The history of the debate over gender language in English Bibles, from the NRSV to the NIV 2011, the ESV and the CSB, is told in Gender language in translation. This article looks more closely at one word in that debate, and at what Open Word Bible does with it verse by verse.
The word is ἀδελφός, adelphos, “brother”. In the plural, ἀδελφοί, adelphoi, it is Paul’s usual way of addressing a church, and it runs through Acts, James, Hebrews and the letters of John and Peter. In our New Testament records it carries a reader setting more than five hundred times.
How the Greek plural works
Greek, like Spanish or French, uses the masculine plural for a group of men and women together. A Spanish speaker calls a brother and a sister hermanos; a Greek speaker could call them adelphoi. So the plural form alone does not tell us whether women are included. Only the context can.
Sometimes the context says no. In Matthew 12:46 Jesus’s mother and brothers come looking for him, and the record says they are his brothers, the ones named in 13:55. No setting applies there; the word means men.
Sometimes the context says yes, plainly. In Philippians 4:1 Paul writes “my brothers”, and in the very next verse he names two women in that church, Euodia and Syntyche, and pleads with them to agree. Our meaning decision for 4:1 gives the sense as “fellow believers, women and men”, and cites verse 2 as the reason:
So then, my dear brothers and sisters, whom I love and long to see, my joy and my crown: stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends.
Most of the time the evidence is less dramatic but just as clear. Paul’s letters were written to whole congregations and read aloud to them. The record for 1 Corinthians 1:10 notes that the report of the quarrels came from “Chloe’s people”, a household headed by a woman, and that the letter speaks to women directly later on (7:10–16; 11:5). The record for Acts 1:15 notes that Mary and the other women have just been named among the 120 believers who gather. The record for Acts 6:3 notes that the apostles speak to “the multitude of the disciples” (6:2).
The meaning comes first
This is the order in which our records work. First a meaning decision says whom the word refers to. Only then does a rendering decision choose the English.
Where the meaning decision concludes that the word includes women, the English carries a reader setting: “brothers and sisters” by default, with “brothers” as the traditional option. Romans 12:1 is a typical case:
So, brothers and sisters, I appeal to you by the mercies of God: offer your bodies to God as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to him. That is your reasonable worship.
The rendering decision there says simply that Paul writes to the whole church, women and men, and that the reader can choose the traditional “brothers”. Both options mean the same thing. “Brothers and sisters” says it in today’s English; “brothers”, read in its older inclusive sense, says it in the form of the original. That is the test for every setting in this translation: it may change wording, never meaning (see Settings change wording, never meaning).
Two things about the setting are worth noticing.
It applies at every level, including Literal. One might expect a literal rendering to keep “brothers”. But the setting is stored once in each sentence, as a pair of options, and the reader’s choice applies everywhere. A reader who wants “brothers” in Literal can have it, and in Balanced and Readable too.
It follows the grammar of the sentence. The setting is not a search-and-replace. A singular adelphos becomes “a brother or sister”, as in Matthew 5:22, where anger against “a brother or sister” is under judgment. A phrase like “brotherly love” becomes “love for brothers and sisters”. And where a pronoun follows, it changes too. In the Literal level of 1 John 3:17 the traditional option reads “sees his brother having need, and shuts his heart against him”; the default reads “sees their brother or sister having need, and shuts their heart against them”.
Where no setting is needed
Sometimes the Greek itself names both. James 2:15 says ἀδελφὸς ἢ ἀδελφὴ, “a brother or a sister”. The rendering decision there notes that since the Greek names both, English does too, and no setting is needed. Matthew 12:50 is similar: Jesus says that whoever does his Father’s will “is a brother and sister and mother to me”, with “sister” in the Greek. The record observes that no sister had been named at the door, yet Jesus includes sisters among those who do God’s will.
And sometimes Readable avoids the family word altogether, to say who is meant. In Acts 1:15 it says “the followers of Jesus”; in 1 John 3:17 it says “a fellow believer”. Those are still rendering decisions, built on the same meaning decision, and the record states them.
When it is not clear
Not every case is easy, and our records say so when they are not.
The hardest is Acts 1:16. Peter stands up among the 120 and begins with a formal address used to open speeches in Acts: Ἄνδρες ἀδελφοί, literally “men, brothers”. The first word is the one Greek uses for males and husbands, not the general word for human beings. Our meaning decision is marked uncertain and carries a footnote. Speakers in Acts use this formula to open a speech (2:29; 13:26; 15:7), and Peter is speaking to an assembly that includes women. But he is about to propose that a man be chosen to replace Judas (1:21), and it may be that he turns here to the men. The record says plainly that this “cannot be settled from the words”.
So the rendering differs by level. Literal keeps both Greek words, “Men, brothers”, without a setting. Balanced and Readable use the inclusive default, with “brothers” as the alternative, since the assembly includes women; the rendering decision notes that the meaning note marks this as uncertain.
“Men, brothers, it was necessary for the Scripture to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand through [the] mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who seized Jesus, for he was numbered among us and obtained the share of this ministry.
Other verses have smaller questions. In Galatians 1:2 Paul sends greetings from “all the brothers with me”. Some readers think he means only his male co-workers, travelling with him. Our record takes it as the believers who were with Paul as he wrote, and treats the masculine plural as the ordinary way to speak of a mixed group. A reviewer could reasonably question that, and the record gives its reasons so that they can.
Jesus’s brothers and sisters
One use is theological as well as linguistic. Hebrews 2:11 says that Jesus “is not ashamed to call them brothers”, and then quotes Psalm 22: “I will make your name known to my brothers”. The writer’s point is that the Son shares the life of those he saves, flesh and blood, testing and death (2:14–18). Our meaning decision says that those Jesus calls his brothers include women, and so the setting applies. With the default, the verse says that Jesus is not ashamed to call them his “brothers and sisters”.
Some readers feel that “brothers” keeps the tie to the psalm more clearly. Others feel that “brothers and sisters” makes the writer’s point more clearly, that the Son became like all of us. Because both options mean the same thing, Open Word Bible does not have to choose for the reader. It decides the meaning, records the reasons, and leaves the wording to the setting.
What the reader can check
Every verse with the setting has a meaning decision that says who is meant, and a rendering decision for the setting itself. Tap the verse to see them. Where the record says “women and men”, the reasons are there; where it says “uncertain”, the alternatives are there too. Like all our drafts, these are AI-assisted and await review by named human reviewers, who can test each decision against the context.
Open Romans 12, Philippians 4 or Acts 1 and tap a verse to see the full records.