jshipley@corp.sun.com (John S. Shipley) (01/07/91)
In article <Jan.3.04.30.15.1991.14557@athos.rutgers.edu> John_Graves@cellbio.duke.edu (John Graves) writes: >And this is my first annual plea to President Bush, to ask him to remember >the Christmas message of the angels, that there be "PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD >WILL TOWARDS MEN (AND WOMEN). I'm curious about the more recent translations of this "message of the angels" (Luke 2:14). The translation given above is really very nice, and has been included in many Christmas carols. But the common translation nowadays seems to be "PEACE ON EARTH AMONG MEN WHO DO GOD'S WILL." For me this changes the Christmas message quite a bit, and I'm not sure whether I like the change. It certainly seems to be more in agreement with some other parts of the Gospel, such as Jesus saying "Do you suppose that I am come to bring peace on earth? Not at all, I tell you, but rather discord;" (Luke 12:51), as well as being in agreement with the catastrophic end-times described in the Gospels and the Revelation of John. What prompted the change in translation? I'm curious how other people feel about the newer translation? (And how do we change the words to "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day"?) :-) Happy New Year to everybody! John Shipley [Sort of. I don't actually know any recent translations that are quite like yours, but there has definitely been a change. It's not just a change in translation. There is both a textual issue and a translation issue here. The question is whether good will (eudokia) is nominative (eudokia) or genitive (eudokias). There are plenty of manuscripts with both, but those that are regarded as the most ancient and best (aleph*, A, B*, D, W) have genitive. The Vulgate is also genitive, although one edition is missing a preposition. The UBS Greek adopts genitive with a certainty of B, meaning fairly certain. There are two "traditional" translations. KJV: and on earth peace, good will toward men (nominative eudokia) CCD: and on earth peace among men of good will (genitive eudokias) Most people now agree that the genitive is the right text. It was adopted by the ASV, and every translation since (at least among those I've seen cited -- which is a pretty impressive list) has followed it as well. However a number of studies of the passage have convinced scholars that the traditional translation of the genitive is wrong. So the current translation is NRSV: and on earth peace among those whom he favors TEV: ... among those with whom he is pleased (By the way, "men" is "anthropois", which includes both sexes, so NRSV is right to use a rendering that avoids "men", if your translational theory regards "men" as explicitly masculine.) My impression from the Anchor Bible commentary on Luke is that the change in translation is based on reading "men of good will" as a Semitic idiom, in effect translating "sons of his good will". The NRSV seems to be the most common translation, but if I understand the construct, TEV's would be another way to read the same idiom. The commentary doesn't give enough detail for me to evaluate the evidence, even if I were competent to do so (there are a number of different kinds of evidence involved), but it appears that the scholarly community in general is convinced. According to little Kittel, eudokia is not a classical Greek word. It occurs first in the Greek Bible, as a translation of a Hebrew word that normally means God's favor (though a couple of times it is used of people). Similarly the Greek almost always means God's favor. This history lends support to the idea that one should read the phrase as a semitism. --clh]