Lamogai word used to refer to any group of people, whether mixed or not, is the inherently gender-neutral word oduk (people). This is the only word available in the Lamogai language for translating ’ādām and anthrōpos in contexts where they refer to mankind in general.

3. Brother(s). Lamogai does not have a masculine word for “brother,” nor does it have a feminine word for “sister.” The Lamogai terms for siblings are all gender-neutral—denoting either same-sex siblings, or opposite-sex siblings. The term I would use to refer to my sister is luku, which means “opposite-sex sibling.” She would use the same term to refer to me. The term I would use to refer to my brother is tikino, which means “same-sex sibling.” A woman would use the same term, tikino, to refer to her sister.

4. Son(s). There are many Lamogai nouns that cannot be made plural, and “son” is one of them. The Lamogai word for “son” is always singular. The plural Lamogai word for “children,” is inherently gender neutral. The only way to explicitly talk about plural “sons” in Lamogai is to use the two-word phrase “male children.” This phrase is exclusively male and can never refer to a group of males and females together. A literal translation of Luke 6:35, “you will be sons of the Most High” (ESV), into Lamogai would be, “you will be male children of the Most High.” That would imply that females will be turned into males. When we translated this verse into Lamogai, the only viable option was to use the gender-neutral word for “children.”

Poythress suggests that “using a sex-neutral term like ‘child[ren]’” in place of “son[s]” in this kind of context would “erase a male-oriented meaning in the original text.”59 If this proposed standard is God’s universal standard, then the Lamogai language is automatically disqualified from ever having a faithful, accurate translation of the Holy Scriptures. That would mean God created Lamogai, along with many other non-Indo-European languages, to be inherently deficient. But I am convinced that when God confounded the languages at Babel, he made sure every language on earth has everything it needs to communicate every truth of his word faithfully and accurately—even though some of those truths will need to be communicated very differently in some languages, especially those that are totally unrelated to Hebrew and Greek.

7. When Is Gender-Neutral Translation Acceptable?

When the NIV translators produced their revised 2011 edition, they did not feel compelled to eliminate every masculine term that refers to men and women collectively. As we noted in Table 5, the NIV 2011 translators even retained masculine terms in some instances where literal translations like the ESV and NASB opted for gender-neutral terms. In the three examples in Table 9, the NIV 2011 translated anthrōpos as “man,” but the ESV and NASB used the gender-neutral words “person” and “people.”

Table 9: Masculine Forms in NIV 2011; Gender-Neutral Forms in ESV and NASB
Verse	Masculine Form		Gender Neutral
Matt 10:36	NIV 2011	A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household	ESV	A person’s enemies will be those of his own household
Matt 12:35	NIV 2011	A good man brings good things out of the good stored up	ESV	The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good
Matt 19:26	NIV 2011	With man this is impossible	NASB 1995	With people this is impossible

In these examples, the NIV 2011 retained (and still retains) the masculine word “man” from the NIV 1984 edition. But in Matthew 19:26, the NASB 1995 replaced the masculine word “men” from the 1977 edition with the gender-neutral word “people.” This shows that even as long ago as 1995, the NASB translators recognized that the English word “man” carried a less inclusive meaning than it had in the past. This supports a statement made by Mark Strauss over twenty-five years ago:

Almost every major version that has been prepared or revised over the last decade has adopted the extensive use of [gender-neutral/gender-inclusive] language. The rationale has always been the need to keep up with the changing state of the English language.60

Table 10 shows a few more gender-neutral substitutions that the NASB 1995 made from the 1977 edition.

Table 10: Gender-Neutral Changes in the NASB 1995
Verse	NASB 1977 edition	NASB 1995 edition
Matt 12:31	blasphemy shall be forgiven men	blasphemy shall be forgiven people
Matt 12:36	every careless word that men shall speak	every careless word that people speak
Matt 23:13	shut off the kingdom of heaven from men	shut off the kingdom of heaven from people
Rev 16:2	men who had the mark of the beast	people who had the mark of the beast

Today, the NASB’s shift toward increased gender-inclusiveness is continuing at an accelerated pace. The latest edition of the NASB, released in 2020, removed more than twelve-hundred occurrences of “man/men” from the NASB 1995 text.61 The NASB website provides an explanation of these and other gender-related changes. Here is an excerpt:

The NASB 2020 is gender-accurate, meaning the reader will no longer have to try to intuit which genders the biblical authors have in mind. Now the text will clearly communicate gender in modern English, while still remaining true to the context and original languages of the ancient manuscripts. It should not be assumed that everyone will “just know” if both genders are intended when reading gender specific English, and for that reason clarification is critical…. Now, in order to maintain gender accuracy, more occurrences of ‘people’ or ‘person’ [over 1,200] have replaced ‘men’ or ‘man’…. In many cases where the context indicates that the gender is not exclusive to men, the terminology has been changed for accuracy and understanding according to current English.62

Here is another statement from the NASB website: “The NASB 2020 is not gender-neutral because when the original context calls for a specific masculine or feminine term, it does not use a gender-neutral term instead.”63

The wording of this statement is unfortunate and potentially misleading—particularly for those who do not have direct access to the source texts. This statement implies that translations which identify themselves as “gender-neutral” will “use a gender-neutral term” even when “the original context calls for a specific masculine or feminine term.”

It appears that the NASB 2020 website uses the term “gender-neutral” to describe translations that indiscriminately eliminate the distinction between male and female, regardless of the dictates of each context. If we use this NASB 2020 statement as a benchmark, then the NIV 2011, along with several other versions embroiled in the debate, would not be considered “gender-neutral” translations either.

If a translation of Scripture like the NASB can eliminate more than twelve-hundred occurrences of “man/men,” plus other masculine terms, and still explicitly state that it is “not gender neutral,” what does it even mean to say that any given Bible version is a “gender-neutral translation”?64

This is a matter of ideal versus real. When the translators of each Bible version describe their translational goals in their preface or introduction, they are making important statements about their translation philosophy. That is their ideal. But more significantly, they make statements about their philosophy by the real translational renderings they choose throughout Scripture. When translators eliminate hundreds of masculine forms that appeared in previous editions of their translation, they are clearly stating that they have changed their philosophy regarding gender in Bible translation.

The debate about gender-neutral translation has often been hindered by the fact that some authors focus almost exclusively on philosophical ideals, and ignore some of the real pertinent evidence, including the fact that several popular versions that do not explicitly identify as “gender neutral” have eliminated scores of masculine terms in their most recent editions. To fully comprehend the truth about this crucial issue, we must look beyond what translators say about translation (the ideal), and carefully examine what they do in actual translation practice (the real).

The CSB, which is a revision of the HCSB,65 is another translation that has taken significant steps toward increased gender-inclusiveness.66 Poythress states that “the CSB [has] not adopted a gender-neutral policy.”67 However, careful analysis will show that the CSB replaced several hundred68 masculine terms from the HCSB with gender-neutral terms. How many gender-neutral substitutions does a translation need to make before we say it has “adopted a gender-neutral policy”?69

The CSB translators explain their approach to translating gender on the CSB website in a document entitled “Changes from HCSB to CSB”:

To improve accuracy, the [CSB] Translation Oversight Committee chose to avoid being unnecessarily specific in passages where the original context did not exclude females. When Scripture presents principles or generic examples that are not restricted to males, the CSB does not use “man,” “he,” or other masculine terms.70

I cannot think of a better way to concisely describe a “gender-neutral [translation] policy” than to expressly state that the translators “[do] not use ‘man,’ ‘he,’ or other masculine terms” in statements “that are not restricted to males.”

The CSB translators went on to explain why they made an exception to their practice of gender-inclusive translation by retaining the generic “he” instead of changing it to the indefinite “they”: “The [CSB] translators did not make third person masculine pronouns inclusive by rendering them as plurals (they, them), because they believed it was important to retain the individual and personal sense of these expressions.”71

It is clear by this statement that the reason the CSB translators decided not to replace the generic “he” with the indefinite “they” was specifically to retain “the individual and personal sense.”72 It was not about trying to retain a presumed “male-oriented” meaning that might be indicated by masculine grammatical forms in contexts that apply to both sexes.

Interestingly, both the CSB and the NASB 2020 cited “accuracy” as their primary reason for replacing hundreds of masculine terms with gender-neutral terms. The CSB statement says, “To improve accuracy, the [CSB] Translation Oversight Committee chose to avoid being unnecessarily specific in passages where the original context did not exclude females.”73 And the NASB 2020 statement says, “In many cases where the context indicates that the gender is not exclusive to men, the terminology has been changed for accuracy and understanding according to current English.”74 The NASB 2020 distinguishes itself from previous NASB editions by explicitly identifying as “gender-accurate.” The current NASB and CSB statements on gender accuracy sound remarkably similar to statements that have appeared in the preface and introduction to the NIV and NLT for the past several years.

The ESV is a classic case of a Bible translation that, from its inception, exemplified the shift of modern English toward increased gender inclusiveness. When the ESV was released in 2001, it was not a new Bible translation; it was a revision of the RSV (1971 edition), only “changing the text somewhere between 5 and 8 percent.”75 In creating the ESV, the translators replaced hundreds of masculine words from the RSV with gender-neutral terms. Mark Strauss writes: “The ESV … moves the RSV in a more gender-inclusive direction, for example, removing the words ‘man’ and ‘men’ almost seven hundred times from the RSV.”76

Of course, that does not include other masculine words in the RSV that the ESV translators sometimes replaced with gender-neutral terms as well. Table 11 shows a few examples where the RSV originally translated the singular and plural forms of anthrōpos as “man” and “men,” and the ESV subsequently changed them to the gender-neutral words, “person” and “people”:

Table 11: Gender-Neutral Changes in the ESV Revision of the RSV Text
Verse	RSV	ESV
Matt 16:13	Who do men say that the Son of man is?	Who do people say that the Son of Man is?
Luke 6:26	Woe to you, when all men speak well of you	Woe to you, when all people speak well of you
1 Cor 2:11	For who knows a man’s thoughts	For who knows a person’s thoughts
Gal 2:16	a man is not justified by works of the law	a person is not justified by works of the law
1 Thess 2:6	nor did we seek glory from men	Nor did we seek glory from people
2 Tim 3:2	men will be lovers of self	people will be lovers of self

This table is not exhaustive. And of course, anthrōpos is only one of several words for which the ESV translators made this kind of change. If we objectively evaluate the evidence, we can only conclude that when the ESV translators produced their revision of the RSV text in 2001, they took a major step toward increased gender inclusiveness.

Another masculine RSV word that the ESV translators sometimes changed to a gender-neutral word is the word “sons.” Here is an example from the book of Proverbs:

Proverbs 17:6

RSV: the glory of sons is their fathers
ESV: the glory of children is their fathers

Interestingly, this is one kind of gender adjustment that Poythress specifically mentioned and criticized in his 2022 article:

In general statements, such as we find in the book of Proverbs, the target language may allow a choice between a male-oriented term like “son,” a female-oriented term like “daughter,” or a sex-neutral term like “child.” The issue is then whether we allow a general gender-neutral policy to erase a male-oriented meaning in the original text, by using a sex-neutral term like “child” in the translation.77

Here are two more examples from the book of Proverbs where the ESV replaced the masculine word “sons” in the RSV with the gender-neutral word “children”:

Proverbs 20:7

RSV: blessed are his sons after him
ESV: blessed are his children after him

Proverbs 8:4

RSV: the sons of men
ESV: the children of man

In Poythress’s statement above, he chose his words carefully. He did not categorically condemn the translational practice of replacing masculine terms with gender-neutral terms, because he knows that every major Bible version employs this practice in many contexts, including the ESV, NASB, and KJV. Poythress specifically singled out Bible translations that adopt a “general gender-neutral policy.” So apparently his concern is not with the principle of gender-neutral translation itself, but rather with how often that principle is applied in any given Bible translation.

When Poythress mentioned “general statements … in the book of Proverbs” where “a sex-neutral term like ‘child’” in place of “son” would “erase a male-oriented meaning in the original text,” he may have had certain verses and versions in mind. If so, he did not tell us which ones they are. Did the ESV translators “erase a male-oriented meaning in the original text”78 when they changed “the glory of sons” to “the glory of children,” and “blessed are his sons” to “blessed are his children”? One could conclude that they did, based on what Poythress said about this kind of change. How are these examples in the ESV different from those in less-literal versions where the translators made the same kind of adjustment?

Who gets to be the arbiter of when it is acceptable to replace “son(s)” with “child(ren)” and when it is not? Who gets to decide which gender-neutral renderings are appropriate and which ones “suppress” or “erase” meaning from the source texts? Is it fair to condemn certain translations simply because they have transparently adopted a “general gender-neutral policy” while letting other more-literal translations remain uncriticized, even though they use many of the same gender-neutral terms in the same kinds of contexts, albeit less frequently?

If we criticize major English versions that identify as gender inclusive, such as the NIV and NLT, then fairness and full disclosure demand that we explicitly acknowledge that versions that do not identify as gender inclusive, such as the NASB and ESV, have also eliminated hundreds of masculine forms from previous editions of their translations, replacing them with gender-neutral forms.

In the abstract at the beginning of Poythress’s 2022 article, he summarized his position on gender in translation by asking a question and providing an answer from his perspective:

When we are translating statements that express general truths, applicable to both sexes, should we suppress male meaning nuances in the original languages when we render the meaning in a modern language? The answer is no. Rather, we should try to capture as much meaning from the original as we can, within the constraints of the target language.79

This statement, taken at face value within its context, appears to say that whenever “the constraints of the target language” allow translators to translate a masculine Hebrew or Greek term as masculine in English, they should do so—even in “statements that express general truths, applicable to both sexes.”80 How does this relate to the fact that the ESV, CSB, and NASB translators removed hundreds of masculine forms from previous editions of their translations and replaced them with gender neutral terms? Clearly, “the constraints of the target language,” English, allow for masculine renderings in those hundreds of instances because that is how the RSV, HCSB, and earlier editions of the NASB translated them. Does that mean the ESV, CSB, and NASB translators are guilty of “suppress[ing] male meaning nuances in the original languages”? If we accept Poythress’s summary statement as a benchmark for faithful translation, we must apply it in a uniform fashion to every version. Therefore, if Poythress’s statement stands as an indictment against any English translation, it stands as an indictment against every English translation.

8. Conclusion

The discussion of gender in Bible translation does not need to be contentious, and it does not need to be confusing, especially if we come together and acknowledge a few observable realities:

(1) Every major English Bible translation replaces masculine forms with gender-neutral forms in many contexts, not only in places where “the constraints of the target language” require it, but in many other places as well. Often it is simply a judgment call on the part of the translators of both literal and nonliteral versions.

(2) Sometimes a notably nonliteral version reflects a masculine form from the source text, even though some literal versions exchanged it for a gender-neutral term.81

(3) Many of the contexts where literal versions translated a masculine Hebrew or Greek term with a gender-neutral term are comparable to contexts where nonliteral versions employed the same practice, only on a more consistent basis.

(4) Every major English translation that has a “general gender-neutral policy” only replaces masculine forms with gender-neutral ones in places where the translators consider the context to apply to males and females collectively.82

(5) Grammatical gender (masculine, feminine) is not the same as semantic gender (male, female). Every first-century native speaker of koine Greek understood this intuitively, but most native English speakers do not—including many who have studied koine Greek as a dead language. Native English speakers who learn Greek gain a cognitive understanding of the distinction between grammatical and semantic gender, but not necessarily an intuitive sense, because their heart language, English, does not have a comprehensive grammatical gender classification system like other Indo-European languages. This is probably the main reason the gender debate has been most prominent in the English-speaking world. Much of the confusion and controversy about gender in Bible translation stem from the fact that most native English speakers assume that grammatical “masculine” is equivalent to semantic “male.”

(6) Some of the strict guidelines that have been proposed for handling gender in Bible translation are not relevant to many languages around the world, particularly those that are far removed from Hebrew and Greek.

(7) In recent years, even literal translations like the ESV and NASB have taken significant steps toward increased gender inclusiveness, using far more gender-neutral terms than their predecessors, the RSV and earlier editions of the NASB. This seems to indicate that the translators of these versions recognize that masculine English words like “father(s),” “brother(s),” “man/men,” and “son(s)” are less inclusive today than they were just a few decades ago, and, by the same token, are less inclusive than the corresponding Hebrew and Greek terms.

English speakers are blessed to have many high-quality Bible translations of various kinds. I pray that God will help us recognize and embrace the benefits of this incredible blessing, especially as we reflect on the fact that there are still thousands of people groups around the world with no Scripture in their heart language.