2 Peter 1:21: Which prophets count as prophets?

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This one is a little complicated, because we are looking at the translation of two different words.

…or are we??? (Spoiler: We are not.)

“First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”
— 2 Peter 1:20-21, NRSVUE

The focus is on verse 21, but I am including verse 20 for context, which will later turn out to be useful (sort of). Verse 21 starts with “because no prophecy ever came by human will”.

Part 1: No prophecy ever came by ___ will.

Whose will? The Greek is anthropou, which is a form of anthropos, human being, person. In this case it’s functioning like an adjective or a possessive noun.

So: No prophecy ever came by human will (or, by a human’s will).

Part 2: But, by the Holy Spirit, ____ spoke from God.

Who spoke? The Greek is anthropoi, which is a grammatical form of anthropos, human being, person. Humans spoke from God. People spoke from God.

So, no prophecy ever came by human will. But, by the Holy Spirit, humans spoke from God.

Simple, easy, right?

Oh, if only. But first, the chart!

2 Peter 1:21 “by [1] will (the will of [1]); [2] spoke”
Translation/Language: Date: Phrase: Approach 1: Approach 2:
Original Greek text anthropou; anthropoi
Popular translations:
King James Version (KJV) 1611 man; men Male Male
American Standard Version (ASV) 1901 man; men Male Male
The Living Bible (TLB) 1971 the prophet himself; men Male Male
New King James Version (NKJV) 1982 man; men Male Male
New International Version – 1984* 1984 man; men Male Male
New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) 1989 human; men and women Inclusive Inclusive
Good News Translation (GNT/GNB/TEV) 1992 human; people Inclusive Inclusive
Contemporary English Version (CEV) 1995 on their own; they Paraphrase Paraphrase
New Living Translation (NLT) 1996 human; those prophets Inclusive Paraphrase
New International Version (NIV) 2011 human; prophets (human) Inclusive Paraphrase
Common English Bible (CEB) 2011 human; men and women Inclusive Inclusive
English Standard Version (ESV) 2016 man; men Male Male
Christian Standard Bible (CSB) 2017 man; men Male Male
The Message (MSG) 2018 human; men and women Inclusive Inclusive
New American Standard Bible (NASB) 2020 human; men Inclusive Male
NRSV Updated Edition (NRSVUE) 2021 human; men and women Inclusive Inclusive
Specialty translations:
God’s Word (GW) 1995 humans; humans Inclusive Inclusive
New Century Version (NCV) 2005 a person; people Inclusive Inclusive
The Inclusive Bible (TIB) 2009 human; people Inclusive Inclusive
Expanded Bible (EXB) 2011 person/human; people Inclusive Inclusive
Names of God (NOG) 2011 humans; humans Inclusive Inclusive
New Testament for Everyone (NTE) 2011 human; people Inclusive Inclusive
The Passion Translation (TPT) 2017 human; those Inclusive Inclusive
New English Translation (NET) 2017 human; men Inclusive Male
First Nations Version (FNV) 2021 human beings; those Inclusive Inclusive

Is this a Greek problem?

The first problem is that people keep insisting that anthropos means “man”.  But, Greek has a different word for “man”.  Anthropos refers to a human person.

The word is masculine grammatically, but that’s just a convention. Instead of saying that Greek has masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns, we could just as well say that it has nouns in category A, category B, and category C.

Saying that anthropoi is “a plural category A noun” is not necessarily telling you anything about the gender of the people it refers to. Grammatically, they are just people.

So, no, this is not a Greek problem.

Is this an English problem?

We knew when Star Trek: The Next Generation came out in 1987 that “man” does not mean “person”. (Maybe it did, once. It didn’t in 1987, and it doesn’t today.)

J.R.R. Tolkien, while being so painfully old-fashioned that he referred to humans as “Men”, was fully aware that this outdated usage could cause confusion and reveal bias. He used that bias against one of his great villains, who feared “no living man”, but learned to fear just one woman.

An oldschool blinkie-style banner with Éowyn saying "But no living man am I!", and the word "man" is flashing annoyingly. This was once considered cool.

Look, back when we did pixel art like this, screens had a lot lower resolution, okay? This is going to look blurry scaled up.

Éowyn didn’t need to learn about inclusive language to know that “no man” didn’t refer to her—a life spent being told she couldn't do that because she was not a man was all she needed. Her author probably had some help from the study needed to become an esteemed philologist and distinguished professor of English. The Return of the King was finally published in 19551, but was written earlier.

If such venerable institutions as Star Trek and J.R.R. Tolkien understood this 50 or more years ago, then possibly Bible translators could try catching up to, like, the late 20th century, at least.

So, no, this is not an English problem, either. In English, “men” means “men” and “people” means “people”.

I will concede that if you say men, then some people will understand that in a more general sense. But, in that case, you must also realize that many people will assume you mean men. This might just be really bad translation, but it’s probably sexism.

Surprise! This is a sexism problem.

For extra fun, there is are a couple of modern translations (NET, NASB) that do understand that anthropos means human…and they translate the second half of the verse with “men” anyway.

For example, NET handles the first half of the verse pretty accurately, but then hopelessly botches the dismount2:

“...for no prophecy was ever borne of human impulse; rather, men carried along by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”
— 2 Peter 1:21, NET

Why???

They actually explain in the footnotes (see 2 Peter 1:21 NET)! It involves making up a distinction between spoken and written prophecy (based on verse 20), and then ignoring the words of female prophets that are plainly recorded in scripture (making them both spoken and written in scripture). 

In other words, they know that this word refers to people, not specifically to men. They chose to translate it “men” anyway, because they don’t believe there are any women whose words count as “prophecies of scripture”.

Sorry, thanks for playing, but there are no participation trophies in The Chart.

Also, the prophet Miriam3 would like to speak to whoever wrote that footnote. The prophet Huldah4 is standing right behind her. She looks like she ran out of patience at around 2 Kings 23:1. I’m not sure if she’s heard about Éowyn, but just FYI, she probably knows about Jael5.

Wait, why do we care, again?

First, who has already spoken as a prophet by God’s will? Do the multiple named female prophets in the Hebrew scriptures count as prophets? If we erase them, we’re not just erasing the contributions of women—we’re also removing the parts of scripture that don’t align with our modern (sexist) values.

A neon sign, with white letters against a brick background, that reads: THIS IS THE SIGN YOU'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR

When you’re looking for a sign from God, it really helps if you don’t ignore half the people who might be telling you about it.

Second, who can speak by God’s will? Whose is allowed to speak by God’s will? I suspect that this is the real reason why some translators are so uncomfortable with admitting that women like Miriam and Huldah exist in the Bible. In the Bible, a prophet is not just some guy who predicts the future. A prophet is a person who delivers a message from God.

We can’t have people who aren’t men doing that, because then we’d have to listen to them! What’s next, treating children like people?

Addendum: The NRSV (and some other translations) could be better

Look, the NRSV remains the gold standard for not adding gender-exclusive language that isn’t in the original text. This text is an example of how that’s really not a high bar.

NRSV (and the update), CEB, and The Message all translate the second part of the verse using “men and women”. This is a much better translation than “men”, but it is still more specific than the Greek, because it suggests you are only talking about adults, and excludes non-binary people. The Greek word does not have these limitations. It would be more accurate to use a word in English that does not unnecessarily specify the age or the gender(s) of the people in mind.

This is not reflected in The Chart, only because The Chart has a more narrow focus.

1 Ah, yes, the 1950s, the decade famous for empowering women, as long as they wanted to be empowered to be housewives. I'm sure Professor Tolkien was influenced by political correctness gone too far, rather than his deep understanding of how languages work, his Catholic spirituality, and his real-life experience of meeting actual women.
2 The gymnastics reference seemed appropriate, for some reason.
3 Miriam is identified as a prophet, and her words are recorded, in Exodus 15:20-21.
4 Huldah is identified as a prophet, and her words are recorded, in 2 Kings 22:14-20. She does not sound like she had much patience left to start with.
5 Because Jael's story is recorded in Judges 4, which is before 2 Kings. Spoiler: It involves a sharp tent peg. Well, I hope it was sharp.