Gender in Translation
🔗Overview
The UPDV translates gendered terms according to the distinctions present in the original languages. Hebrew uses several different words where English has only "man," and the UPDV preserves these distinctions rather than collapsing them into a single term.
🔗Old Testament: Four Hebrew Words for "Man"
Hebrew distinguishes between four words that English translates as "man." Each carries a different meaning, and the UPDV renders them differently:
"man": אָדָם (adam): A human being or mankind. It is often collective and may refer to humanity without regard to sex; it can also denote an individual human or, in Genesis 2, the man. In Genesis 1:27, God creates "the man" and then specifies "male and female he created them." Depending on definiteness and context, the UPDV renders adam "man," "the man," "of man," or "from man."
"common man": אֱנוֹשׁ (enosh): Ordinary humanity, often emphasizing frailty or mortality. In Psalm 8:4, the parallelism makes the distinction visible: "What is common man (enosh), that you are mindful of him? And the son of man (adam), that you visit him?" Both refer to humanity, but enosh stresses the ordinary and mortal.
"a man," "men," "husband": אִישׁ (ish): Commonly an individual man or men, and in marital contexts a husband. It can also denote a human being in contrast to God (at Numbers 23:19, "God is not a man, that he should lie," ish is the human as opposed to God), or function as "someone," "anyone," "each," or "every," sometimes including women. The UPDV commonly uses forms such as "a man," "any man," "this man," and "men," but English articles and demonstratives are determined by the construction and do not uniquely identify the Hebrew lexeme.
"[able-bodied] men," "[prominent] men," "[noble] man": גֶּבֶר (geber): A man defined by strength, capability, or status. The specific quality depends on context — might, military fitness, leadership, nobility — and the UPDV places the qualifier in brackets to show it is drawn from the word's semantic range rather than from a separate word in the text. In Exodus 10:11, Pharaoh replies to Moses and Aaron: "now go, you⁺ who are [prominent] men, and serve Yahweh." The same bracketed rendering is used for the Biblical Aramaic cognate גְּבַר (gĕbar) in Daniel.
"a woman," "women," "wife": אִשָּׁה (ishah): A female person or, in marital contexts, a wife. Context and construction determine whether the UPDV uses "woman" or "wife" and whether an article, demonstrative, or possessive appears ("Give me my wife," Genesis 29:21).
🔗New Testament: Greek Distinctions
Greek makes a similar distinction between two words for "man":
"man," "people": ἄνθρωπος (anthrōpos): A human being regardless of sex, parallel to Hebrew adam. When Jesus says "the Sabbath was made for man" (Mark 2:27), the word is anthrōpos, all people, not males specifically. At John 6:10 the same word is rendered "people": "Make the people sit down" (anthrōpos), while "the men sat down, in number about five thousand" translates the distinct word anēr.
"a man," "husband": ἀνήρ (anēr): A specific male individual, parallel to Hebrew ish. Context determines whether it means "a man" or "a husband."
"a woman," "wife": γυνή (gynē): A specific female individual, parallel to Hebrew ishah. As with anēr, context determines whether it means "a woman" or "a wife."
"brothers": ἀδελφοί (adelphoi): The UPDV retains "brothers" as the translation of adelphoi, following the literal Greek. When Paul addresses a mixed congregation as adelphoi (e.g., Romans 1:13, 1 Corinthians 1:10), the UPDV renders this as "brothers" rather than "brothers and sisters" or "siblings." The plural-you marker (⁺) on surrounding pronouns indicates that the audience includes all members of the church.
🔗Pronouns and Other References
Pronouns such as "he," "she," "him," and "her" follow the gender of the original text. The UPDV does not alter gendered pronouns to achieve gender-neutral language.