My social media posts explain some problems with our English Bible translations related to gender. Although people were taught, “The Bible is only inerrant in the original languages” they still panic and say I’m attacking the inerrancy of God’s Word, or the principle that God preserved the Word. They are afraid that my assertions amount to questioning the reliability, accuracy, and inerrancy of the Bible. (“Inerrant” means no flaws or errors.) They say things like, “Scholars have studied and carefully examined the Bible for many years. We have figured it out.”  

The Rose-Colored Glasses 

When we say things like that, we wear rose-colored glasses. We are imagining that all English translators have been just as inspired by the Holy Spirit as the original Hebrew and Greek writers. People in the KJV-only camp have said they believe the translators who worked on the KJV had special, God-breathed inspiration on the level of the original authors. 

So, what about other languages that have the Bible–are their translations perfect too, or just English? Does God prefer English speakers and only we get special inspiration? Why would God divinely inspire those cooperating with King James and no other translators? Or does he divinely inspire every translator throughout history with all 4,000 languages that have the Bible? No, no, and no. The Bible is not inerrant in English! It’s very close most of the time, but it’s dangerous to look at English words and call them inerrant. 

What we’ve had throughout the centuries is flawed people doing their best. They sincerely pray for God’s help and receive it except when they accidentally (or rarely, intentionally) act in human flesh or incomplete understanding. We want to keep in mind that we owe much to translators for their hard work. Many have sacrificed lives and fortune to provide the Bible in a common language. Those who have done wrong (either accidentally or on purpose) are, in my opinion, in the infinitesimal minority, but we still need to shed light on what still needs corrected or updated for better understanding by today’s reader. 

Notice how many English versions of the Bible we have because translators don’t agree. Some people say, “Oh they’re just different paraphrases and they all mean the same thing.” However, people go to a huge amount of trouble to make new versions because they believe they have something significantly different to offer.  

Most of us wouldn’t understand the significance of some differences unless someone interested in a particular issue it affects pointed it out to us. My book compares four popular versions (NIV, NASB, ESV, N/KJV). There are plenty of significant differences that affect the gender issue I’m writing about. Which one is “right”? The Greek version. Even-handed translators of a particular version will tell you to consult multiple versions and they don’t claim their own is “the best” but rather explain the pros and cons of different ones. 

Which version is “right”? The Greek version.

If you download the first 27 pages of my book from my website, you will read an introductory section that includes translation challenges. I only included the challenges that affect the examples in my book related to gender—there are more challenges. Following is a bullet-point list of some of them (my book explains more on each one), abbreviated from the books of preeminent translators whom I cite: 

• Language has always kept moving and changing meaning. 

• Masculine generic defaults are not consistent across languages and have changed in English. 

• Different languages have different grammatical rules, preventing word for word translations. 

• Words do not have “literal” meanings. For example, the words “bank” and “field” can have several meanings based on part of speech (noun, verb, modifier, etc.) and based on context. See, The Literal Meaning Fallacy by Dr. Mark Strauss. 

• Words do not perfectly correspond with words and their meanings in other languages–they have different nuances. 

• Idioms can be misunderstood. 

• Ancient Hebrew and Greek did not have quotation marks so translators must decide when to use them and it’s not always obvious. 

• Geographic, historical, and cultural context can be missed. We’re still discovering and translating documents that shed light on what a first-century audience would have understood something to mean. 

• Translators must make choices and their ideology can affect those choices. We have a really good example of that happening recently in 2016 with the ESV where a translation team voted to add the word “contrary” to Genesis 3:16 and it took a firestorm of outside influence to get them to relent and remove the word in 2025 and 2026 editions.  

The Dark Glasses 

In light of this, one could put on dark glasses and say, “You can’t trust anything in the Bible!” But that would also be foolish. These translation issues do not affect the most important doctrines of the faith. There are plenty of passages that confirm essential doctrine such as the divinity of Christ and salvation by grace through faith. We can use the clear passages to interpret the difficult passages. 

But on secondary and tertiary issues, where there are fewer passages and some of them are quite difficult, there’s room for questions. We should be able to discuss them without panic, and without judging those with whom we disagree.  

For those of us who have built life-time views based on specific English words or phrases, this revelation of translation challenges and misleading tactics can be earth shaking. It disturbs me to realize that all my life, I (and others who taught me) put too much stock in English words, and completely trusted fallible translators and interpreters. Even though I knew the Bible is inerrant only in the original languages, I acted as though the English Bible was inerrant and revered the English words themselves.  

Meanwhile, people who are doing the hard work of translation may not always get it right. It would be difficult to make some things more clear without tampering too much with the text. And we may be misunderstanding some of what they did get right. The bottom line is that the faith tradition in which I was raised was far too certain in their interpretations and taught me to be far too certain. This attitude of certainty can lead to pride and to judging others who interpret differently.  

The Clear Glasses 

I am not shaken regarding the inerrancy of the Bible, but I am disappointed in the errancy of human teachers who are upheld by the vast majority of evangelicals. I realize it is partly my fault for being naïve. There are many reasons why Pastors are demotivated to look into the gender topic and those reasons are the dark underbelly of organized religion. 

I am disappointed in the refusal of many teachers to do deeper study on this topic—mainly seminary professors who steer pastors. They are far more responsible than young graduates getting into the ministry who just want to see people saved and need to feed their families. Seminaries pay professors to study and teach, and professors don’t have the broad range of overwhelming responsibilities that pastors have. They have decades of experience with original languages and have more liberty and resources to study whatever topic they choose in depth.  

However, to be fair, it can be hard to land a job in academia, so professors can be concerned about losing their job if they fall out of favor. For example, with the “conservative resurgence” of the Southern Baptist Convention beginning in 1979, those who gained power forced many well-loved egalitarian professors out of the six SBC seminaries. This led to the current impression on seminary campuses that august seminary professors do not believe egalitarian theology because it is so easily disproved, when instead their voices were silenced.  

They were basically accused of high treason–not believing in the inerrancy of the Bible. This has a chilling effect on any Christian leader who wants to even treat the subject even-handedly. They are afraid of losing their pulpits and reputation if they even breathe a word of disagreement. 

Also to be fair, there were some professors who actually did question the inerrancy of the Scriptures, and some of them were egalitarian. However, some egalitarians were unfairly lumped in with those who didn’t believe in inerrancy. There was a concerted effort to rid the SBC of anyone who would ordain women as later revealed by those who spearheaded the movement and were shown to be personally perverse. (One sexually abused boys and the other mishandled funds and covered up a rape at his seminary.) Actions in annual meetings also evidenced this endeavor as high priority.  

I recommend the 5-part podcast series “All the Buried Women” by Savannah Locke and Beth Allison Barr found on most podcast platforms. They documented their research well. It connects the dots and pulls back the curtain on this aspect of the SBC “conservative resurgence.” Barr’s book, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry documents earlier ordination of women by Baptists (especially SBC) and other evangelical denominations. I discovered this miniseries after I wrote the book. My book goes more into the biblical problems of the SBC position whereas the series goes into the historical aspects. I think it’s important because they would have us believe women have never been ordained.

Rather than shaking my confidence about the inerrancy of the Bible, my study has resolved a lot of apparent discrepancies in the Bible with a coherent theology. I’m upset with myself for passing over difficult passages for decades, and simply swallowing the inadequate explanations others gave me. I was patted on the head and told “You just don’t understand because God’s ways are higher than your ways.” (This is a dismissive way to respond to someone who is comparing passages that appear contradictory.)  

I was trained to ignore discrepancies like ignoring an elephant in the room. It is like when a pastor preaches on a passage from the gospels that is about a healing and draws many current applications from the passage but never even mentions healing, but that is considered okay. We are trained to overlook what does not neatly fit our theological framework. 

Why did it not bother me more when Paul seemed to contradict himself in the same chapter, in the same letter, across his other letters, and even across the entire theme of a letter or the entire Bible? I guess because I feared that skeptical questions were irreverent and I should humbly and simply accept what I told by those who knew more. I also felt intimidated, because (mainly due to my childhood), I have felt like any woman who questions hierarchical teaching is suspected of rebellion, and I wanted to please the men around me. 

Finally in my fifties, I read an excellent explanation that cleared up one problematic gender-related passage and I became curious to know if there were similarly good explanations for other seemingly problematic passages. I looked further, and then the house of cards began to fall. It is exciting to see how the Bible fits together better than I had previously understood. Some confusing passages now make sense. As a result, my study has strengthened my confidence in the Bible. 

Do I worry that there might be other teachings that I’ve misunderstood because of these same tactics? Yes. I now read my Bible much more carefully and consult multiple versions and commentaries. I’m skeptical when a preacher makes a big deal about the meaning of an English word without presenting the original language. I use the Blue Letter Bible while in church now, so I can quickly look at alternate translations and a Greek interlinear resource. I’m questioning long-held beliefs about a couple of other secondary topics. This is healthy. Paul commended the Bereans who carefully researched all he taught them. 

We could wonder why God didn’t make everything simpler, for example, the whole world speak the same language throughout all of time. Perhaps God wanted us to depend more on Holy Spirit than we do. A couple years ago, Holy Spirit showed me something in my devotions that I was excited about and made a post on Facebook. Some people jumped on me with correction because it was not what we were taught in our faith tradition. I was intimidated and backed down. But since then, I’ve seen increasing evidence that what Holy Spirit showed me was accurate. I realized that I CAN hear his voice and should not be so easily intimidated. 

Perhaps God wanted us to depend more on the Holy Spirit than we do.

Not only do we need to depend more on Holy Spirit, we need to recognize that our faith is grounded in the resurrection of Jesus, not having the entire Bible figured out. If we panic or disfellowship with other believers over Bible interpretation on secondary issues, we are putting the book ahead of Jesus. 

If we who consider ourselves mature believers set a better example of allowing questions and engaging in kind, respectful dialogue, perhaps there wouldn’t be so many people “deconstructing” their faith, or at least more of them would be only deconstructing secondary issues instead of the very core of the Gospel. They feel like they were misled, not only because of certain things in the messaging, but because of contradictory living by those who shouted the loudest about how they were protecting the inerrancy of the Bible. 

Between translation challenges and misleading tactics, we begin to get the picture of why our posture toward our English translation should be one of cautious confidence with humble curiosity rather than high confidence. Generally, translators have done a wonderful job and provided us with a great treasure for which we should be extremely grateful. However, we also need to understand that translators can be ideologically driven. 

Our posture toward our English translation should be one of cautious confidence with humble curiosity rather than high confidence.

I forgive those who malign me and misunderstand me. It hurts, because I actually treasure and hold high reverence for God’s Word. But I realize their concern comes from a place of fear and incomplete understanding of translation issues. 

God, help us all as we navigate these waters. Fill us with a spirit of love and cooperation.