Good KJV Preaching and Urinating

Some friends of mine played this youtube clip for Doug Moo on a break in our class (it is about five mintues long). If you want to know what is wrong with America today, why the NIV and NKJV are bad translations, and, most importantly, what it means to be a man, this is the sermon you need to watch. It also serves as an excellent "argument to absurdity" of how some evangelicals treat the Bible. One part of the text the speaker misses, however, is that the text says "wall" quite specifically, which would have an effect on his interpretation of the text. This has been traveling around the blogosphere, I picked up the address from Ben Witherington's blog. The youtube clip has been viewed over 130,000 times. 

As funny as this video is, the issue he brings up is a problem, although not how he thinks. See Codex Blogspot for two posts (1 and 2 ) about this. The Hebrew text does say "him who urinates against a wall."  But the modern translations all say "male." They certainly get the referrent right: it does refer to males. But this is not speaking about males in a positive light: this is fairly crude and derogatory language, which "male" does not communicate. This is the classic problem of translating both the literal meaning as well as the way the literal meaning would have been understood or felt. If it is correct that this refers to an action of dogs, then a modern equivalent would be urinating on a fire hydrant, something (at least in my mind) more closely connected with dogs doing their thing. But one cannot simply introduce fire hydrants into an ancient text.  My best shot would be some kind of combination: all the males, all the ones who urinate against a wall like a dog. Or something like that. 

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