5:00 a.m.

I am not a fanatic about inclusive language, but one of the things I appreciate about the NRSV is its sensible use of “brothers and sisters” when both genders are meant (it does not change pronouns for deity). Few things can stir up a  flame war in the evangelical blogosphere quicker than disagreements about the relative merits of translations of the Bible. I’m weary of the argument that there’s no problem with the generic use of “he,” “man” and “brothers” because these also—of course—automatically reference women. They once did, but in the vernacular no longer do, and there’s no use saying this is not the case, because saying it doesn’t make it so. The vernacular is where we live. The vernacular—how words are actually, not ideally, used and perceived by people—is a primary concern of Bible translation.

There would be something jarring nowadays, for example, about a child-rearing manual that referred to the child only as “he.” It would not have been jarring thirty years ago. Language changes gradually with usage, and prescriptive rules shift gradually to account for usage. This is not a political statement; it’s just the way things work in the real world. I learned this in grad school, by the way, and want to say here that it’s entirely possible to be a descriptivist about language without being a relativist in your theology. I would wager that, in time, “they” (and “them” and “their”) may well become grammatically acceptable gender-neutral singular pronouns in written English. We already use these quite commonly in our speech: “Go up to the front of the store and look for a clerk and I’m sure they can help you.”