On Beyond Gender: Representation of God in the Torah and in Three Recent Renditions into English

Three recently published English translations of the Torah refer to God in unusual ways: They offer the reader the rare experience of encountering the biblical God as a persona who is “beyond” gender. The three renditions, which are of related provenance and presented as “gender accurate” or “gender...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nashim : a journal of Jewish women's studies & gender issues 2008-03 (15), p.108-137
Main Author: Stein, David E. S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Attributes
Bible
Criticism
Deities
English language
Gender
Gender neutral language
God
Grammatical gender
Humans
Imagery
Jewish studies, gender studies, cultural studies, history
Judaism
Language translation
Literary translation
Personification
Pronouns
Reading
Torah
Torah scrolls
Translations
Translations and translating
Citations: Items that this one cites
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Summary:Three recently published English translations of the Torah refer to God in unusual ways: They offer the reader the rare experience of encountering the biblical God as a persona who is “beyond” gender. The three renditions, which are of related provenance and presented as “gender accurate” or “gender sensitive,” appear inThe Torah: A Modern Commentary, revised edition (2005);The Contemporary Torah(2006); andThe Torah: A Women's Commentary(2008). Having served as the central member on the translation teams that addressed gender issues, I review considerations for construing God's gender as represented in the Torah. The analysis, based on a reconstruction of ancient plain-sense reading conventions and concepts about deity, explains why a (mostly) gender-neutral translation produces the least distortion of the Torah's God-language. The article then characterizes the three new renditions and their God-language, including the representation of God's name and the rendering of ascriptive imagery.
ISSN:0793-8934
1565-5288
DOI:10.2979/NAS.2008.-.15.108