To catch the full emphasis of this post, please read the following posts (and comments) in order before continuing. TC’s original post A Speck of Dust in the TNIV’s Eye; comments there birthed these two posts by Suzanne over at the BBB: Rahab and her sisters & Grammatical Gender.
Now that you have read those, I’ll get on with my story. Over the past few months I’ve studied a bit about the Greek term adelphoi which means brothers. Or does it? Trying to find the answer to this question has led me back and forth, through various commentaries, and ultimately to this post. Up until Sunday morning this journey had been primarily relegated to what I read online and the occasional book. Why Sunday morning? Well, it just so happens that we’ve been studying James during Sunday School, and yesterday our class teacher and his wife were MIA, with no one assigned to cover for them. Both our high school and middle school pastors are in our class, however they were out of town for the holiday weekend as well. So after about twenty minutes of chit-chat and sharing prayer requests I finally offered to lead us through the passage for the day.
On this particular day I happened to bring three small bibles to church instead of my usual one. They were my TNIV, ESV, and a tiny GNT that I had just purchased the day before for $5. As I quickly glanced over the passage in our handbook I found the references to James 2:14-19 (I’ve included the Greek at the bottom of the post for your convenience).
I flipped to the page in my TNIV and noticed that it started off with the infamous my brothers and sisters! As I read verse fifteen I noticed that it also had the words a brother or sister, singular! After the previous week’s blog reading I couldn’t believe the odds of this happening. A quick glance at my GNT showed me that there were not just one, but three Greek words in this passage relating directly to Suzanne’s post the day before.
All eyes were on me to lead, so I decided to start off by reading the whole passage. There was one problem however, for the first time in months I had my ESV with me as well. I knew the ESV would translate adelphoi as brothers, my preferred rendering. However I also knew it was likely to have some inverted word order that might make me stumble as I read the passage aloud. Since I was already unprepared, I chose to teach from the TNIV yesterday because many use the NIV in our church and the fact that I could probably read out loud from it more easily without practice. I didn’t crack open the ESV until the pastor’s sermon 90 minutes later, but here is the comparison:
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14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if people claim to have faith but have no deeds? Can such faith save them?
15 Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.
16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?
17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.
19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
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14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?
15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food,
16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?
17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!
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Now you might be scratching your head wondering how this affected the lesson. To be honest, it didn’t, at least nothing that was said aloud. Our conversations focused more on assurance of salvation and putting our faith into practice. I am not a woman, so I have no idea if the wives present would have felt excluded (or rather, not included) had I chosen to read from the ESV instead. While I have my own opinion on how to translate adelphoi I can hardly claim to be an expert on Greek vocabulary and grammar. I believe that the generic masculine still has a place in the English language, and will for some time. However, I view inclusive renderings as having an eye to the future when this will cease to be the case.
So why did I make this post? I don’t want to attempt to persuade anyone towards one view or the other, I’m hardly in a position to do anything of the sort. Rather, I would like to take the time to point out my observation from this whole experience. Had it not been for my interactions with fellow bloggers the past three months that I’ve been blogging, I would not have a background in some of the things that are cropping up in my church. If it weren’t for the fact that I feel I can express my thoughts, and get feedback and constructive criticism about my opinions through my blog, I don’t think I would have stepped up to teach a classroom of twenty of my peers yesterday. My first experience teaching a class related to my beliefs went well, and I was not unnerved in the process. For that, I wish everyone who takes their time to read my blog and leave comments a sincere thank you.
Now, I don’t want to leave you hanging there, with some humble words. That’s not my style. Anyone who has read any of my comparisons in the past knows that I like to offer my own translation, or at the least, a preferred English translation. Iyov had requested that I continue including one of the newer translations, and so I indulge him now as this seems an appropriate passage to include here. After looking through many of my Bibles, I really felt that the NEB captured much of my preferred readings for this passage so it will suffice in lieu of my own translation.
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14 My sisters and brothers, what good is it to profess faith without practicing it? Such faith has no power to save.
15 If any are in need of clothes and have no food to live on,
16 and one of you says to them, “Goodbye and good luck. Stay warm and well-fed,” without giving them the bare necessities of life, then what good is this?
17 So it is with faith. If good deeds don’t go with it, faith is dead.
18 Some of you will say that you have faith, while I have deeds. Fine: I’ll prove to you that I have faith by showing you my good deeds. Now you prove to me that you have faith without any good deeds to show.
19 You believe in the One God. Fine. But even the demons have the same belief, and they tremble with fear.
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14 My brothers, what use is it for a man to say he has faith when he does nothing to show it? Can that faith save him?
15 Suppose a brother or sister is in rags with not enough food for the day,
16 and one of you says, ‘Good luck to you, keep yourselves warm, and have plenty to eat’, but does nothing to supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?
17 So with faith; if it does not lead to action, it is in itself a lifeless thing.
18 But someone may object: ‘Here is one who claims to have faith and another who points to his deeds.’ To which I reply: ‘Prove to me that this faith you speak of is real though not accompanied by deeds, and by my deeds I will prove to you my faith.’
19 You have faith enough to believe that there is one God. Excellent! The devils have faith like that, and it makes them tremble.
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Thank you for indulging me and sharing in my experience as I learn Greek. Hopefully you can see why I love studying scripture immensely, I only hope it comes through in my meager attempts at a story. Feel free to share your own observations in the comments, I look forward to reading them. Also, I prefer to limit my posts to only a few paragraphs so don’t expect another epic post of this scale any time soon. As I look to the future, I hope that some day I can bypass this all entirely and read it for myself fluently from the Greek:
- Τί τὸ ὄφελος, ἀδελφοί μου, ἐὰν πίστιν λέγῃ τις ἔχειν ἔργα δὲ μὴ ἔχῃ; μὴ δύναται ἡ πίστις σῶσαι αὐτόν; ἐὰν ἀδελφὸς ἢ ἀδελφὴ γυμνοὶ ὑπάρχωσιν καὶ λειπόμενοι τῆς ἐφημέρου τροφῆς εἴπῃ δέ τις αὐτοῖς ἐξ ὑμῶν, Ὑπάγετε ἐν εἰρήνῃ, θερμαίνεσθε καὶ χορτάζεσθε, μὴ δῶτε δὲ αὐτοῖς τὰ ἐπιτήδεια τοῦ σώματος, τί τὸ ὄφελος; οὕτως καὶ ἡ πίστις, ἐὰν μὴ ἔχῃ ἔργα, νεκρά ἐστιν καθʼ ἑαυτήν. Ἀλλʼ ἐρεῖ τις, Σὺ πίστιν ἔχεις, κἀγὼ ἔργα ἔχω· δεῖξόν μοι τὴν πίστιν σου χωρὶς τῶν ἔργων, κἀγώ σοι δείξω ἐκ τῶν ἔργων μου τὴν πίστιν. σὺ πιστεύεις ὅτι εἷς ἐστιν ὁ θεός, καλῶς ποιεῖς· καὶ τὰ δαιμόνια πιστεύουσιν καὶ φρίσσουσιν.
May 26, 2008 at 4:35 pm
That was an awesome story. Thanks for sharing it. I’m glad it worked out so well.
Bryan
May 26, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Nathan, thanks for the story, and I rejoice at the fact that you were able to step up and lead the class. It would have better if you had read straight from your Greek text (smile).
As a footnote, I was visiting with the oldest member in our local assembly, and she said that she’d like for her “brothers and sisters” to pray for you.
She didn’t say “brothers” but “brothers and sisters.” She’s 94 and knows the difference. “Brothers” like “brothers and sisters” is simply an English construct for the Greek form adelphoi. What does it mean in its various contexts is the question to ask?
May 26, 2008 at 5:47 pm
What do you think about the way the Inclusive Bible translates verse 18? It takes the most liberties with the Greek, but it seems to be the clearest English of any of the four translations you give.
May 26, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Iyov,
I’ve not looked really close at the Greek in this passage, I plan on doing that this week and maybe making another post. To answer your question though, I like how it really comes across as having an attitude or frustration on Paul’s part. It also has the most natural sounding English of the three to my ears.
May 26, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Glad to hear that you weren’t unnerved in teaching… that’s always a good thing. BTW, which GNT is that in the photo?
May 26, 2008 at 7:05 pm
It’s a Nestle 16th ed. circa 1936.
May 26, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Nathan, thanks for the story. James really has a lot of good things to say about putting our faith into practice. I love it.
I like how the Inclusive version puts v.16:“Goodbye and good luck. Stay warm and well-fed”. It’s similar to the NEB.
May 26, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Just as a warning… I’ve personally found that reading Greek text in a group bible study or Sunday School class gets you either blank stares or chuckles – maybe an occasional eye roll. By no means am I discouraging you from doing it! Builds character…
Anyway, great to hear it went well.
May 26, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Nathan — Off topic but this may interest you.
May 26, 2008 at 9:20 pm
George, I got that before; I’ve since quit the practice. I just read in my study or with someone else.
May 26, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Nathan, I know this is not entirely related to you post, but it is to grammatical gender (which is what Greek) and our on going discussion…
Hypothetically, if the Bible had originally been written in Russian, how you translation the following word? I’ve put dashes at the morpheme breaks and glossed them.
mushin-a
man-nominative.feminine.singular
When you see a pronoun referring to children in Greek, would you translate it as “it”?
May 26, 2008 at 10:25 pm
I just asked my brother, who speaks some Russian he learned in Ukraine the last two years. He says it means, “a man.” When I brought up the grammar, he said, “what?!”
As for little children, I prefer to translate the Greek pronoun into our local dialect as, “ankle-biters.”
May 26, 2008 at 10:33 pm
*laughing*
That’s great!
Well, just so you know the word takes masculine adjectives, which in my grammar sketch I’ve described as a construction according to sense rather than according to inflection.
And I like your dialect.
May 27, 2008 at 4:35 am
Nathan, I expected you to bring up the point that in verse 14 there is just one word adelphoi which TNIV translates “brothers and sisters”, but in verse 15 there are explicit singular words for both “brother” and “sister”. I suspect that in the latter case “or sister” was added explicitly to emphasise that this verse applies to women just as much as to men.
You write
That may be true in conservative Texas. I think that you will find that in other areas, the UK and Australia and perhaps on the east and west coasts of the USA, it has much less place remaining. Just as in Texas y’all have a separate second person plural pronoun which the rest of us don’t have, so there are other subtle differences in the pronoun system between English dialects.
Mike, the Russian word is in fact grammatically masculine although taking the endings most commonly used with feminine nouns. As such it is like a few other nouns and especially short forms of male names. There are of course similar examples in Greek, such as hodos which is feminine. So this is really a matter of morphology rather than grammar. A better example would be “la personne” in French which means “the person” (gender generic) and is really grammatically feminine.
May 27, 2008 at 5:42 am
Peter,
You make some good pts on (dia)lect. Here’s the Texas International Version (not to be confused with any less conservative English Bible):
14 Now yall*, what good is it to profess faith without practicing it? Such faith has no power to save.
*This word is one that faithful men in Texas are still arguing over, spellin’ wise anyways:
‘ could be yall, y’all, or ya’ll
We don’t argue ’bout that in public ’cause some who ain’t from around these parts say we sound like we don’t got much learnin’ and the misspellin’ just proves it. It’s up for a vote in the Texas senate on grammar, where we have a couple’a womin lest any sez we’re sexist here. But didn’t mean to sidetrack the discussin’. It’s just always awfully good to hear from a Brit or a Yank on ‘ccasion.
May 27, 2008 at 6:49 am
Peter,
I’m thinking of making another post about the Greek in this passage. The post was already going to be pretty long so I opted not to post it. I suppose a few people will miss that reference though and I should have included it.
JK,
Everyone knows it’s spelled y’all. Also, I don’t live in Texas, but nearby. Around here there is a very peculiar word that is used by the locals instead of y’all. I first noticed it after I got married because all of my in-laws say it. The word is y’ins and it has the exact same meaning as y’all. It never ceases to make me laugh or at least smirk a little bit.
Of course, my own use of the plural is a generic masculine; I tend to refer to other people as you guys. In fact, I was recently talking to a group of teenage girls and addressed them all as you guys. Often I drop the you and just use guys as my plural, especially greetings, “Hey guys!“
May 27, 2008 at 8:59 am
Nathan,
You’re absolutely right, for someone who “don’t live in Texas.” Let me introduce you to my Crazy Aunt Purl who’s in the minority on the Texas Senate for Grammar. She is from Texas and still gits around good enough to them foreign places. (Anyway the ESL teachers here at Texas Christian University still argue over the correct spelling of yall and keep changing this wikipedia entry.)
On a good bit more serious note, did you let your Sunday School class know you’d already started that wonderful translation of the Book of James? I’d love to see how you translate 2:14-15!
For what it’s worth, NEB and ESV are the only versions you post here that get the translation right in 2:14-15. Jacob’s vocative ἀδελφοί μου in 14 is directed to his male siblings only. In fact, all his very direct references to females in his letter are marked, and are easily translated to English as “widows,” “Rahab the prostitute,” “sisters” and so forth. Males are sometimes marked in the letter but mostly are not. Even the “twelve tribes” he addresses at the front of the epistle is surely an unmarked reference to the sons of those dozen male sons of Leah, Bilhah, Zilpah, and Rachel, but not any son or daughter of Leah’s daughter Dinah. (Genesis 30:13, 30:21).
May 27, 2008 at 10:56 am
Kurk, I think we both know that Texans who would say, “Such faith has no power to save,” would definitely be in the minority.
Maybe something more like: “That kind of of wouldn’t save nobody!”
Based on what I’ve read and elicited, Peter, and from talking with my lingusitics consultant (who speaks Russian at Superior), I’m not sure if that’s the best analysis, though I’m willing to be wrong…
May 27, 2008 at 11:14 am
George,
I don’t really talk about learning Greek with anyone at my church, I get enough blank looks when talking about scripture in English, hehe. My wife and her brother like to tease me about it and mention it to people, otherwise no one would know I’m teaching myself. I really only talk about Greek with my friend, who is our youth pastor, and whom I think would learn with me if he had the time.
JK,
Eventually I hope to get back to James and translate the whole thing. However I think I’m going to try my hand at John 3,2,&1 before tackling the Gospel of John. I might change my mind by then but I want to translate the whole NT at some point.
The latest post on the BBB by David reminded me that I have those translation handbooks on Logos, and I’ll probably try to use those as a guide to the whole process. Right now I’m just trying to decide how to split my time between reading English scripture, studying Greek, translating scripture, and blogging about all of them. Right now it is mostly the first and the last on that list, and I’m considering cutting my blog time in half.
May 27, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Nathan, help me out here. You said: ” I am not a woman, so I have no idea if the wives present”. Do you really only allow married women to attend your church, or was this a slip of the cultural keyboard?
May 27, 2008 at 3:03 pm
No, my Sunday School class is all young married people. I’m estimating that there were ten to twelve couples present, maybe one or two without their spouses, but we are all married in the class.
May 27, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Nathan –
I think that if you blog about what you learn (for example, you blog brief outlines of what you learned) you will find it reinforces the lessons substantially. I have seen this work successfully in traditional classes.
May 27, 2008 at 9:53 pm
I’ve tried doing that a little bit with my Lesson posts, but to be honest I spend much more time reading, replying, or creating blog posts than I do studying Greek. So I’m thinking about how to cut back on how much time I spend with blogs in general. Just so many funny and interesting things being posted out there, I can’t resist. Short of deleting posts from my feed reader I haven’t thought of any other easy way to reduce my reading time.
May 28, 2008 at 12:10 am
I guess you’ve learned how blogging can take up so much time. It can actually become a full-time job sitting in front of our computers writing and reading on our own blog and others’ blogs. I don’t know how you get around the blogosphere. I’ve contemplated quitting my pastoral job and becoming a full-time blogger
but my family duties prevent me from doing so…so now I just blog when I can.
May 28, 2008 at 8:06 am
I don’t know how you get around the blogosphere.
Two words: Google Reader
May 28, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Nathan,
Many thanks for making us read the other blogs as well as your post. It’s such a fascinating question how adelphoi should be translated. I have the natural posture to say “brothers and sisters,” but the close proximity of adelphe does raise a flag. I’ll have to comb through James to get a sense of the overall argument and see if the form of adelph- is relevant to this question.
One note of interest on one of the other posts you recommended (mandated) is that adelphos means “from the same womb.” This should be an immediate indication to us to take six steps back from the argument over whether sisters are included in adelphoi. In obvious metaphorical language (since Christians are by no means literally from the same womb), I’m not sure sex matters much.
On another note entirely, I’d recommend translating 1 John. My Greek prof had us do that as our first big translation project, and it was immensely fulfilling. The next semester we did Titus, which was also great. Keep up the good work of learning Greek!
May 28, 2008 at 4:25 pm
John,
That is my current plan, though not with John 1 first. I’m thinking of going in reverse order, 3, 2, & then 1 John. After that I was thinking of John’s gospel, though Titus sounds intriguing. I may stick to the shorter epistles first, but I won’t make that call until the first three are done. I’ve already spent some time with 3 John which you can read here and then here.
Thanks for stopping by; any new info on the NT project that you can share?
May 29, 2008 at 5:44 am
Nathan, Thanks for clearing up my confusion. I really hadn’t grasped the composition of your group. I think, especially given the nature of John’s specific address to include varying age and gender groups, you (or rather your church) might ponder whether some learning needs a more diverse class group.
May 29, 2008 at 6:55 am
I agree. I’ve been discussing with my pastor a complete revamp of the way our Sunday classes are set up, with mixed age brackets and quarterly rotation of teachers/topics/lessons. There are a few other ideas we’ve been kicking about such as dropping Sunday evening services and starting small group meetings weekly, etc. I’m unsure how open people are to change, but I think God is moving things in that direction. We shall see.
Also, I’ve been thinking about teaching a small class myself, open to any age, focusing on scripture and incorporating the sorts of things I blog about, among other things.
May 31, 2008 at 12:05 am
Dropping Sunday evening services would be a big change. You might even want to consider having the class as an option to the service…choices you know. Just an idea.
I tried Google Reader and it works like a charm. I don’t know why I didn’t use it before. I’ve often gotten lost in tracking my comments and getting to new posts.
May 31, 2008 at 12:58 am
On The Books of The Bible front, we’ve made some progress on the NT. It might be more “moral victory” stuff than substantive progress, but I think we’ll get to do some cool things with the NT. There’ll be more info on all that in the next couple of months.
We’ve been talking a lot about what to do to help the church at large see the benefits of reading the Bible in a format like The Books of The Bible. Many people object to using it because it is unfamiliar, therefore inconvenient. What do you think about teaching a class using TBoTB and giving us feedback on some of the hurdles your cohorts face. We’d like to publish “handbooks” on how overcome these hurdles to engage in more and better Bible reading. We’re convinced that this needs to happen at the local church level. And we’re not saying, “Buy our Bible!” We’re saying, “If you can get a publisher to publish your favorite translation this way, use it! Just stop reading the Bible as if its genre=proverbs only.”