Certainly. The thing I'm having trouble understanding here - and partly because people are not completing the arguments they are making - is that they are engaging in a very much more prescriptivist philosophy of language than I've encountered in either modern language learning or linguistics - from my decidedly non-expert point of view, but one informed by people with PhDs in the relevant subjects. In arguments here and elsewhere, I'm encountering people arguing that you have to go back to PIE word roots to determine the "real" meaning of "man" or ἄνθρωπος, that contemporary usage of the term "man" is irrelevant because of its history, that we essentially import all usages and meanings of a term when it is used, etc. These are quite simply false and contrary to any reasonable education in the liberal arts. So we come to a simple argument: the context of the original Greek text indicates that the terms used should be generic, and in contemporary English usage the most reasonable generic term is probably going to be "human", since a fair number of people see the usage of "man" as a generic term as archaic and implicitly gendered. I don't see how cracking open Smyth and refreshing my Greek grammar is supposed to enlighten me otherwise.
EDIT: corrected "Smythe" to "Smyth"
Hi, gz,
Maybe this will help: What academics call "descriptive language" only describes what people do say, rightly or wrongly. If Germans tell immigrants "Arbeit macht frei", or we speak of "ethnic cleansing", as if some kind of detergent was being used to wash everyone, this may be how people actually speak, but it is not truthful. It is linguistic deception.
Prescriptive language, on the other hand, says how people OUGHT to talk. It establishes conventions that aid common understanding, rather than approve of euphemisms that inhibit it. I teach Russians English, and let me tell you that if you walk into an ESL class outside of an English-speaking country (where, as immigrants, the learners can learn from the world outside even when the teaching is bad, as it often is), you will not achieve much if you try to teach using "descriptive" language approaches. In order to build clear language commonly understand, you NEED prescription. Good English is not already in your head; it needs to be put in their by parents and teachers. You must deal with convention, and in order to be able to communicate throuout time as well as space, you need stable convention, that doesn't change every other week with the latest slang fads and hipster expressions.
As to PhD's, I have met them, and found them to be quite mortal and fallible. One Literature textbook I have, written by three such animals, had footnoted the word "Gadzooks!" and the wise PhD had written underneath "Word of unknown origin". Only I, a mere MA, KNEW the origin of the word as "God's Hooks", a reference to the nails used to nail Christ to the Cross, thus making it a religious blasphemy to use in vain. I have read a rather standard textbook, given to me by my best friend from childhood, a philosophy major, and written by two philosophy PhDs )"An Introduction to Philosophy" (1940 or so), and thanks to my own sometimes-maligned teachers (Lewis and Chesterton) I was able to see through their efforts to pretend that they were being neutral with ease. Even their section n Christianity had commentary by two... atheists. This is what PhDs offer us and our faith. So many have been formed by educations that in their essence were and are anti-Christ and anti-Faith, that even the believers wind up with cognitive dissonance between what they believe and what their programs taught them and they now teach others. That's not saying "everybody", but given the predominance of public school and public education (and not only) in the life of the nation, it is safe to say that it is the majority.
I am a language teacher. I have, and have to have, a really darn good understanding of words, if I want to feed my family. I don't work for a state institution that doesn't care what I do; I am answerable to my students or their parents, and if what I do doesn't work, my reputation will go down the drain and I will lose my business. People need to leave my lessons and really be able to understand and communicate in real time. And I know that words have multiple meanings - BUT -those meanings are tied to a common root understanding. I understand clearly that "virtue" does NOT mean "manliness", or "strength", or "courage", though in Latin it did, but I can clearly see a link between the concepts of virtue and courage; I can see a thread that has not been lost. And I can see different meanings in the word "man" that are related, and need not be confused.
So I come back to the question, who exactly do you think misunderstands the use of "man" in our Scriptural and Liturgical context? Who thinks that "for us men and for our salvation" means "not women"? Why do you advocate for change when for hundreds of years no one has seen the need for any change, not even the Orthodox who translated texts into English? Change because "it seems good to you", or even an improvement, is a terrible concept, and not what Orthodox generally do. Change of anything is only made when a real problem arises. There IS no real problem here. Nobody misunderstands what the word "man" means in that context. There is no clear and pressing need to change it.
And there IS a reason to resist change, aside from the general Orthodox resistance to change. It is the predominance of feminism, which, in confusing equality with identicality, seeks to overturn all tradition, big T and small. And if they can find unsuspecting allies within the Church to help them do that, so much the better (for their cause, not for the Church). If this were a time of real (as opposed to imaginary) oppression of women, if wifebeating were the norm in every household, if women were sold in chains on the markets, then we would need to specially emphasize their general equality as God's co-equal creation to man; WE would need to shout about their equality from the rooftops. But in times that seek to exaggerate that equality and even turn the tables, that exaggeration, and the linguistic efforts used to underline it, should be resisted, and the differences of the sexes emphasized.
