The Greek that is translated as “the sheep from the goats” or similar in English is translated in the German New Testament translation by Berger / Nord (publ. 1999) with die weißen Schafe von den schwarzen Ziegen or “the white sheep from the black goats.” The translators explain: “The usual [traditional German] translation as “ram (Böcke)” [see also the traditional German translation of Beelzebul] is sexist, simplistic and misleading. When juxtaposed with sheep, the word erifos means ‘goats.’ Since the goats in Palestine are black and the sheep are white, the contrast here is between white as the color of the righteous and black as the color of the unrighteous.”