"Goodwill to men," or " "To those whom He favors."

Third Wednesday of Easter

I'm going to take a short break from the faith journey to look at something I ran across today in my daily reading of a page of the Greek NT. It's in Luke 2:14, when the angels sing to the shepherds, "peace on earth,...."

I grew up hearing and reading the last words of that verse as "goodwill to men." I think it's even quoted that way in Charlie Brown's Christmas. "Peace on earth, goodwill to men," is the King James Version's translation. All of the newer translations have it differently from the KJV. Here are several:

"among men with whom he is pleased." (RSV)

"to men on whom his favor rests." (NIV)

"among those whom he favors." (NRSV)

Why the differences?

I might note first that the NRSV removes the gender specific language we find in the other translations. This is the consistent practice of the NRSV and accurately reflects the meaning of the Greek.

But why do the modern versions all have something other than "goodwill to men [people]? Until today I assumed that it was simply a matter of translation. It isn't. It's a matter of text; that is to say, a matter of what the manuscripts say. The King James translators had only five manuscripts to translate from. Primarily they used not the manuscripts but the 1522 printed edition of the Greek New Testament made by the Dutch scholar Erasmus, who also had these five manuscripts. None of the manuscripts was earlier than 11th century.

Since the KJV was published, 1611, we have discovered thousands of Greek New Testament manuscripts, most of them older. Our earliest manuscript of Luke (p45) dates to about 200 AD, more than a thousand years closer to the original than what the KJV writers have. But even with our early manuscripts there are many, many variations in the text. This is one of them.

Some of the manuscripts, including some early ones have the Greek word eudokia, a nominative. That makes it the subject of the clause. It would properly be translated, "Goodwill to men."  That's also what all of the KJV's manuscripts had and that's the way they translated it. I've always said that the KJV translators did a good job with what they had. They just didn't have much, and what they did have was not very accurate.

Other manuscripts have eudokias, which is a genitive of the same root word. Literally our most accurate translation would be "to men who have God's goodwill." This is the reading of the best manuscripts, and the original reading of two of the best manuscripts which were later corrected to the nominative reading.

So what's the difference? It's a big one, and maybe not one we like. "Goodwill to men would mean that the angels were proclaiming goodwill to all.  "Among those whom he favors," i.e. among those who have received God's goodwill, does not imply all people but only those whom God has favored. It assumes that God has not favored all. That's what Luke wrote. Whether Luke was right is another question. Whether we can give some other interpretation to Luke's words than the apparent interpretation is still another question. Those are theological questions, and I am but your humble Biblical scholar. 

Faithfully,

Christian