In our last roundup of the Old and New Testaments for a little while, I want to call out two specific passages which are concerned with the body and the soul. The first, from Ecclesiastes 11:5, is often interpreted as being a rejection of transgender people by telling us that we do not know more out ourselves than God knows about us – thus it’s presumptuous to say that we know we were born in the wrong body. The objection to transgender persons via this verse of course is hypocritical, in that the person objecting is also pronouncing that God never intended to create transgender persons in the first place. In other words, it’s “God-in-a-boxism” all over again.

The second passage is from Galatians 3:28, and is concerned with the concept of whether souls have gender. This passage should be interpreted as favorable to transgender people in its plain-test reading, although different translations can change the intend very subtly. In the case of this verse, the substitution of “and” for “nor” makes a huge difference, and depending upon which translation one reads, one may have a completely different interpretation. For crying out loud, I think some of the newer translators might benefit from an old Schoolhouse Rock lesson.