What if it was written in a genderless language? In a language without plurals? Inaccuracies pop up everytime a piece is translated. |
All of the evidence is against this, given the presence of gendered pronouns in both ancient and modern Semitic languages. But since proving a negative is impossible ("Can you prove there wasn't a pre-pre-pre-Hebrew genderless proto-language?"), it's pretty easy to go into a fatal spiral of counterfactuals. Not would I would call intellectually honest inquiry, though. |
Isaiah 54:5-6 For the One who made you - whose name is "God of Hosts" - will espouse you. The Holy One of Israel - who is called "God of all the earth" - will redeem you. God has called you back as a wife forlorn and forsaken. Can one cast off the wife of his youth? said your God. Also, most of Hosea 2. |
There is a Jewish midrash (oral tradition) that Adam was both male and female before Eve was split from him, at which point, they became male and female. "Adam" in Hebrew comes from the same root word as "Adom" which means "red" (like the clay of the earth that God used to make Adam) or "Adamah" which means "from the ground." |
Some of us do... ✡️ |
This is going to be good... What language is that? |
Ummm... he is called "Father" by Jesus Christ. We do not see Him as gender free. |
He is the Father. |
I understand gender neutral language but the prayers I grew up with mean a lot to me so I want to still say He |
+1 I think Christianity's placement of God in the Trinity as the Father to the male Son of God, Jesus Christ, makes it harder for anyone to conceptualize God as anything other than male. |
God exists. |
No. genesis can be read as God saying “we will make him in our own image.” The insistence that it is masculine third person singular is usually put forth by uneducated “preachers” who don’t understand how translation works and who don’t actually know anything about other languages and who aren’t fluent in anything except English. There are many languages that actually have a pronoun that is third person but neither masculine nor feminine. The closest English equivalent would be something like “one” (One often enjoys these things, one often does these things, for example.) God is speaking as “one” in these passages. It is modern readers who have added the He. |
I had a mean abusive father who was an SOB. I remember learning about God the Father when I was six or seven and thinking “shit, I have to have two of them?” It was hard enough to hide and Defend myself from the one abusive mean drunk. Why would anyone want two fathers? I still struggle with this. |