PETA, or the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, have been urging translators for a more animal-friendly update to the Bible.
The group is requesting translators of the New International Version (NIV) to remove what they term "speciesist" language and refer to animals as "he" or "she" instead of "it."
The NIV has recently made a move towards more gender-inclusive language, and PETA is hoping these moves will also include animals.
“When the Bible moves toward inclusively in one area ... it wasn’t much of a stretch to suggest they move toward inclusively in this area," Bruce Friedrich, PETA's vice president for policy, told CNN.
Friedrich, a practicing Roman Catholic, said, "Language matters. Calling an animal 'it' denies them something. They are beloved by God. They glorify God."
“God’s covenant is with humans and animals. God cares about animals," Friedrich said. "I would think that’s a rather unanimous opinion among biblical scholars today, where that might not have been the case 200 years ago.”
A Hebrew scholar, David Berger, the dean of Yeshiva University’s Bernard Revel graduate school of Jewish studies, reacted cautiously to this call saying these shifts would be complicated because of the nature of ancient Hebrew.
“In Hebrew all nouns are gender-specific. So the noun for chair is masculine and the noun for earth is feminine. There’s simply no such thing as a neutral noun," Berger informed CNN. “It’s unusual to have a noun that would indicate the sex of the animal.”
“In Proverbs it says, 'Look at the ant oh lazy person. See its ways,' " Berger said, quoting the English transition from the book of Proverbs. "In Hebrew it’s 'see her ways.' That's because the word for ant in Hebrew happens to be female. It’s not intended to exclude male ants as far as I know. It’s just an accident the Hebrew word happens to be feminine.
"It’s a little bit misleading given the fact in English the gender of the pronoun means something. It refers to the masculinity of the person or the animal that’s being referred to. In Hebrew in most cases its just sort of an accident of the masculine or feminine of the pronoun to which it referred," Berger added.
Another scholar, David Lyle Jeffrey, the distinguished professor of literature and the humanities at Baylor University, while sympathetic to PETA’s call, was similarly cautious.
“I agree with their contention that God cares for all of creation," Jeffrey stated. "It is true that we have a responsibility to reflect that affection.
"In gender-inclusive Bible translation the generic terms for humankind, let's say, are then replaced with an emphasis on he or she. Instead of the generic he, you say he and she. I don’t quite see how that would work with animals," Jeffery said.
"Do we need to know the gender of the lion Samson slew? What would it give us there?" he continued. "You could try to specify that, but you would be doing so entirely inventively if you did. It's not in the original language. ... Nothing is made of it in the story.
"When you get to the point when you say, 'Don’t say it, say he or she' when the text doesn’t, you’re both screwing up the text and missing the main point you addressed."
There has been no official acknowledgement of PETA's call from the NIV translators yet.