Simon Cox Blog: Gender and the Christian Standard Bible: Trevin Wax Answers My Questions

Monday 12 June 2017

Gender and the Christian Standard Bible: Trevin Wax Answers My Questions

I spoke with CSB publisher Trevin Wax.

I’m excited to welcome Trevin Wax to The Exchange today. He gave us an overview of the release of the Christian Standard Bible (CSB) translation a few months ago, which has now launched.

Disclosure: The CSB is published by LifeWay, where I was a Vice President until a year ago, and I still have connections with them, including that Trevin and I co-edit The Gospel Project. However, I used the HCSB in my church before I went to work at LifeWay, and its update (the CSB) is the Bible I now use most.

So, I’m an interested user.

On to Trevin…

There’s been some dustup about the Bible in regards to its gender usage, so I asked Trevin to jump in and answer a few questions.

A recent article in The Atlantic claimed that the CSB has embraced a gender-inclusive translation philosophy. Then, Denny Burk responded and said that the CSB does not.

So, which is it, Trevin?

Well, the Christian Standard Bible is not a gender-inclusive translation—that’s not the philosophy that undergirds our translation work. The CSB is gender accurate.

The CSB’s translation committee is made up of conservative biblical scholars, and their approach on gender usage lines up with the aim of the entire translation effort: fidelity to the original text of the Bible. Translating accurately is our agenda—when the original text means male, we translate as male; when it means both, we translate as both. Masculine terms (Father, Son, King, etc.) and pronouns (he, him, his) are retained whenever they refer to God. Likewise, when Scripture presents historical accounts and parables referring to male humans, the Translation Oversight Committee retained masculine terms and pronouns.

So, we think that is gender accurate. Sure, some ...