Why is it that several versions of the Bible do not capitalize "He"?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bohm_Bawerk
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
B

Bohm_Bawerk

Guest
I’ve noticed with a large number of bibles, when God the Father/Jesus/Holy Spirit is spoken about, “he” is not capitalized. Why is this?
 
Bohm_Bawerk said:
I’ve noticed with a large number of bibles, when God the Father/Jesus/Holy Spirit is spoken about, “he” is not capitalized. Why is this?
Click to expand...
A few hundred years ago, it was common to capitalize pronouns which refer to important personages such as God and royalty (the reverential capital). Nowadays however, the trend in English grammar is to render most pronouns aside from “I” in lowercase no matter who the addressee is.

But then again, the original languages - Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic - do not (or did not originally) distinguish between upper- and lowercase letters: Greek did not yet have lowercase when the New Testament was written, and the scripts historically used for Hebrew/Aramaic simply do not have the distinction. The whole beef about capitalizing parts of speech is mostly an issue limited to languages which have a distinction between uppercase and lowercase letters such as English.
 
Capitalization is just a convention and (as Patrick pointed out) that convention is not the same in every language nor even in English throughout the centuries.

If you look at the Church documents on the Vatican website, they pretty much never capitalize the pronouns in reference to God. Only a few Catholic publishers do. Most of them do not.
 
Patrick457’s answer is very good. I’d only add that for those Bibles which do capitalize pronoun references to God, it can actually be a bit complex. For example, what do we do with the OT Messianic prophesies? With the Suffering Servant in Isaiah, for example, should we capitalize the pronouns? Same thing with the Son of Man in Daniel, and with the Heavenly figure that Jacob wrestled with in Genesis. Either choice sends a clear (not necessarily intentional) signal to the reader – that this is, or isn’t, Jesus that these prophesies are talking about.

So while I prefer it when Bibles capitalize pronouns referring to God, I can understand why they sometimes don’t.
 
This is an EXCELLENT question. I grew up when pronouns were capitalized when referring to God. I think it makes reading easier [but that’s just me].

I also suspect that dropping the capitalization falls in the same category as the use “BCE” and “CE” in lieu of “BC” and “AD”, respectively.
 
In both the King James and Douay-Rheims versions, these pronouns were in lower case. The Catholic News Service style manual says to use lower case for divine pronouns. The first Bible to capitalize them was published in 1902.
 
because editorial style books in most English speaking countries were changed several decades ago and the practice has almost disappeared
 
sedonaman said:
This is an EXCELLENT question. I grew up when pronouns were capitalized when referring to God. I think it makes reading easier [but that’s just me].

I also suspect that dropping the capitalization falls in the same category as the use “BCE” and “CE” in lieu of “BC” and “AD”, respectively.
Click to expand...
I would necessarily draw that comparison. Maybe that’s just my own sensitivities, though. BCE and CE irks me to no end. But the pronoun thing doesn’t bother me. It’s hard to get mad over non-capitalization of pronouns when the Catechism doesn’t even capitalize them.
 
Joe_5859 said:
I would necessarily draw that comparison. Maybe that’s just my own sensitivities, though. BCE and CE irks me to no end. But the pronoun thing doesn’t bother me. It’s hard to get mad over non-capitalization of pronouns when the Catechism doesn’t even capitalize them.
Click to expand...
I agree. 👍 I just prefer the capitalization.
 
patrick457 said:
A few hundred years ago, it was common to capitalize pronouns which refer to important personages such as God and royalty (the reverential capital). Nowadays however, the trend in English grammar is to render most pronouns aside from “I” in lowercase no matter who the addressee is.

But then again, the original languages - Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic - do not (or did not originally) distinguish between upper- and lowercase letters: Greek did not yet have lowercase when the New Testament was written, and the scripts historically used for Hebrew/Aramaic simply do not have the distinction. The whole beef about capitalizing parts of speech is mostly an issue limited to languages which have a distinction between uppercase and lowercase letters such as English.
Click to expand...
Apparently, English used to capitalize every noun.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization
usconstitution.net/const.html

The German language currently capitalizes every noun. Does that mean that “Die Katze ist auf der Matte.” must be translated into English as “The Cat is on the Mat.”, or can it, or should it, be translated “The cat is on the mat.”?
 
I could name a few advantages and disadvantages of capitalizing divine pronouns. On a practical level, capitalizing them helps the reader know who is speaking which or who is being addressed to in passages such as “he said to him”, without needing to change the pronoun into a proper noun as some translations do (i.e. “he said to Jesus / Jesus said to him”).

The disadvantage is related to what Belloc Fan has said about OT passages traditionally interpreted Christologically: take for example the coronation Psalms. On a literal level, these were originally written for the coronation of earthly Israelite kings, but theologically they also apply to the King of Kings, which would leave one in a dilemma about whether to capitalize the pronouns there or not, because of the layer of meanings that the passages carry. Another is that capitalizing necessitates the need to review which passages refer to God which do not (this is also why I think manufacturing red-letter Bibles is rather impractical).
 
patrick457 said:
A few hundred years ago, it was common to capitalize pronouns which refer to important personages such as God
Click to expand...
I am considerably less than 100 years old, and all of the secular textbooks when I went to school said that pronouns referring to God must be capitalised. The reference books I have with me now (published from 5 to 20 years ago) all say the same thing or at least say that it’s optional.
and royalty (the reverential capital).
Click to expand...
What? I have never ever seen any English text from any time period refer to any merely human being with capitalised pronouns. Maybe you are getting confused with the former use of the “royal/papal “we”” where a pope, king or queen used we, us and our unstead of I, me and my.
But then again, the original languages - Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic - do not (or did not originally) distinguish between upper- and lowercase letters: Greek did not yet have lowercase when the New Testament was written, and the scripts historically used for Hebrew/Aramaic simply do not have the distinction.
Click to expand...
They also didn’t have any punctuation marks, didn’t have any spaces between words, and in the case of Hebrew didn’t even have any written vowels. Do you propose that English Bibles should omit these too?
The whole beef about capitalizing parts of speech is mostly an issue limited to languages which have a distinction between uppercase and lowercase letters such as English.
Click to expand...
And every other language which is written in the Roman or Modern Greek or Cyrillic alphabet or any of many other alphabets. That is, most languages today. Even some languages which don’t have upper and lower case letters/symbols have a means of indicating a particularly important word, which is equivalent to capitalisation of the initial letter of a word.

I don’t think that the OT texts which predict the Messiah are a problem in this regard. Where a text can have both an interpretation referring to Christ/God and an interpretation referring to any other person, the use of uncapitalised pronouns is unobjectionable. Where a pronoun clearly refers to God and to nobody else, e.g. " With these words He breathed His last." (Luke 23:46) it should be capitalised. “Modern usage” may do otherwise, but I still find it off-putting.
 
I use a starting capital for the pronouns referring to God and teach my primary/elementry class the same. Just the way i was taught i guess. It seems to make good grammatical sense.

Interesting point though about the Jewish prophecies and ambiguous stories.
 
Petergee said:
I am considerably less than 100 years old, and all of the secular textbooks when I went to school said that pronouns referring to God must be capitalised. The reference books I have with me now (published from 5 to 20 years ago) all say the same thing or at least say that it’s optional. What? I have never ever seen any English text from any time period refer to any merely human being with capitalised pronouns. Maybe you are getting confused with the former use of the “royal/papal “we”” where a pope, king or queen used we, us and our unstead of I, me and my.
Click to expand...
Now that you mention it, yes, it does seem that you’re correct. My bad (forgive the use of this IMHO tasteless recent expression).
They also didn’t have any punctuation marks, didn’t have any spaces between words, and in the case of Hebrew didn’t even have any written vowels. Do you propose that English Bibles should omit these too?
Click to expand...
At the risk of sounding crazy: SRWHYNTRMVPNCTTNNDSPCNGFRMNGLSHBBLSTHTWLDBGRTD 😃 I’ve been struggling to actually read Hebrew and Syriac for quite some time now (right up there with Samaritan, Brahmi, Devanagari, Siddham, and Korean on my to-do list :o), and I don’t see why not …but then again, nah.
And every other language which is written in the Roman or Modern Greek or Cyrillic alphabet or any of many other alphabets. That is, most languages today. Even some languages which don’t have upper and lower case letters/symbols have a means of indicating a particularly important word, which is equivalent to capitalisation of the initial letter of a word.
Click to expand...
Thanks for pointing this out! Save for those darned Japanese that is…they dinna use any spaces, and they write in such funny symbols. 😛
I don’t think that the OT texts which predict the Messiah are a problem in this regard. Where a text can have both an interpretation referring to Christ/God and an interpretation referring to any other person, the use of uncapitalised pronouns is unobjectionable. Where a pronoun clearly refers to God and to nobody else, e.g. " With these words He breathed His last." (Luke 23:46) it should be capitalised. “Modern usage” may do otherwise, but I still find it off-putting.
Click to expand...
Great idea. As an aside, my own personal usage is rather inconsistent: I usually capitalise third-person divine pronouns (‘He’, ‘Him’) but keep second-person pronoun ‘you’ in lowercase. I’m just so not used to spelling ‘You’, it kind of grates into my eyes.
 
I suppose my preference is to write pronouns in actual Bibles in lowercase, but to use uppercase for pronouns in devotional and liturgical material.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top