Ben Witherington Discusses Biblical Gendered Language
Ben Witherington III
Ben Witherington offers an interpretation of the brief episode about Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well from the Gospel of John to resolve an apparent oxymoron with the God language used there.
A quick look at God language in the New Testament reveals that only male-gendered language is used to describe God (e.g., he, him, father, etc.). According to Ben Witherington of Asbury Theological Seminary, gendered language such as calling God “Father” does not imply that God has a gender; rather, this sort of God language describes a relational aspect of God to his people.
Unlike Hebrew and Greek (in which all nouns, even inanimate ones, have gender), English is not a gendered language. Thus, Ben Witherington explains, when we hear male pronouns, we (wrongly) assume it implies a physically male gender. But “there is no connection between gendered language and gender identity,” according to Ben Witherington. “Our cultural biases have led to an overly sexualized reading of the God language in the Bible.”
For more about gendered language in the Bible, see Ben Witherington III, Biblical Views: “Spirited Discourse About God Language in the New Testament,” in the May/June 2012 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
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