I’m sure that most of my readers already know what a pronoun is, but, just in case you happened to skip (or forget) every grammar lesson in elementary, middle, and high school, a pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun. Pronouns are considered a part of speech. They have also generated a lot of controversy in recent years, due to the fact that personal pronouns are sometimes gendered.
Some people with left-leaning or progressive political inclinations have started stating their pronouns in their social media profiles or (less frequently) when they introduce themselves in person, so that other people will know how to refer to them. They do this because, in some cases, a person’s gendered pronouns may not be obvious from their name or appearance. This is especially often true in the case of transgender people.
Naturally, many conservatives are outraged over this. In fact, the word pronouns has become such a buzzword among conservatives that some conservatives seem to have forgotten what the word itself actually means. Some conservatives, falsely assuming that pronouns are something that only transgender people have and seeking to undermine them, have made the assertion: “There are no pronouns in the Bible.” This claim, however, is false, regardless of whether you are reading the Bible in English or in the original languages.
Lavern Spicer’s tweet
Lavern Spicer is a conservative Republican politician who has already declared her candidacy in the 2022 U.S. congressional midterm elections to represent Florida’s twenty-fourth congressional district (i.e., the district containing the city of Miami, Florida) in the U.S. House of Representatives. On 24 July 2021, Spicer issued a tweet in which she declared: “There are no pronouns in the Bible.” She swiftly followed this up with a tweet advertising her candidacy for the House.
As of the time I am writing this, Spicer’s tweet has received 1,775 likes and 303 retweets, which is far more than it should. Although this incident happened over a month ago, I thought it was pretty hilarious and it pertains to the Bible, language, and gender, which are three of my areas of interest, so I thought I would write a short piece about it.
ABOVE: Screenshot of Lavern Spicer’s tweet on 25 July 2021 that there are “no pronouns in the Bible”
Pronouns in the English Bible
For anyone who knows what the word pronoun means and who has actually read the Bible, Spicer’s assertion is obviously complete nonsense. Pronouns are an essential part of speech and they are thoroughly ubiquitous throughout the Bible, both in English and in the original languages. You can take nearly any verse from any English translation of the Bible and find pronouns in it. For instance, here is the translation of the Gospel of John 3:16 that is given in the King James Version (KJV) that Evangelical Protestants love quoting, with pronouns bolded:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
In this passage, the words he, his, whosoever, and him are all pronouns, because they are all words that take the place of nouns. If we were to rewrite this passage without pronouns, it would read as follows:
“For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only begotten Son, that any person believing in the Son should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Notice how this rendition of the passage is extremely redundant and unpleasant to read.
It is also worth noting that, as I previously mentioned in this article I wrote in May 2021, the King James Version of the Bible actually uses the pronoun they to refer to a singular antecedent of unspecified gender on multiple occasions. For instance, in the KJV’s translation of the Book of Deuteronomy 17:5, God commands:
“Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.”
If you are deciding which pronouns to use based on which pronouns are used in the KJV, then you have no choice but to accept that they can be used as a singular gender-neutral pronoun, which is something that contemporary conservatives like Spicer constantly seek to deny.
ABOVE: Illustration by the French illustrator James Tissot from c. 1900, showing the stoning of a Sabbath breaker as described in the Book of Numbers in the Hebrew Bible
Pronouns in the Greek New Testament
Someone defending Spicer might point out that all the writings that are now included in the New Testament were originally written in Koine Greek, not English. This is true. It is also true that personal pronouns are generally less frequently used in the Koine Greek New Testament than they are in English translations of it. For instance, here is the text of John 3:16 in the original Koine Greek with pronouns bolded:
“οὕτως γὰρ ἠγάπησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν κόσμον, ὥστε τὸν υἱὸν τὸν μονογενῆ ἔδωκεν, ἵνα πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων εἰς αὐτὸν μὴ ἀπόληται ἀλλ᾽ ἔχῃ ζωὴν αἰώνιον.”
This means, in my own attempt at a fairly literal translation:
“For the [masculine] God so loved the [masculine] cosmos that [he] gave the [masculine] son, the [masculine] only-begotten one, so that every [masculine person] who is faithful to him will not perish, but have eternal [feminine] life.”
The pronoun “he” as the subject of the verb ἔδωκεν, meaning “gave,” is implied, rather than directly stated. Similarly, God’s possession of the accusative masculine singular noun υἱὸν, meaning “son” is indicated through the use of the masculine accusative singular form of the definite article τὸν, rather than through a possessive pronoun.
The word ὁ is the masculine nominative singular form of the definite article, but, in the second instance where it is used in this passage, it is used as a pronoun meaning “the male person who.” The word is grammatically masculine, but, in this instance, it is assumed to apply to every person, regardless of gender. In Koine Greek, the masculine grammatical gender is generally the default. When an author wants to refer to someone who could be of any gender, they virtually always use masculine grammatical forms.
Finally, the word αὐτὸν is a straightforward masculine accusative singular personal pronoun meaning “him.”
Thus, although personal pronouns are less commonly used in Koine Greek, they do indeed exist. Moreover, despite the fact that personal pronouns are less common, Koine Greek is, if anything, a far more aggressively gendered language than English, since every single noun, every single article, and every single adjective has its own inherent grammatical gender. Thus, in John 3:16, we know that God is masculine (at least in terms of grammar), even without any pronouns that refer directly back to him, because the masculine form of the definite article is used to refer to him.
ABOVE: Jesus talking to the Twelve Apostles, painted by the French illustrator James Tissot between 1886 and 1894
Nice short post, though I wonder why you didn’t cover pronouns in Biblical Hebrew. Is it because you’re more familiar with Greek than Hebrew or because you thought it wasn’t as relevant?
The problem is that I only know a few words and phrases in Biblical Hebrew and I cannot read the language fluently. By contrast, I can read Koine Greek quite well, as long as I am allowed to look up unfamiliar words.
Ok, just wanted to know. I do know someone who is versed in it, I might ask him some examples to reply it back you if you have some curiosity.
I do speak/read Hebrew and can confirm the Hebrew Bible uses pronouns in basically the same way English does.
I don’t understand in what sense that is… Hebrew as a language has gender, grammatically, as many languages do whereas English does not. Many God names in Hebrew contain male and female referents, whereas most English translations render them all as male. How might we better approach translating things like the “feminine” nature of the Yah in Yahweh, or the nuanced meaning of Shaddai, etc., etc.?
Off topic but did you use the Buth pronunciation when learning Koine? That’s what my professor had my class use. It threw me off because I had been using the classical or Erasmian pronunciation when teaching myself Koine.
I have never taken Koine Greek specifically in a formal classroom setting. While I was in high school, I taught myself some Koine Greek using a website I found online that had free “lesson” articles explaining Koine grammar and syntax, with New Testament vocabulary lists and “quizzes” to test your knowledge. The website recommended using the Modern Greek pronunciation for Koine.
My university only offers classes in Classical Attic Greek and Modern Greek, not Koine. I am currently on my fifth semester of classes in Classical Attic Greek. All classes are taught using the Erasmian pronunciation.
Nice analysis, as always, although I agree with RKirby3 that similar examples in Biblical Hebrew would have been even more enlightening. But then, you only know what you know.
If nothing else, this just reinforces my long-standing assertion that conservative politicians are, generally, idiots.
I’ve never heard of Lavern Spicer and I don’t know what she actually meant by that, but I know that people do sometimes make a statement that sounds absurd when taken literally, but is meant to imply or suggest something more than is said. In this case, since the literal meaning is so obviously absurd, I wonder whether she intended to say that there is no sense of pronoun choice in the Bible, i.e, that no one chooses a set of pronouns based on personal preference or a sense of his or her “real” gender. This is true not only of the Bible but of pretty much all literature before the 21st century, so it’s still pointless, but it may be closer to what she actually meant. Or not.
That’s just what I was thinking.
So this whole essay is a bit pointless since the target of it almost certainly did not mean what she is accused of writing.
Mr. Mcdonald might change this essay to one of praise for the English language as being more gender neutral than either ancient Hebrew or ancient Greek or many modern languages, for that matter.
Why should they? You’re defending Spicer for sloppy communication skills in the public forum. Lazy rhetoric should be reserved for casual communication. Would you defend a newspaper for using the wrong it’s/its in a headline (not that such things don’t happen)?
I’m not defending the woman.
Far-right Black persons belong on The Island of Dr. Moreau with other synthetic misbreeds.
I’m only suggesting Young McDonald might stop taking ill-considered statements literally and making very detailed rebuttals of them.
We’re a Spence stan here, and anything they wanna conduct rhetorical exercises on is fine by us.
Barring, you know, unexpectedly joining a cult or something.
As I note in my article above, I wrote this article partly because I thought the line about there being “no pronouns in the Bible” was hilarious and partly because I thought I could use it as an opportunity to teach people a little bit about pronoun use in Koine Greek.
Yes, obviously Spencer is being a tiny bit tongue-in-cheek but anyone who makes the argument “there are no pronouns in the Bible” is demonstrating a keen willingness to play hard a loose with the facts and Spencer argues his political point pretty clearly before using the situation as an opportunity to give us a lesson on New Testament Greek
“For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only begotten Son, that any person believing in the Son should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Redundant and unpleasant is just like how I translate Latin.
Would be fun to see a guest post or link to Biblical Hebrew, etc., especially as we’re pretty sure there are some Very Interesting God names and referents involving masc/fem/plural. Also so much of this conservative pronoun hysteria prob wouldn’t even be happening if most Americans weren’t so dadgum monolithically monolingual in a language that skews gender binary. Many languages are no such thing.
Also, re whatsherface the politician: she wants to run a food pantry for the whole country? Wha?
A telling comment. I have read the Bible, several times (many for certain chapters) and I would not be able to answer the question “Are there any pronouns in the Bible?” off of the top of my head (except maybe for He).
But I am also not an idiot and I would go to BibleGateway.com, call up certain versions of the Bible and search for words like “He.” Oh gosh, look at how many times “he and He” show up. For the KJV it was over 10,000 times. So, not only are there pronouns in the Bible, there is a shitload of them.
Just when we thought US politics could not get more surreal………..
I am a Christian but not being a pastor or a Bible scholar I have never studied either Hebrew or Koine Greek, however do either of those languages have a neuter gender?
Nope, only Greek.
That said, Greek uses the neuter only when referring to things, not unlike ‘it’ in English. It’s not used to refer to mixed groups or people of unknown gender. Some related Indoeuropean languages, however, do, such as Old Norse.