Revised Bible Tones Down References to ‘Man’

The Bible version most commonly used in mainline Protestant churches and in biblical scholarship has undergone a long-awaited editing to improve the English phrasing and to eliminate references to “man” when both sexes are meant.

The New Revised Standard Version, which will be available in bookstores next summer, was previewed by Bruce M. Metzger, who chaired the team of Christian and Jewish scholars who began working on the new edition in 1974.

The current version, which was first published nearly four decades ago, has such familiar lines as, “Man shall not live by bread alone.” But the New Revised Standard Version committee decided to render the line as, “One shall not live by bread alone.”

Both Men and Women Meant

Metzger, an emeritus professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, said in an interview this week that that change was made because it was “an unnecessary, restrictive use of the word ‘man,’ whereas the import was both men and women.”

In the case of “O men of little faith,” an expression attributed to Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Metzger said that the word for man was not even present in the Greek texts. The new translation will read, “O you of little faith.”

Likewise, in the Gospel of John, the new edition has Jesus saying that when he is “lifted up from the earth,” he will draw all “people” to him--not all “men” to him as the current edition says.

6 Publishers Licensed

Metzger, 75, who was honored Friday as a distinguished alumnus of the Princeton seminary, discussed the new edition last week in Lexington, Ky., at a meeting of the Governing Board of the National Council of Churches, which holds the copyright on the Revised Standard Version. Six U.S. publishers have been licensed to print the work.

There has been no dearth of new Bible translations in recent decades, including versions produced especially for conservative Protestants or Catholics. Two best sellers in Christian bookstores are the New King James Bible and the New International Version. But the Revised Standard Version is the standard in United Methodist and Presbyterian churches, for instance, and is the preferred version of mainstream biblical scholars.

The new Bible edition retains masculine references to God in keeping with the Hebrew and Greek words in biblical manuscripts. Thus, the committee differed from the team that changed “Father” to “Parent” and “Kingdom” to “Realm” in biblical passages for the controversial “inclusive language” lectionaries published in the mid-1980s by a National Council of Churches agency. The “thees” and “thous” and “thys” common to English-language Bibles since the time of the King James Bible have been eliminated from the new edition.

Prayer, Psalm Wording

The original Revised Standard Version removed the antiquated language throughout the Old and New Testaments, except for the wording in prayers and in the psalms because “thy” and “thou” sounded appropriate in those cases.

“But the old RSV (Revised Standard Version) introduced a distinction that isn’t there in the biblical manuscripts,” Metzger said.

The translation team decided against some stylistic changes that have been introduced into some other modern editions of the Bible. Metzger said that the new Revised Standard Version does not use contractions (“too chatty”) and does not capitalize the pronouns referring to God and Jesus (“no Bibles did until recently”).

Some revisions were made to avoid misunderstanding because of changes in English vernacular:

- The 50th psalm now has a line, “I will accept no bull from your house.” That has been altered to “I will not accept a bull from your house.”

- The Song of Solomon’s first chapter in the old edition says, “I am very dark, but comely. . . .” The new version substitutes “and” for the word “but.” “The Hebrew word wa , 49 times out of 50 is translated ‘and,’ ” Metzger said. “We felt we shouldn’t allow the idea to surface that because you’re black you couldn’t be beautiful.”

- In the New Testament, Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Once I was stoned . . . “ but it now will read, “Once I received a stoning. . . .”

Problem About Elephant

The discussion on wording by the 30 men and women scholars sometimes got intense, especially when the committee voted to reject “particularly fond suggestions” made by panelists.

Occasionally there was humor, he said, such as when the committee wrestled with describing how a Jewish soldier got under a Syrian elephant and stabbed the elephant in the soft part of its belly. After a great deal of debate about using “stooped” or “snuck,” the committee decided on: “He got under the elephant.”

Another light moment came over the New Testament passage that says Jesus took his disciples “apart,” he said. That was changed to read he took them “aside.”