The NIV and the King of Sheba

The Washington Post reports that a secretary in D.C. is now the king of a village in Ghana.

There's a problem with this; she's a woman. Not a problem for the people who allegedly elected her, but a problem for the English language, which has never referred to a woman as king before.

The word queen has always had an exclusively female connotation, even before it took on specific reference to royalty. In recent centuries it has been used both for the consort of a male monarch and for a female monarch; queen mother is now used for the mother of the monarch (a distinction already made in the NIV). But the editors of the Washington Post now want to call a female monarch king--without bothering to mention what they will call her husband. Or, actually, husbands; kings in Ghana are always polygamous.

The Committee for Bible Translation believes that literary English changes measurably every generation; certainly this is a new English term for female monarch, and they had better take it into consideration for their upcoming revision of the NIV: "Queen of Sheba" is sexist, outmoded, and discriminatory. Time to start getting used to calling her "The King of Sheba," or the New and Improved NIV will be obsolete before the ink has finished drying on its pages.

Parenthood is not a civil right

An American-born baby has been taken away from his mother because she doesn't understand English well enough to call 911. The only bright spot in the story is that the child is guaranteed American citizenship, but only by virtue of having been born in an American hospital.

There's a problem here. Being able to call 911 is not a fundamental right, but parenthood is. In America, where the woman has been liberated from being under the control of the father of her children, she is now under bondage to the State instead--a State that grants her custody of her own child only if it deems her a suitable parent. And the list of disqualifiers for that role is apparently infinite.

I, for one, do not consider this an improvement.

The Updated, Newly Revised, Politically Correct, Cutting Edge Version of the Bible--for the next three to five years anyway.

Oh boy. I'm not surprised to hear that Biblica (fka the International Bible Society of New York, about 3 name changes ago) will cease publishing the TNIV. It just hasn't been selling. The good news is that they are admitting that they went too far in the translation itself. The bad news is that they aren't admitting how stupid it was to push the TNIV as the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel. It was that, more than anything else, that turned me so much against it. Of course, in the same breath they were admitting that no translation is perfect, especially one over 30 years old, so it was a foregone conclusion that the TNIV would go out of print later if not sooner.

But what really twists my shorts is the admission that it was a mistake to promise not to ever change the NIV again (this announcement made shortly before the original release of the TNIV). They already bombed changing the NIV last time, and they're already planning to do it again? This is not going to help Zondervan's market share at all.

Douglas Moo, a professor at Wheaton College and chairman of the Committee on Bible Translation, said the group is committed to "a complete review of every gender related change."

"I am not sure how it's going to come out," Moo said. "We have a genuine, authentic review process ... Everything is on the table." Most changes will have nothing to do with gender inclusivity, Moo said.

Yeah, right. That's pretty much what they said last time.

Well, the market will decide which version is best. But if they really take the 1984 NIV out of print, I don't think we'll ever see a Biblica edition of the Bible at the top of the sales charts again. There are just too many other options that weren't there in 1984.

Citizens are getting involved in Government--whether They like it or not!

Note to Government officials: If you open a meeting to the public to discuss a controversial legal proposal, you'd better count on at least 500 people showing up to oppose it.

Last night the city of Goshen, Indiana had to move the venue of their city council meeting to the local high school in order to accommodate the crowd that showed up to oppose an ordinance forbidding Goshen businesses from keeping female impersonators out of the ladies' restrooms. And even then, police were already turning people away at the door by the time the meeting was to begin. Most of the attendees weren't Goshen residents, but that should come as no surprise: most of the people who patronize Goshen businesses aren't either. Since these customers can't vote for Goshen City Council, this was their only chance to make their voice heard, before having to vote with their gas pedals and pocketbooks should the ordinance pass. The meeting went on for over six hours, with over 100 people speaking out against the ordinance, before the Council finally voted on it.

And it would have passed, had not the council members received from a pastor in a neighboring town a book exposing the likely legal consequences of such a law. Upon reading it, one of the ordinance's co-sponsors, Chic Lanz, reversed his vote and the motion failed, 3 to 4.

Voting is both a right and a privilege, but an even more powerful right, enshrined in the First Amendment, is to communicate one's concerns to government officials without fear of reprisal. Barack Obama has made that a little more difficult--his campaign once sent the Secret Service after a woman who voiced her reasons for refusing to donate to it--but this is one case where the pen, skillfully wielded, was more powerful than the ballot card-punch.

Fuel burns

Southern California is aflame with several massive wildfires eating through thousands of acres of federal land.

That last phrase is the key to the problem. LA suburbanites have built their homes right up to the wooded foothills that house, among others, the Los Padres National Forest. Now, there are two things about this that make the fire so devastating.

One, since the federal land is rugged, fire crews have a hard time getting out on it to put out the fires.

Two, since the federal land is protected, no one has been allowed to clear out the dead brush that is currently feeding the flames. Some of that fuel has been accumulating for fifty years.

The combination of suburbia bordering a massive fuel dump has naturally resulted in the loss of dozens of homes, with many more to come before the fire can be contained. Ironically, the best news for these homeowners is that the remnants of Hurricane Jimena are on their way with far more water than has been thrown at the fire to date.

The other good news is that the burned-over areas are not going to be susceptible to wildfires for at least another few years.