I’ve been on a Christopher Hitchens roll of late.
It began with his fascinating back and forth with Marilyn Sewell (the Unitarian clergyperson) in which he deftly revealed the vapidity of revisionist Christianity. Now, he’s onto the gender neutral folks. In the latest issue Vanity Fair he offers high praise for the King James Bible. Being the 400th anniversary of the KJV, Hitchens makes the case for the superiority of the King James Bible over all comers. In one section of the essay, Hitchens takes on the gender neutral language increasingly prevalent in modern versions. In particular, he criticizes the Contemporary English Version’s use of “my friends” in place of the KJV’s “brethren.” He writes:
“Pancake-flat: suited perhaps to a basement meeting of A.A., these words could not hope to penetrate the torpid, resistant fog in the mind of a 16-year-old boy, as their original had done for me. There’s perhaps a slightly ingratiating obeisance to gender neutrality in the substitution of ‘my friends’ for ‘brethren,’ but to suggest that Saint Paul, of all people, was gender-neutral is to re-write the history as well as to rinse out the prose.”
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