Children of God or Sons of God

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Sam_777

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Please correct me if I’m wrong here, but doesn’t Children means males & females (aka sons & daughters), while Sons means only males?

So which is more accurate to use Children (to include both males & females) or to use Sons, I see almost half of the translations supporting Children while the other half support Sons, so which is more accurate?

Bible translations that use “Children of God”:
My other question, Jesus as “Son of Man”, because “Man” is giving some confusion for some of our English Islamic people (they think he has a biological father), in Arabic we have no problem with that, because its equivalent to “Son of the human being” which includes males & females, by that we can say he is Son of Virgin Mary, I’ve seen only one Bible translation that uses “human being” instead of “Son of Man” which is the (New Century Version):
“In my vision at night I saw in front of me someone who looked like a human being coming on the clouds in the sky. He came near God, who has been alive forever, and he was led to God.”

Does anyone know the original word in Greek, and can it be used to indicate males & females.
 
The Greek huios (son), teknon (offspring), and thugater (daughter) are all obviously different words, and not simply different forms of the same root. In my opinion, they should be translated as such. As far as translations go, how they translate a word/phrase is going to depend on whether it’s a word-for-word or thought-for-thought type of translation, or a combination. Very few translations are word-for-word, so what you end up with is different translations using different words to translate the same original Greek word.

If the question is whether women have the same status of men, I think that’s pretty clear. The the Bible states quite explicitly that women are daughters of God: 2 Cor 6:18, 1 Peter 3:6 (that actually says daughters of Abraham, but you get the point). So, on that point, women are adopted “children” of God, just as much as men are.

I see several explanations for the way most New Testament authors write using son (huios) instead of children (teknon). Some possible explanations:
  1. It was simply a misogynistic society, and that’s just the way people wrote.
  2. As Paul states elsewhere, there is no more male or female, slave or free, etc.
  3. “Huios” is simply idiomatic and people understood it to mean all children.
The last is my personal preference. God refers to Israel as his “Son” in the Old Testament (Ex 4:22). The translators of the LXX translated this as “huios” in Greek, as they did elsewhere when translating “son” from Hebrew. Since Israel was an entire nation, and would have included women, I’d say it’s reasonable to understand “sons of God” in the sense of #3 above, possibly in combination with #2, because these aren’t really mutually exclusive.

As far as the English speaking Islamic confusion, I think it’s best just to show a parallel. Jesus was described as the “son of David” yet he obviously wasn’t David’s literal son. Again, it’s idiomatic. I think that Muslims understand this quite well, and they only introduce this phrase to try to distort the Bible to their own understanding that Jesus was merely a prophet and not the Son of God.
 
it depends on the passage. what does it say in the original language and what is the meaning of the phrase in that context. for instance there is a responsorial psalm that refers to Sons of God, and the inclusive language gurus inevitably change it to children of God which is wrong in that context because the psalm is clearly referring in the body to the Son of God-Jesus Christ-and the fact that those who become through adoption sons of God inherit the privileges of sonship. In the culture which produced this psalm (and I don’t remember which it is) sonship meant something quite different legally, religiously and familialy than “child of”, so to change the wording changes and waters down the entire meaning of the verse itself, and of the whole psalm.

there are other passages where “son” or “brothers” or “mankind” simply means in the original language as in orthodox English grammar, all children, all relations, all peoples, male or female. depends on the context.
 
Sam_777 said:
My other question, Jesus as “Son of Man”, because “Man” is giving some confusion for some of our English Islamic people (they think he has a biological father), in Arabic we have no problem with that, because its equivalent to “Son of the human being” which includes males & females, by that we can say he is Son of Virgin Mary, I’ve seen only one Bible translation that uses “human being” instead of “Son of Man” which is the (New Century Version):
“In my vision at night I saw in front of me someone who looked like a human being coming on the clouds in the sky. He came near God, who has been alive forever, and he was led to God.”
Click to expand...
Son of Man
newadvent.org/cathen/14144a.htm
 
This verse was apparently written in Aramaic (part of Daniel was); the original for “son of man” is “bar anash.” In the next chapter where Gabriel addresses Daniel as “son of man” it’s “ben adam.” Interesting.

In the Old Testament, “sons of God” translates bnei ha-elohim, literally “sons of the gods/the God.” (“Bnei” is the plural construct form of “ben,” or “son,” and I am using the older, more literal translations here.) “Children of [whomever]” uses the same format–“bnei [whomever],” and it is assumed to include all children, male and female.

DaveBj
 
🙂 Thank you all for your contributions, “ckempston” could you please list me the Bible translations that are exact and accurate “word-for-word”.
 
There are very few, and I apologize because that’s somewhat of a misnomer. There is no real word-for-word translation because each word in Greek or Hebrew does not have a single English word that corresponds. Sometimes the word order is reversed, and sometimes idioms in one language make no sense in another. With that being said, you might want to check out Young’s Literal Translation or an Interlinear Greek.
 
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