Greek for Luke 2:14

[Afterthought]

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." I've been told that this translation is wrong. It should be something like other translations use: "with whom God is pleased/on whom God's favor rests", etc. Which is correct? I suspect from the outset that my question is unanswerable to someone like myself who doesn't know greek, but I'm posting just in case it is answerable.

 

[The Calvinist Cop]

Try this link:
Luke 2 (Blue Letter Bible: ESV - English Standard Version)

Also:
Luke 2 (Blue Letter Bible: ESV - English Standard Version)
Textus Receptus and GNT Morph

I am sure that many of our more educated Brothers can provide us better insight

 

[SeanPatrickCornell]

Well, the Mounce Reverse-Interlinear New Testament (a literal translation) renders it thusly,

“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth among those whom he has favored!”

Luke 2:14 MOUNCE -

The Holman Christian Standard Bible is similar,

"Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and peace on earth to people He favors!"

Luke 2:14 HCSB - Glory to God in the highest heaven, and - Bible Gateway

The English Standard Version says,

“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

Luke 2:14 ESV -

So it seems that your question is not without merit!

 

[Afterthought]

Try this link

Thanks! It looks like it may actually be a textual issue, not a translational one as I had thought? Hm.

 

[JP Wallace]

I wouldn't say it is wrong, it is a slightly different interpretation. Here is a clear case where a literal word for word translation is useless. Both these two translations, and indeed any other are interpreting three words that literally translated are rather meaningless.

Literally: in [to] men of good pleasure.

My preference would be for how the ESV, NASB etc. interpret i.e.

ESV Luke 2:14 "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!"

NASB Luke 2:14 "Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased."

NIV Luke 2:14 "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."

 

[JP Wallace]

Thanks! It looks like it may actually be a textual issue, not a translational one as I had thought? Hm.

It's both - critical text has a genitive, traditional text has a nominative. But interpretation/translation is needed for both. Unless you're committed to the traditioinal Greek text (which is fine) the external evidence is for the Genitive. Hendrikesen goes for genitive, Lenski for nominative but as much on the grounds of interpretation are textual matters.

 

[Afterthought]

Thank you!

If you go for the genitive, I don't see how one is able to get the translation the ESV/NASB gets out of it. The quality of "good pleasure" must belong to the men, correct? In that case, it is perfectly meaningful to say 'on earth, peace to men of good pleasure', though it sounds very strange given the rest of the bible and the solemnity of the message. How many phrases in the bible are like this, where it is meaningful of itself but strange otherwise and so interpreted so that it fits something that isn't strange (I notice no mention of God in that part of the sentence when you translated it literally)? I hope there aren't too many instances of that wide of interpretation, cause that's rather a downer, unless there's some sure rule one can use in interpreting. I'm not sure how one can go from "to men of good pleasure" to "men with whom God is pleased" or to "good will toward men", given the genitive.

If you go for the nominative, I actually don't see the problem, and I wonder if it really is "interpreting." It would read something like 'on earth peace to men good pleasure'? Cause the "good pleasure" is just hanging there at the end? It would perhaps be translated something like 'on earth, peace to men, good pleasure'? That is, the good pleasure is to the men along with the "peace," with the "good pleasure" almost as an additional thought. So I can see how the "interpreting" (if it can be called such in this case) can arrive at the translation it does, unless I've forgotten something about how nominatives work (it has been a while since I studied such in non-greek languages!) or that in greek it really is nonsense still without interpreting it in the same manner or degree as in the case where the word is genitive.


Is it possible to help me further here?


As an interesting aside, the ESV uses "those" instead of "men." I had forgotten/didn't know the ESV did that.

 

[CharlieJ]

Beginning Greek students are taught to render the genitive construction with the word "of." Sometimes this is impossible, though, and at other times it is misleading. Generally, our English word "of" carries a subjective meaning, such as "men of good pleasure" meaning mean who are characterized by or possess the quality of good pleasure. However, Greek genitives can also be objective and thus not rendered with the word "of." An objective reading of this genitive would indicate that the men are objects of good pleasure. Then the translators fill in the fairly obvious agent of the good pleasure, God. So, "men who are the objects of [God's] good pleasure" just gets smoothed out in the versions.

A somewhat parallel case might be the genitive phrase "vessels of wrath," (Rom. 9:22) which does not mean that these vessels are wrathful, or act in wrath. Rather, it means that they are experiencing or will experience someone else's wrath, i.e., vessels that are objects of wrath.

Textually, it's not a clear case either way. The majority reads with the traditional text, but the syntax of the sentence is quite awkward that way. Also, there are some fairly old translations that suggest the translator was looking at a text with the genitive.

 

[Afterthought]

Thank you; interesting. Is there any way to tell if it is objective or subjective, or is it seen as objective merely because the phrase sounds strange when subjective? I go with the traditional text anyway, so I guess the main issue of the thread is decided in my case; but these translation issues are interesting to me too.

 

[CharlieJ]

I have a few internal reasons for preferring the critical text rendering. First, if there are two nominatives (peace, goodwill), it is unusual (but not impossible) for the Greek text not to have any conjunction between them. Second, the parallelism fits better:

Glory / to God / in the highest
Peace / to men of good will / on earth
(and remember that since "of good will" is only one Greek word, the parallelism is actually even closer in Greek)

vs.

Glory / to God / in the highest
Peace / on earth
Good will / to men

 

[Afterthought]

Thanks!

Second, the parallelism fits better

Hah! Funny you mentioned this; I happened to think about the parallelism of the traditional reading before you posted, and to my English thinking mind, I thought that the parallelism of the traditional reading was rather nice, given the symmetry between "earth" and "man", and between "peace" and "good will," especially seen in the (well, the word order of, anyway) greek ("on earth, peace/to men, good will")--almost kind of like a structure one might find in the psalms, where there is a repetition of sorts for emphasis. I do see what you are getting at though. However, I'm still not sure which parallelism is better, since there is no repetition of the part about God's glory on the traditional reading; perhaps if I had a greek thinking mind like yours and/or a better ear for poetry, I would agree with you! But obviously, I'll be biased to the one I believe God spoke by holy men, and I'm not sure if, for the sake of pure literary analysis, I can help that bias or if I should.

But anyway, to make sure I understand, those two reasons in your post are two reasons why, in the critical reading, the objective genitive should be chosen, instead of the subjective?

 

[CharlieJ]

The two reasons I gave are two internal reasons why I prefer the genitive textual reading over the nominative.

As to preferring the objective interpretation of the genitive, there are two factors. 1) The passage makes more sense that way. 2) In the gospels, God is always the agent of ευδοκια (good will) and its accompanying verb (Matt. 11:26; Luke 3: 22; Luke 10:21; Luke 12:32).

 

[Afterthought]

Thank you! This thread has been very informative!

 

[MW]

Burgon's Revision Revised contains a good treatment of this verse and satisfies me that the AV reading and rendering should be retained.

 

[Afterthought]

Burgon's Revision Revised contains a good treatment of this verse and satisfies me that the AV reading and rendering should be retained.

Revision Revised

Very interesting. Thank you, Mr. Winzer!

 

[CharlieJ]

Here's an interesting update. The subjective genitive reading is also found in church history. In On Grace and Free Will 4, Augustine cites this verse as proof that men have free will, because God says, "Peace on earth to men of good will."

Of course he is reading the Latin (pax in terra hominibus bonae uoluntatis), but this proves that Augustine's Latin edition is based on a Greek text that has the genitive.

 

[CharlieJ]

I just now saw the references to Burgon. I am, as usual, unimpressed. First of all, over 100 years has passed since Burgon's death, and all the textual research since his time has confirmed the reading that now stands in the critical text.

1) the addition of a final sigma is far less likely than the accidental omission of it, which in early manuscripts was not even written out as a full letter but was often abbreviated as a small curve affixed to the final letter of a word. "When alpha and sigma are written at the end of a word in the first century BC, at times the sigma becomes a downward curving stroke, open to the left, attached to the alpha." (Frederic Kenyon, The Paleography of Greek Papyri)

2) The Dead Sea Scrolls have furnished several examples of phrases "X of good pleasure", where the import is that God's pleasure rests upon them, so there is nothing unlikely about that interpretation.

3) The point about the missing "εν" is off-the-mark. The construction εν + dative can be rendered in Latin by a simple dative, which is what we see in the Old (and new) Latin.

4) Several early translations have been found which support the genitive.

Any good critical commentary could furnish you with this information and more.

 

[MW]

It is understandable how one already taken with the unscientific assumptions of eclectic criticism would be unimpressed with Burgon's arguments. There is nothing new there.

It has already been stated in post 8, "Textually, it's not a clear case either way." In another post it was claimed there are internal reasons for the revised reading; but internal reasons work both ways, as anyone who has worked with the canon of difficilior lectio will appreciate. It is noteworthy that there are specialised commentaries, though supporting a revised reading, which will still support the AV's emphasis on the divine source of good will, but by taking liberties with the text. This shows that context does in fact provide strong internal support for the reading adopted by the AV.