Translation and the Construction of Gender in the Bible

Introduction

The Bible, although not regarded as the direct word of God, is seen as divinely inspired. As such, the text is highly influential within Christianity, used to justify a variety of stances on moral, social, and political issues. Yet, for all the importance that the text itself holds, one would assume that there is a definitive version of the Bible. However, the Bible has not remained a static text throughout history. Instead, it has gone through transformations in various languages, changing to reflect the language structure and culture it is being brought into. During the process of translation, the meaning of individual verses might shift, creating implications that could have broader effects on social issues such as gender construction. Therefore, I want to examine whether this distortion of language has had a significant impact on scholars’ views of gender, constraining them to a gender binary or complicating the binary. Specifically, I will look at Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, and Latin Vulgate to understand how three popular historical biblical translations interact with the construction of gender within their respective cultures and time periods. However, given that the common people did not have access to the religious texts in a large capacity, my analysis will be constrained to religious thinkers that interacted directly with these texts.

The Hebrew Bible

Written from 1200 to 100 BCE, the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, spans a long portion of history, comprising twenty-four books written mostly in Hebrew by various authors. As such, while there is an overarching narrative establishing a monotheistic tradition, one can hear the voices of multiple authors within even a single book. Later, Christian tradition adopted the Hebrew Bible as its Old Testament, contributing to its prevalence in many languages. However, its place as the sacred text of the Jewish people remains undisputed.

The first creation story takes place in Genesis 1:26–27. Although the modern eye may skip over it, reconciling the conflicting singular and plural pronouns remains one of the biggest puzzles for religious scholars and theologians. According to one scholar, there is a possible explanation rooted solely in grammatical construction. In the Hebrew text, the double adjectives ‘ָ֖בה ֵק נְוּ ֥כר ָ זָ’ [male and female] come before the plural pronoun ‘ָתֽם ֹ א’ [them] at the end of Genesis 1:27 (“male and female He created them”). In order to agree with its plural antecedent, the pronoun ‘ָתֽם ֹ א’ [them] must also be plural. Therefore, one does not need to interpret the verse as having two physical people, a man and a woman, present; it is still possible for Adam to be the only person God created in this verse.^[1] In addition, the use of the word ֙ם ָד אָָהֽ [Adam], meaning “humankind,” creates ambiguity in this verse. “Adam” is a word linguistically related to the Hebrew word for “ground,” leading to the interpretation that the first man was created from the ground.^[2] Although it is a grammatically masculine word (because Hebrew has no neuter designation), Adam does not mean man in opposition to woman. Instead, Adam refers to a general human being, without necessarily adding a gendered aspect to the being.^[3]

In the second account of the creation of man in Genesis 2, there is tension within the gender structure that lends itself to the view of Adam and Eve as one being. In Genesis 2:23, after God creates Eve from Adam’s side, Adam says “This one [ֹאת ֣ז ]… is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. This one [ֹאת ֣ז ] will be called woman for from a man, this one [ֹאת ֣ז ] was taken.”^[4] Because Eve has not yet been named by Adam, he refers to her thrice as “this one,” indicating her closeness to Adam. At one point, Eve and Adam were a single being, and even after their physical separation, they remain spiritually connected. When put in conversation with the following verse, which deems woman as the reason that a man leaves his parents and “become[s] one flesh” with his wife, one can see that at this point in the story, man and woman could still be viewed as an “undifferentiated unit.”^[5] Even within this second creation story, “the gender dynamic projected is not defined by hierarchy, but by symmetry. Adam and Eve are two identical halves that long for unity.”^[6] As an added note, in order to create a linguistic pun, it is only here that the word for man gains a gendered aspect, because שִׁ֖אי ֵמ ['ish] refers to man in opposition to woman השָּׁ ֔ ִא ['ishah].

Some rabbinic sources interpret Genesis as evidence for Adam as an androgynous being. According to an early Palestinian midrash, the solution to the two contradicting creation stories was imagining Adam as a “corporeal androgyne,” a “dual-sexed creature in one body.”^[7] The being had both sets of genitals, and the act of separation in Genesis 2 placed the two sexes into two different bodies.^[8] Part of their evidence comes from the verse where God creates Eve from one of Adam’s ribs. In the original Hebrew, the word tsela did not mean “rib” (that was a later Christian development)^[9], but could instead mean “side,” giving merit to the idea that Eve was simply the other side to Adam.^[10] Rabbis who believed this account may also have believed that “the physical union of man and wife restores the image of the original whole human,”^[11] similar to what Kalmanofsky posits.

The Septuagint

The Septuagint, or LXX, occupies a unique place in religious history, spanning the centuries between Judaism and the rise of Christianity in a Greco-Roman dominated world.^[12] The name is derived from the Latin septuaginta [seventy], referring to the number of Jewish scholars who translated the work into Koine Greek. According to Loader, the LXX was an extremely influential source in both Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity.^[13] However, as Christian reliance on the Septuagint began to grow, Jewish reliance on the text began to diminish.^[14] Nevertheless, the background of the LXX is steeped in many cultures, making it an interesting case study. Because the LXX was a significant translation for Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity it is an important case study for considering translation’s impact on theological conversations.

In its rendering of the first creation story in Genesis 1:26–28, the Septuagint retains most of the original Hebrew grammar. However, one aspect of the translation that differs is its substitution of ‘τὸν ἄνθρωπον’ [the man/humankind] for the Hebrew “Adam.” Similar to the Hebrew, the word ἄνθρωπος does not explicitly refer to the masculine gender, although the word itself is grammatically masculine.^[15] Therefore, both words avoid explicitly gendering the first being. Because this first account of the creation of man is meant to refer to all of mankind, that may be one reason why the vocabulary remains generic. It is not until Genesis 2:16 that the ἄνθρωπος is explicitly given the name Αδαμ [Adam]. While the Hebrew “Adam” is a pun that refers to Adam’s origins from the earth, the LXX is not able to replicate this pun in the same way, leading to an “awkward transition from speaking generically to speaking of Adam.”^[16] Loader provides one explanation for this shift in vocabulary, stating that 2:16 “contains the prohibition which the individual figure … violates in the following chapter.”^[17] In order to separate general humankind from the actions of the obviously gendered Adam, the Septuagint uses two separate words.

While the second creation story in Genesis 2 has obvious implications for gender construction regardless of language, the LXX shifts from the Hebrew to create a more explicit gender hierarchy. Interestingly, the Greek uses a plural command in 2:17 with ‘οὐ φάγεσθε’ [you shall not eat] where the Hebrew uses a singular. Because Eve also partakes in eating the fruit in the next chapter, the Greek acknowledges this action before it happens.^[18] This recognition seems to place the blame of the fall of man more heavily on Eve than the Hebrew Bible does, because she is not yet present in Genesis 2:17. In Genesis 2:23, there is a small difference in the Greek that could be interpreted as creating a gendered hierarchy. Rather than repeating the Hebrew translation of “woman was taken from the man,” the Greek states “ἐκ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς αὐτῆς,” [woman was taken from her man].^[19] Although the use of one possessive pronoun is not the strongest evidence of a gender hierarchy, Greek heavily relies on definite articles in sentence construction. “ἐκ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς” by itself would mean “from the man,” implying that the possessive αὐτῆς was a purposeful addition that inserts a hidden meaning where woman is a derivative of man.

Additionally, the Greek translation does not include the linguistic pun that Hebrew utilizes when stating that woman comes from man.^[20] Instead, the LXX uses γυνή [gune] for woman and ἀνδρὸς [andros] for man. In fact, ἀνδρὸς is the first time that the Septuagint uses a clearly gendered word for man, deviating from its use of the non-gendered Αδαμ and ἄνθρωπος.^[21] Taken alongside the use of the possessive αὐτῆς, the translators may be trying to emphasize the gender hierarchy that appears once woman is placed in relation to man.

Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish scholar living in the 1st century BCE, represents one way that intellectuals conceptualized gender. Philo lived during extraordinary times, having been a Jewish man speaking and thinking in Greek, but living on the outskirts of the Roman Empire in Egypt. Indeed, there is no understating the influence that four different cultures had on his interpretation of the Septuagint.^[22] For example, Philo’s ideas about gender were adopted from Hellenstic and Roman models of masculinity and femininity.^[23] He viewed gender less as physical representations of the body, and more as “philosophical categories,” where masculinity was closest to divinity.^[24] Philo also took the earlier rabbinic idea of Adam as a corporeal androgyne and turned him into a spiritual androgyne, where the female component of the androgyne was hidden by the masculine portion.^[25] Rather than adhering to a strict gender binary, Philo believed in a continuum of gender where man was perfection and woman was an incomplete version of man.^[26] In addition, Philo associated gender traits with the state of the soul, where “feminine” traits such as passivity were associated with moral deficiencies.^[27] Although a person could only identify with one of two genders, they could rest anywhere on this continuum from man to woman, behaving in more masculine or feminine ways, regardless of their designated gender. Philo’s interpretation of a gender continuum where man lies at the top resonates with the Septuagint’s own restructured gender hierarchy. Just as the Septuagint complicates the gender binary with its use of ἄνθρωπος, so too does Philo understand gender as a spectrum rather than a binary. The Septuagint also displays elements of a gender hierarchy in its grammatical construction. Similarly, Philo’s use of a continuum is to show that men who display “feminine” qualities fall farther from perfection. Though Philo had a “fluid concept of gender,” it is not in the progressive way that we think of gender fluidity today because he conceptualized it in an inherently hierarchical way.^[28]

The Latin Vulgate

Out of the three Bibles, the Latin Vulgate is perhaps the version that is most influential within western Christianity today. Born around 347 CE, right after the end of Constantine’s reign, Jerome lived during the transition of the Roman Empire to Christianity. Jerome was known as a vir trilingus, a trilingual man, to his peers, schooled in Latin, and picking up Hebrew and Greek later in life.^[29] Although Jerome produced commentaries on many Christian texts, his most influential work was the Latin Vulgate, a Latin translation of the Bible. Translated in the 4th century CE, the Vulgate did not rely on the Septuagint like many previous Latin translations of the Bible did.^[30] Instead, Jerome translated directly from the Hebrew, which drew criticism from many theologians at the time, including Augustine.^[31] By the time Jerome had undertaken his work, many translations in Greek and Latin floated around the Roman Empire, complicating the question of how much impact any singular translation had. By the 13th century, however, the Vulgate had become the versio vulgata, the common version, that would become the official Latin Bible of the Catholic Church.

Similar to the Hebrew and Greek, the Latin translation of Genesis 1:27 uses both singular and plural pronouns in the same sentence. In addition, Jerome uses homo/hominem to refer to Adam, a word that also implies general humankind over the gendered vir [man]. In doing so, he follows the Hebrew and Greek traditions that precede him. However, he deviates from previous models in his use of masculum et feminam. Unlike the previous two translations, Jerome does not use two adjectives in this phrase. While masculum remains an adjective, he uses femina, the noun meaning woman or female, rather than the adjectival form femininus. Although this difference could simply be chalked up to an error in vocabulary, it could be evidence of a clearer gender binary.

The most interesting choice of translation arises in his translation of Genesis 2:23 with the word virago. In the line “vocabitur virago quoniam de viro sumpta est” [she shall be called woman because she was taken from man], Jerome participates in the same wordplay that the Hebrew and English do, but that the Greek lacks. Because woman was created from man, so too does the word woman come from man. However, the question arises about his word choice, because there was a more obvious pun—the word virgo [maiden].^[32] One might argue that virgo would more accurately describe Eve, who represents the original and therefore perfect woman, as the word implies a sense of purity and chasteness. Instead, he used a word that connotes masculinity within a woman’s body.

Jerome’s choice to use virago may reflect his own views on women. In one letter to a female protégé, Jerome tells her that “when a woman puts aside all things in service of the Lord, she becomes male.”^[33] For him, the ideal state that a woman should ascend to was male, because it was the closest to divinity.^[34] Originally used in the Roman Augustan era to mean “a man-like, heroic maiden” or “a female warrior,”^[35] virago often described war-like virgin goddesses like Minerva and Diana. By Jerome’s age in the 4th century CE, virago had come to symbolize “female masculinity, virtue, and spiritual progress.”^[36] Bolen argues that Jerome used the term in his translation to describe his perfect, prelapsarian version of Eve. Prior to the fall, Eve was somebody who represented masculine virtue, but lived in the body of a woman.^[37] By the Middle Ages, the term had become fully entrenched in medieval literature to describe a woman who “embodied the virtues of Christian masculinity” while remaining a virgin.^[38] In order to relieve their fears over women taking on religious roles, men used the word to open up a space for women to inhabit; by their logic, if a woman could hold a religious position, it must be because they had many man-like qualities.^[39] Indeed, Jerome’s choice to include the word in his translation, centuries prior, is indicative of a larger trend to both glorify and criticize women who did not adhere to gender norms, and his work was highly influential in shaping the virago paradigm of the Middle Ages.^[40] Through the Vulgate, we can see a stricter gender hierarchy emerge, in which men attempt to categorize women who deviate from gender norms in order to minimize their threat to society.

Conclusion

The small differences between each translation indicate some level of change, whether that be linguistic or cultural. It is apparent that translation and intellectual thought interact to reflect general societal themes on gender, as scholars grappled with the language of gender in religious texts. The Hebrew, Greek, and Latin texts all had varying levels of gender fluidity, though the Greek and Latin confirmed a stronger gender hierarchy. Perhaps in an attempt to reconcile conflicting depictions of gender in the Bible, the Septuagint and Vulgate tightened their use of language to minimize ambiguity. However, it is also likely that each translation simply reflects the beliefs of the translator, who allows their own thoughts on gender to permeate through their language choices. Although it is difficult to draw conclusions about what the general population may have believed about the construction of gender due to a lack of non-elite sources, I wanted to understand what gender ideas mattered most to the intellectuals who engaged with textual material. As the Bible moved from Hebrew to Greek to Latin and beyond, a stricter gender binary gradually emerged, going hand in hand with the writings of religious scholars who also began to favor a binary over the centuries. It is only recently that scholars have begun rethinking this emphasis on the gender binary within translation, attempting to recontextualize the links between gender and religion in a way that complicates the current binary construction of gender.