Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men?

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* Be warned; this is about to get nerdy. But if you like grammar, Greek, history, or controversy, then you might enjoy what's coming. *

If you open to the King James translation of Luke 2:14, you'll find that it says, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." From this verse, we get many Christmas decorations, cards, and songs that say something to the effect of "Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men." Is this what the verse is saying?

The KJV verse is broken into three clauses. Glory to God, peace on earth, and good will toward men. However, if you open to most other translations, you'll find something a little different. The CSB, for example, reads, "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people he favors!" This verse is constructed in two clauses. Glory to God and peace to those who have God's favor.

What's going on here?

Believe it or not, it's the difference of one letter: Sigma (like the s in English). But the location of the sigma (or lack thereof) makes a difference.

In the English language, we use word order to indicate which noun is the direct object (doing the action) and which is the indirect object (receiving the action). In Greek, this is determined by the ending of the word (case ending) because word-order is used for something else. In English, an apostrophe followed by the letter s indicates possession. In Greek, a different case ending suggests possession. The direct object is called the nominative case, and the possessive is called the genitive case.

In some manuscripts, the word is εὐδοκίας (note the last letter), and in others, the word is εὐδοκία (no ς on the end). By the way, this word means favor, good will, or pleasure. Without the ς the word is nominative (a direct object); with the ς the word is genitive (or the possession of another noun).

If the manuscripts that have the word in the nomitave case (direct object) are correct, then the last three words of this verse (ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκία) are a clause on their own. Because word order doesn't matter but the case endings do, the statement would be "favor to people." This clause would mean the angels are singing about three things.

If the manuscripts in the genitive case are correct, then the favor toward people belongs to someone or something. It is modifying something, specifically something in the normative case (a direct object). If this is true, the direct object in this clause would be the word peace. On earth and favor toward people belong to peace.

Which is it? Which translation is wrong?

Here is yet another circumstance where the King James Version was correct at the time because the translators had a limited number of Greek manuscripts with which to work. There's a group of manuscripts that seem to have dropped the sigma, making the word a direct object. Given what they had to work with, they translated this in a way it should have been translated.

However, thanks to a great deal of archeology and other finds, we have many more manuscripts than the KJV team had. Many of the manuscripts we have available today, came from a much earlier period. They demonstrate that the sigma had been dropped off at some point. Most manuscript experts and language scholars believe the genitive case is correct, and the presence of the sigma is right.

There are only two clauses, which seem clear and straightforward when diagraming and translating this verse.

While this may be problematic for your favorite Christmas song, we should have a correct understanding of this verse. There are theological ramifications here. As the TCGNT notes, "The meaning seems to be, not that divine peace can be bestowed only where human good will is already present, but that at the birth of the Saviour God's peace rests on those whom he has chosen in accord with his good pleasure" (111).