This is written as a church study group based on the passage mentioned.
Curious Kyrios
Welcome everyone. You’ll notice I brought a small truckload of books here with me tonight to demonstrate exegesis and study in true scholarly style. I’m going to introduce you to some of the methods and tools we can use the dig deeper into our study of the Bible. In keeping with the season, I thought we’d focus on a short passage from Luke: the annunciation of Jesus’s birth to the shepherds in their fields – Luke 2: 8-14. While six verses may not seem like much, it is fascinating to learn how much scholarship and controversy can be attached even to such a small part of the Bible. However, we’ll start with a few basic steps before we get to that.
The first thing I do when I want to explore a passage of scripture is to look it up in a few different translations of the Bible. Every group of translators has slightly different goals in mind when they approach the Greek texts. This affects every decision they make, from which Greek texts to use – there are many to choose from – right down to what words get used and in which order in a given sentence. This means that some versions of the same story can look dramatically different. There’s a good example of this just in our own six verses. If you look at verse 14 in the King James Version, the angels announce our familiar “goodwill toward men” that we have seen in greeting cards all of our lives. However, the New Revised Standard Bible is a little more sparing with God’s goodwill: here it is distributed only among “those whom he favors.”
This source of this particular discrepancy comes from the Greek words used in the text: anthropois eudokias. Sound familiar to anyone? Surprisingly, you can already hear words in Greek that sound vaguely recognizable – that anthropois is related to the English word anthropology. It is the Greek word for man, or mankind. Eudokia, which doesn’t quite have that same comfortable ring to it, means goodwill or pleasure, generally[1]. So the Greek actually reads something like “in humans goodwill,” which of course sounds pretty straight-forward. However, in the four hundred years since King James commissioned a Bible, many more ancient documents have been discovered. Some contain more ancient versions of the gospels, and some are from various apocalyptic Jewish sects that lived in and around Israel during the same time periods – many of whom certainly felt that they were God’s chose people. They wrote their books to reflect that idea, and they often used the very same phrase in describing themselves. From the context of these documents, scholars have deduced that Luke’s use of this phrase is closer to a meaning like “men of God’s goodwill.” Thus we have “those whom he favors.”[2]
Another basic tool for looking into passages specifically from the four Gospels is a Gospel Parallel. This type of reference shows the gospels in such a way that we can find every version of a particular story. When we check around for birth narratives, it is surprising to find that there are only two: Matthew and Luke.[3] Looking further, we find that our beloved nativity scene actually comes from the melding of two separate stories – Luke doesn’t have any wise men, and Matthew somehow forgot about the shepherds altogether! Why would this be?
To help answer this question, we can turn to perhaps one of the most ubiquitous and voluminous tools out there: a Bible commentary. Just by their sheer numbers, these can be pretty intimidating. You can find them from all sides of every religious spectrum, each with its own particular viewpoint, audience, and goals. Staring at a shelf full of commentaries with no guidance can feel a little like trying to find a good auto-mechanic in the Yellow Pages, so I’ve brought a small stack of some that have helped me in my own studies to give you some examples. A really good general one, and the one I usually go for first, is the twelve-volume set by the New Interpreter’s Bible. The same publisher also has put out a one-volume version that is a bit more succinct.
This commentary has a nice long introduction to Luke, which familiarizes us with certain literary themes that researchers have noticed in their readings. A few of them show up pretty prominently in our passage for this evening: “1. God’s Redemptive Purposes” – an angel announcing good news for everyone, a savior? I’d say that counts. “2. Salvation for All Alike” – that fits pretty well too. “3. The Blessings of Poverty and the Dangers of Wealth” – notice in our passage that the primary audience to God’s announcement is a group of shepherds, not kings or wise men.[4] [5] By looking at the whole of Luke’s book, we get a decent idea of the picture that he is trying to paint with his book, and so it follows that he might highlight the shepherds for this story. Some of the other commentaries I brought noted this as well, specifically pointing to Luke’s use of shepherds as indicative of God’s care for the lowly.[6] [7]
Commentaries can certainly help clear things up, but they can just as easily add layers of complication. In Howard Marshall’s commentary on the Greek text of Luke, he introduces us to many of the various viewpoints and controversies associated with our six verses. I’ll give you a quick sample: The shepherds may or may not be symbolic of Jesus’ role as a leader or his mission to the poor. The angel of the Lord and the simultaneous glory of the Lord may be indicative of two distinct types of experience: epiphany and/or theophany. The titles given to the infant Jesus in this narrative would have most likely been applied to him post-resurrection. The angel’s words mirror various official proclamations from the Caesars, which may (or may not) mean that Jesus is meant to be compared and contrasted with earthly kingship. Perhaps most shocking of all: “there is nothing in the narrative to indicate the time of year, and the celebration of Christmas in winter in the northern hemisphere finds no support here, although it is not rendered impossible.”[8] That is, to put it mildly, a pretty intimidating list.
But don’t let it scare you off. What I’ve done here is introduce you to an even more technical level of critical reading: evaluating the texts in their more original Greek form. Even if you never want to take your own research this far, it’s helpful to see the kind of thinking that comes out of parsing texts on this level. By looking at the Greek words and phrases and comparing them with other Greek texts of the same time period, scholars have been able to draw out and add to the richness and fullness of our shared story. Because some people are born with the capability to lock themselves in libraries and obsessively pore over really tedious ancient texts, you and I are able to have a really expansive and yet very nuanced view of what the writers of the Bible are trying to tell us about God.
For those who want to take the plunge, studying the Greek texts can be a fascinating glimpse into a different world. It is from these kinds of sources and reference materials that I was able to tell you about the “goodwill toward men” discrepancy when we first started this discussion. You don’t necessarily have to learn Greek to start using more advanced tools. A Strong’s concordance, for instance, will let you stick to the English text of the King James while showing you which Greek (or Hebrew, for that matter) words are behind the English ones and where else these Greek words appear. Careful, you don’t want to drop that on your toe. Some lexicons and bible dictionaries will do the same thing, and give you working definitions of Greek words and comparisons for where else they are used. There are even several programs and websites on the Internet that can help you do textual studies in this manner.
There are even more tools for those who are willing to get a passing knowledge of the Greek alphabet and a general idea of the structure and syntax of Greek. An Inter-linear Bible can show you the Greek and English together line by line, and often will show the individual function and tone of each word in the sentence. An exhaustive Greek-English Lexicon, such as this one by Frederick William Danker, will show you the larger meanings and contexts of every Greek word in the Bible, with comparisons to other early Greek texts. This can be very enlightening – after all, there are few words that translate one-to-one exactly from one language to another, as any of you who have learned a foreign language can affirm.
In the next few weeks we will come back to this same section and explore some more of the words and phrases in detail. In particular, we’ll explore the title of “savior” – or the Greek “soter” – and its usage in the New Testament, as well as the origins of the titles “Christ” and “Messiah” and how they relate to the Greek “Christos kyrios” in this text. I would like to open up for more discussion now and hear some of your thoughts on this passage and the ideas and methods I have introduced before we go.
[1] BDAG
[2] Marshall, I. Howard. The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text. Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1978.112.
[3] Funk, Robert W. New Gospel Parallels: Volume One, the Synoptic Gospels. Vol. 1. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985. 287
[4] Keck, Leander E., ed. New Interpreters Bible: General Articles & Introduction, Commentary & Reflections for Each Book of the Bible. Vol. 9. 12 vols. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995. 20-27.
[5] The numbering is from the text: during the above discourse, I would plan to display the book, as the themes I have listed appear in bold, large print on the page.
[6] Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J. The Gospel According to Luke I-IX (Anchor Bible). Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981.395-397
[7] Marshall 108
[8] Marshall, 108-112
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