A review of McCarthy, Suzanne.Valiant or Virtuous? Gender Bias in Bible Translation.Wipf and Stock, 2019.
“Over the centuries, a few women have been agents in Bible translation, and have been active in translating and printing the original text of the scriptures. However, it is more common for women to experience the biblical text as something that acts upon them by setting standards of otherness and difference” (8).
– Suzanne McCarthyValiant or Virtuous?
Of late there have been some popular books on gender and Christian faith, most notably historian Kristin Du Mez’sJesus and John Wayneand medievalist Beth Allison Barr’sThe Making of Biblical Womanhood– both coming out in 2021. They have been widely hailed in the mainstream media an examination of the gendered roles that evangelicals typically prescribe for men and women, and press for a wider range of roles for both sexes. The books also carry the polemics of American culture and religion with them.
Is there a Canadian approach that also demonstrates the Bible offers another way to understand gender roles—different from the roles found in many conservative and evangelical churches? While the idea of the complementary nature of the sexes is not new, the evangelical “complementarian” label is quite new, and prescribes a narrow range of roles for women in their families, churches, and society. Is there another way?
When we heard that our board member, Ruth Hayhoe, had been an editor for the publication of her sister Suzanne’s book on gender bias in Bible translation, we thought we ought to investigate. Ruth recounted to us how her sister was exceptionally gifted in linguistics, becoming fluent in some seven languages, and did her graduate thesis on the Cree language. She dedicated her life to teaching English to international students and created a website to help them write their stories of immigration and refugee escape—in their mother tongue as well as English.
Growing up in a narrowly conservative faith community, gender roles were fairly circ*mscribed for her. Suzanne married young and endured an abusive relationship that ended in divorce.
Ruth Hayhoe: “I am moved to see
how my sister Suzanne’s book has communicated some new understandings to each of the four authors below and happy to share this link to the reflection I wrote on my sister’s life for the Globe and Mail shortly after Suzanne’s passing.” (Photo of Suzanne, courtesy of Ruth)
Her interest in Bible translation intensified, and she began to blog regularly on the topic and engage other specialists inside a chatroom on Bible translation for some 10 years. Sadly, she developed breast cancer, and so she decided to put her thoughts together into a legacy book–Valiant or Virtuous? She died in June 2015, just before the last pages could be penned, and so her husband Jay Frankel, her niece Christy Hayhoe and sister Ruth Hayhoe edited the book for publication. The final chapter ends mid-paragraph, as if she died while writing the last words of the book.
Suzanne’s concern always was: what about other young women, who read these biased translations and think that they are God’s words limiting their opportunities for leadership and service? She wanted them to know both the range of meanings and roles available to them in the ancient text. Incidentally, another of Suzanne’s nieces, Deborah Hayhoe Padilla, has worked as a Bible translator with Wycliffe Bible Translators.
As staff we talked about the book in four sessions, the last with Ruth herself. We all wrote our own response to the book, and each of the next four sections takes the voice of the person named in the subtitle.
Brenda Goranson: Enlightening Testimony
An expert in Bible Translation and in written language systems, Suzanne McCarthy laments the lack of consistent scholarly approach in recent translation work that has served to cloud Scripture while promoting a narrow theology based in ‘male headship’ accused of hindering both individual gifting and the universal flourishing of the entire body of Christ.
McCarthy demonstrates the seriousness of misinterpreting original manuscript language likeadelphoi(meaning ‘brothers and sisters’ or ‘siblings’) amongst others(adam,anthropos,anashim) to read male only, in order to enforce theologicalstatements that build male priority upon female submission. Concerningly, systematic bias seems to have reinforced aBible with an agenda. According to McCarthy, “It is a goal of these translations to keep the connotation of maleness in view” (123).
Valiant or Virtuous?details how certain texts have been “carefully managed” throughselective translation “so that certain offices and roles in the church appear to berestricted to men only.” (127) The resulting doctrine from an influential group has seenthe suppression of earlier translations. These have been derided asgender neutralwhen accordingto McCarthy, they are in factgender accurateand more in keeping with theoriginal. The work worries that womenwill leave the church that they have historically and consistently formed a backbone within.ChayilmeansVALIANT forbothmen and women and where women are biblically shown to be calledto provide, protect, prophesy and lead, so also are men to beauty, nurture, submission,and virtuousness.The portrait is one of biblical equality and mutual submission; beautifully depicting why so many disenfranchised in the ancient Greco-Roman worldflocked tothe early church.
For women who have experienced derision in the church, been distanced fromdiscipleship opportunities; discounted in discussion or decision-making; or disorientedfrom once beloved – now changed – life-guiding, bible verses, McCarthy enlightens:woman is of man and man is of woman; they are both of the earth and as equalinheritors, both shall return to it.McCarthy’s must-read reminds us of the importance ofcareful translation.
Angel Castillo: A Thoughtful Examination of Translation Bias
Suzanne McCarthy’s engaging and accessible prose inValiant or Virtuous?makes complex biblical and linguistic scholarship approachable for a wide audience (including young women in undergraduate studies like myself). Her analysis of the term “ezer kenegdo” in Genesis, commonly translated as “help meet” or “helper,” was particularly striking. She proposes alternative translations such as “champion” or “defender,” which depict women in roles of strength and agency—language that empowers, not diminishes. Notably, “ezer” is also a term used to refer to God later in the Old Testament. McCarthy mentions that while this doesn’t mean women are gods, it indicates thatezercan denote someone of equal or greater strength and status. This interpretation not only alters the perception of women in biblical times (as it did for me) but also has profound implications for contemporary discussions on gender roles within the church.
In chapters 8 and 9, McCarthy turns her attention to gender terms, addressing the use of masculine plural words like “brothers” and “sons” to refer to mixed-gender groups. She provides an overview of the controversy surrounding inclusive translations, such as “brothers and sisters” or “children,” and thoroughly explores the linguistic and historical support for these translations as well as the effects of excluding women in both past and contemporary contexts.
Valiant or Virtuous?called for a posture shift in my thinking about the Bible and my place as a coloured woman in ministry. McCarthy’s fervour for ensuring that women see themselves fairly and accurately represented in the Bible—in a landscape where influential evangelical leaders have modified biblical texts to reinforce patriarchal norms—is evident in her thoughtful examination of translation biases.
Chloe Liu: Chinese Pronouns
Attending a church where both males and females serve in the kitchen during community meals, I have been loved in an environment where Christians serve each other in any role regardless of one’s gender. My first exposure to the Bible was through spoken Chinese, in which the pronouns for “men” and “women” have the same pronunciation, so even as a woman, the issue of inclusivity of pronouns in the Bible did not occur to me.
However, it is disheartening to see some Biblical translations in English have deliberately taken females out of the Gospel story and that the word of God has been used in some churches to justify gender oppression. Suzanne McCarthy dissected extensively the gender bias in Bible translation in her bookValiant or Virtuous?with academic rigor and gentleness. Joseph was beautiful, says the text. A man’s lust for a beautiful woman was as sinful as Potiphar’s wife’s lust for Joseph. Ruth was a woman of power. She was valiant, just as Boaz was.
If gender bias in Biblical translation is corrected with more careful literary research, what more wisdom and truth can we gain from the Bible to engage in today’s societal concerns of gender identity? How more effectively can we speak to the union of marriage by eliminating false gender stereotypes? How much more insights could we gain from the Bible to share Jesus’ love with people experiencing gender dysphoria?
Peter Schuurman: A Male Reading, Leading to Dancing
While I have never been endeared to the likes of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womenhood, Crossway Books, or the ESV translation of the Bible (which are to a large degree the prime examples of translation bias in the book), I was delighted to see McCarthy upend some stereotypes. For example, she shows that men are also deemed beautiful in the Bible (same Hebrew word!), and that women can also be celebrated as providers for their family. She writes, “From the time of the Hebrew scriptures to the early church in Rome, women have been providers for men who were prophets, preachers, scholars, and translators” (90). This approximates my own marriage to a small degree, and I’m glad to read it has been a historical and Scriptural norm!
Some might mistakenly assume McCarthy’s text is for a women’s book club, as it is mostly focused on expanding the attributes and roles directed at women in the Bible—and particularly those roles and attributes that have hitherto been narrowed or denied through a translation bias. But if women’s roles and expectations are to be redeemed, certainly men will have to acknowledge where translation has gone awry, and change the way they relate and talk about women—their daughters, their wives, their colleagues, and their sisters in Christ. If women’s opportunities are to change and expand, then men’s roles must shift as well. This is not just practical social re-engineering, but reconciling relations (as Mary Stewart VanLeuwen said many years ago in her bookAfter Eden: Facing the Challenge of Gender Reconciliation, Eerdmans 1993).
This book can be a corrective for any Christian who takes their Bible seriously. While it is McCarthy’s expertise and writing, the publication of it demonstrates cooperation between the sexes—as Jay Frankel, McCarthy’s second husband, encouraged and supported her in this work and wrote the introduction to the text. This suggests the secular military idiom “battle of the sexes” perpetuates a rivalry between men and women that need not be inevitable. Perhaps a better analogy that fits this book’s purpose would be the transcultural practise of folk dancing (square, line, ballroom), where male and female work in step with one-another. The dance of the sexes would involve discipline, playfulness, and mutual submission, and while we still take roles, they may not be sacrosanct. We can imagine them flexible enough to change and be adapted for different couples and communities.
A Biased Conclusion
It was a privilege to read a book and have its editor give us the background story to how the pages came together. The book was well-written and researched, and while controversial in some of its arguments for some, it introduced us and our interns to some important questions that are part of almost every congregation’s conversations around the division of labour in the church today. Our bias is in favour of this corrective investigation!
Women’s roles have changed in the Western world: mass education, government policies, voting rights, birth control, industrialization, remote workplace options—these structural shifts have made tremendous changes for marriage and family in the modern world.
Different denominations with different theological commitments and different social ethics respond differently to these changes. Some may think they derive their gender roles from the Bible, but they may (in good but misguided conscience) be imposing a tradition on the Bible. As Bible scholars say,exegesis(interpreting from the text) can be mixed up witheisegesis(interpretingintothe text). It is a human tendency, and we as a global church need to keep each other accountable for accuracy and honesty in translation.
We worship a God who translates himself to us in human terms. This is the gospel—the good news—and we ought to steward any translations of the incarnation in a way that keeps it as good news, for every man, woman, and child. To bias any reading of the Scripture with such a gospel hermeneutic helps us discern where culture, history, and interpretation must work together for human flourishing.
