Had the pleasure of a couple of encounters now with the brilliant @WilGafney regarding her #WomensLectionary project. I'm extremely excited to see where it goes, and having lots of thoughts about translation and gender and such matters.
I feel like I'm fortunate to have a bunch of friends who do translation in various forms (h/t to @jeannette_ng here, who does fascinating things with Chinese poetry). Yet even for me it's so easy to forget that the Bible as we read it in English is not the original text.
What we're often nowhere near aware enough of are the choices made in translation to masculinise language that was originally neutral or feminine, to tone down or euphemise troubling passages, and generally communicate the text through a non-neutral lens of white patriarchy.
And translating through a different lens is not changing the text any more than any other translation would, but is making choices that shed new insight and reveal truths within it that are often missed. It's really valuable work.
The notion of a gender-explicit translation as opposed to a gender-inclusive/expansive translation did initially give me pause. Language is a place where different groups of people can have different needs.
Often non-gendered/neutral language is the best tool to include non-binary people, but it can also be used to make women invisible (and insidiously, specifically to misgender trans women). Language that explicitly includes women restores their visibility but can be overly binary.
However, the two don't at all need to be exclusive. One of my favourite memories of first coming to All Saints was @MKinman saying, "Sisters, brothers, and gender-non-conforming siblings" from the pulpit. Women were centred *and* non-binary people explicitly acknowledged.
A translation can't be all things to all people and I appreciate the primary goal of Dr Gafney's project being centring women. I'm also really pleased that there are places and contexts where she is using neutral or non-binary language where appropriate.
It's one of those things where groups have differing needs that may not always be compatible—but conflict is neither helpful or necessary. We can be allies in making space for one another. Glad to find an ally in Dr Gafney and I wish her all the best in her work as it progresses!
