An updated translation of the Bible that focuses on gender inclusivity will drop “wise men” in favor of “magi” in the Christmas story of the Gospel of Matthew, according to preview excerpts.
The New Revised Standard Version updated edition of the Bible was approved last week by the National Council of Churches and will be published as an electronic version on the Word@Hand app on Nov. 1 and in print on May 1, 2022.
It will feature a few noteworthy changes.
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The NRSV previously translated Matthew 2:1 this way: “In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem.”
The NRSV updated edition drops the masculine reference to “wise men” and replaces it with the original Greek word “magi” as used by the gospel writer, with the footnote “astrologers.”
NRSV updated edition editors say “wise men” was only justified by its traditional usage, but the Greek word “magi” has become well known in English and is now more commonly used in other Bible translations, poetry, drama and film.
The NRSV is the Bible translation sponsored by the National Council of Churches, with 38 member denominations, and compiled by the Society of Biblical Literature.
“Some people may say, ‘Why do we have to change the Bible?’” said Bishop Teresa Jefferson-Snorton, chair of the NCC governing board. “It’s not changing the Bible. It’s an effort to help us be better able to understand the message of the Bible.”
According to the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, the NRSV has at times been the third most-used English translation of the Bible, behind the King James Version and the New International Version.
Jefferson-Snorton, who oversees Christian Methodist Episcopal churches in Alabama and Florida, was elected chair of the National Council of Churches on Oct. 13, at the same meeting the updated Bible translation was approved by the NCC.
“There was a body of scholars that represented the various faith traditions, who did their scholarly search of, in particular, words that needed clarification, either because they were antiquated or not common in the English vernacular now, or they were seen as not being translated accurately in the past,” Jefferson-Snorton said. “Those two things are the essential updates that have been made.”
It’s an update of the NRSV translation that was published in 1989 after years of research by scholars and that placed an emphasis on replacing male pronouns that were in a context referring to people. For example, “brothers” was translated as “brothers and sisters” and references to “man” or “mankind” were replaced with more inclusive terms such as “human beings” when the reference was not intended to be gender-specific.
“The last NRSV – New Revised Standard Version – was done almost 40 years ago,” Jefferson-Snorton said. “In the past 40 years we have found, archeologists have found, and been able to translate, so many more of the scrolls and things that have been discovered. This updated edition seeks to use those new translations to help clarify what the writer was actually saying.”
Updating any translation of the Bible can be controversial, because Christians often view the version they are most used to as the Word of God.
“That’s at the exclusion of remembering that whatever translation you use and whatever version you use – such as the King James – that was a translation,” Jefferson-Snorton said.
“It really depends on how people understand the Bible,” Jefferson-Snorton said. “People who understand the Bible as this sort of inerrant Word of God and have this mythology of God actually dictating the Bible, will probably have difficulty with it.”
The King James Version of the Bible, also called the King James Bible, was commissioned by the king of England in 1604, published in 1611 and became the most influential English translation because of its majestic style of language that was contemporaneous with the great dramatist William Shakespeare. Some of the most memorable scripture verses are still recited and quoted from the King James Version.
Although the King James Version remains the most popular Bible, over the centuries, the meaning of many verses became shrouded in the antiquated language. But of course, the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew and the New Testament was written in Greek, not the king’s English.
“That was not the original text,” Jefferson-Snorton said.
Translators over the past century have tried to update and clarify the Bible’s meaning and take advantage of new archeological finds that shed light on the original texts and their meaning.
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, nearly 1,000 texts discovered from 1946-56 in desert caves on the Dead Sea shore that date from 408 B.C. to 318 A.D. in the period when the Bible was being compiled, shed new light on biblical words and phrases and their meaning.
“I hope that one of the ways in which the National Council of Churches can really help improve biblical literacy is by seeing this updated edition as a way to help people grasp the revelatory nature of the Bible,” Jefferson-Snorton said.
‘Female servant’ replaces ‘girl’
The NRSV editors also changed “servant-girl” to “female servant” in Mark 14:69, because “using the word girl to refer to a young woman is today regarded as demeaning,” the editors explain in a preview.
The NRSV editors also note the language of enslavement is undergoing change as well. In Galatians 4:22, the term “a slave woman” is changed to “an enslaved woman,” to “highlight the fact that it is an imposed condition, not an intrinsic aspect of a person’s being.”
‘Having epilepsy’ replaces ‘epileptics’
The same approach was taken to not identify people in terms of a disability, such as in Matthew 4:24. The NRSV translation of “they brought to him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics and paralytics, and he cured them” will be updated to refer to “people possessed by demons, having epilepsy, or afflicted with paralysis, and he cured them.”
The NRSV was an update of the Revised Standard Version published in 1952, which was the first translation to make use of the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah. The RSV was a revision of the American Standard Version of 1901, which was a result of British efforts to update the King James Version starting in 1870, resulting in the Revised Version, published in 1885 in the United Kingdom.
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