Look what they’re doing to the Bible

Inside the Inclusive Language Bibles

Did you know that “misleading masculine-oriented language” has been removed from the Bible—at least in a number of the new translations?

What God told us in the Bible wasn’t good enough for the liberals. It has to be changed.

We live in a daring generation when men are determined to do such things.

In the Dark Ages, the papists burned the Bible; today, the daughters of Babylon rewrite it.

The first major gender-neutral translation of the Bible came off the presses in 1989. It was the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). Since then, several others have followed:

• The New Living Translation (NLT)

• The Contemporary English Version (CEV)

• The New International Version: Inclusive Language Edition (NIVI). This version is still only available in England.

How much of the Bible have these modernists changed, and why did they do it?

As to why they did it, the answer is simple enough: The liberals wanted to produce a man/woman god,—and then abolish gender from humanity as well! As much as possible, nothing must be said about men, either alone or in a generic “mankind” sense. The Bible had to be feminized.

As to how they went about doing it, that answer is simple also: Just rewrite the Bible!

The NRSV Preface explains that the copyright holder (the Division of Education and Ministry of the National Council of Churches) required that “masculine-orientated language should be eliminated as far as this can be done without altering passages that reflect the historical situation of ancient patriarchal culture.”

In the following examples we will primarily compare the RSV with the NRSV, so that there can be no mistaking the extent to which their new translations warp the meaning.

In the new Bibles, it was all right for Mary to be a mother, but not all right for men to be fathers.

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.”—John 12:32, RSV

is changed to

“And I . . will draw all people to myself.”—NRSV

In order to eliminate he and him, passages are rewritten in the plural—although the original is in the singular. This is done because they and them are gender-neutral in English:

“Jesus answered him, ‘If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”—John 14:23, RSV.

This is radically changed to:

“Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”—NRSV.

In John 14:23, Jesus is specifically noting that He and the Father will come to us individually! But, in order to please liberals and women preachers, the modernists have done away with that. In the Preface, the NRSV calls those the “paraphrastic renderings” required to “neutralize” (“immasculate” would be more accurate) genders.

Here is another way they did it:

“I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”—Revelation 3:20, RSV.

“I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.”—NRSV.

The radicals will not even permit Christ to be a man!

“He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.”—Psalm 34:20, RSV (quoted again at the time of fulfillment in John 19:36).

But the NRSV, NLT, NCV, CEV, and NIVI will not permit such a clear prediction of Christ to be made about a “man”! See how they twisted it:

“He keeps all their bones; not one of them will be broken.”—NRSV.

In Hebrew, it is singular His bones, yet the prediction is destroyed in these modernist translations. Satan laughs. There is a verse somewhere in the Bible about a curse being on the land when the people let women rule over them:

“As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O My people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.”—Isaiah 3:12, KJV.

In reality, women can be very wise and are often more spiritually minded than men, yet the God of heaven gave us a pattern in the Bible which we should not ignore.

Singulars are changed to plurals 1,732 times in the NRSV, in order to de-masculinize the Bible. The ancient pagans had mother-father gods, and the spiritualists had witches. The Vatican has made Mary the Queen of Heaven and Co-Redemptrix. Our modern theologians want to join the pack.

In these new versions, the emphasis on God relating to specific individuals is lost.

“God created man in His own image.”—Genesis 1:27, RSV, has been changed to “So God created humankind in his image.”—NRSV.

“Male and female he created them, and he . . named them ‘Humankind’ when they were created.”—Genesis 5:2, NRSV.

The NCV, CEV, and NIVI have human beings here, and the NLT has Human.

In the NRSV Preface, the modernists give their excuse for so twisting Scripture. They say the “culture” of Bible times must be changed to our “culture” today:

“It was often appropriate to mute the patriarch­ialism of the culture of the biblical writers through gender-inclusive language.”—NRSV Preface.

A decided effort has been made to rid the Bible of these seven words: father, son, brother, man, he, him, and his. This was done thousands of times. We found no instances in which woman, she, or her was gender-neutralized.

Leading men (Acts 15:22, RSV) is changed to leaders (NRSV); cf. Acts 20:30.

The high priest was selected from among men (Hebrews 5:1, RSV) is changed to from among mortals (NRSV). Our women preachers will love that translation.

The fact that Christ was a man is hidden:

“As by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.”—1 Corinthians 15:21, RSV.

“Since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being.”—NRSV.

That mistranslation effectively eliminates the representational headship of Adam and Christ.

“The man Christ Jesus.”—1 Timothy 2:5, RSV.

“Christ Jesus, himself human.”—NRSV.

Here is another example:

“Blessed is the man who walks not . . but his delight is in the law . .”—Psalm 1:1, RSV.

“Happy are those who do not follow . . but their delight is in the law . .”—NRSV.

“In order to avoid gender-specific language in statements of a general kind, it was agreed that the plural might be substituted for the singular and the second person for the third person.”—NRSV Preface.

They changed that which the Bible said for what it did not say.

“Whatever a man sows, that  he will also reap.” —Galatians 6:7, RSV

“You reap whatever you sow.”—NRSV.

The NLT and CEV also have you; the NCV and NIVI change it to the plural, people.

If God caused certain passages in the Bible to be written with singular nouns and pronouns, we should leave them that way.

“A man’s mind plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.”—Proverbs 16:9, RSV.

“People may make plans in their minds, but the Lord decides what they will do.”—NCV [singular to plural].

“In your heart you may plan your course, but the Lord determines your steps.”—NIVI [changes third-person singular to second-person singular].

“We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.”—NLT [changes third-person singular to first-person plural].

“The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps.”—NRSV [changes third-person singular to no person].

—Most anything will do, except that which has his in it! But, in the process, they change the meaning and tend to impersonalize or generalize it.

Some will say that the words he, him, his, and man refer not to the human race, but to men only. However, that is not true, as every dictionary clearly points out. Every major dictionary continues to use these broader meanings. Newspapers and news magazines, such as Newsweek, U.S. News, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, etc., continue to use he in a generic sense and man as a name for the human race.

The latest (1994) edition of the  Associated Press Style­book says to “use the pronoun when an indefinite antecedent may be male or female: [example] A reporter protects his sources”—not his or her sources.

“Let’s face it: the English language is stuck with the generic masculine.”—William Zinsser, On Writing Well, 5th edition, 1994.

“A style that converts every he into a they will quickly turn to mush . . I don’t like plurals; they weaken writing because they are less specific than the singular, less easy to visualize.”—Ibid.

Modern man has lost a reverence for Scripture, and his secular mind is going to destroy him.              — vf

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