Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who authored the carol, was aware of his repetitive prose, commemorating his style in the first verse. “Wild and sweet the words repeat of peace on earth good will to men.” He echoed the nativity story when angels appeared to shepherds to announce the birth of Jesus. The heavenly beings divulge the who/when/where details to the migrant workers; then a whole choir appears and sings “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
It’s such a familiar verse, even people who’ve never stepped foot in a church could quote it. From greeting cards to A Charlie Brown Christmas, this Bible story is ingrained in our collective psyche - an inseparable part of pop culture as much as it is a sacred religious tradition. Yet, it is woefully lacking.
Two decades ago, most of my friends (and all of my roommates) were musicians. We all challenged each other to be smarter and more artistic. We honed each other’s talents. One of these dudes had never read an entire book in his life unless required for school. When he decided to be more of a reader, the first book he chose was Plato’s Apology. He asked me if I wanted to take a class with him to study Koine Greek. How could I resist? Doesn’t everyone want to learn a dead language?
I still can’t speak the ancient Mediterranean tongue. It’s complex - lacking in punctuation and current rules of grammar. However, I do remember the alphabet, basic pronunciation, and some vocabulary. More importantly, I learned the basics of how modern scholars approach biblical translation since Koine is the language used in the most of the earliest copies of the New Testament. I learned how many of the older translations into English did not provide the most accurate translation possible. The King James Bible is rife with minor mistranslations including this verse in Saint Luke’s telling of the birth of Christ.
Here is the scripture of Luke 2:14 according to the KJV: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
And the same thing in Koine Greek: “δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις θεῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκίας”
Yeah, I know. You probably can’t read Greek and for the most part, neither can I. However there are a couple words I recognize from my studies during the summer of 2001. Simple ones like ἐν (en) which means in. Or καὶ (kai) the Greek word for and. Easy stuff. Seminary students would likely know words like θεῷ (Theo), which means God, and ἀνθρώποις might be familiar to anthropology students because it’s the entomological origin of their degree curriculum.
To make things easy, I’ll transliterate it: doxa en hypsistois Theo kai epi gēs eirēnē en anthropois eudokias. In a literal word for word translation into English: glory in highest to God and on earth peace among men … eudokias.
That last word, eudokias, is where it gets weird. This is where the KJV goes astray. What does the word mean? It’s also the last word in Philippians 2:13 and there, the KJV gets the translation correct: “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” Eudokias only appears twice in the New Testament. The KJV the translation right in one verse but wrong in the other. How? Why? And what should it say?
Eudokias means good will or good pleasure or with pleasure or good favor or with favor. There’s a lot of different ways to interpret it; like I said, Koine Greek is a complex language.
This is how the KJV got it mixed up. They used good pleasure in Paul’s epistle and good will in the gospel. More specifically God’s good pleasure and men’s good will. On the surface it seems correct, but it’s not. There’s a mistake into how the good will was applied. The word eudokiasis a possessed word. Not possessed like a ghost, but possessed as in belonging to someone or something. This is apparent in the KJV take in Philippians. The good pleasure of eudokias belongs to God. Once you understand the weird and often confusing syntax of Koine, we find the same is true in the book of Luke. The good pleasure, good will, or good favor in the Christmas story belongs to God, not people.
A broken English translation of the verse in Luke should read “glory in highest to God and on earth peace among men of his good will.” Or men of his pleasure (awkward) or as most modern translations use, his favor. More specifically, the NIV reads “peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
It’s not peace on earth AND good will to men. It is peace on earth for those of God’s good will.
I can understand how the King James translators got it wrong and I can see what they got wrong, but I do not know why. All I can explain is the modern implications of this 400 year old mistake.
Despite growing up in a church that relied on the NIV, it’s the KJV version I can quote from rote memory because that’s the version from the Christmas song and Charles Schultz’s cartoon special. It’s the one repeated in the public square.
It would be easy to conclude peace on earth is the sole purpose of the nativity. To do so is missing the point. If Jesus came to bring peace on earth to people with whom God’s favor rests, God’s people should be peacekeepers, or rather, peace bringers.
We cannot sit back and pretend peace on earth is an abstract concept, the responsibility of the divine, and ignore the role we’re supposed to take. The birth of Jesus should give Christians a peace that surpasses all understanding - a sense of peace so strong and overwhelming, we can’t help but spread it to the world around us. Jesus didn’t come to bring peace on earth. He came to give us peace on an earth in turmoil. He lived to show us how to share that peace. And he commanded us to do the hard work of binging peace on earth.
Unfortunately in modern Christianity, especially in America, and ESPECIALLY in white evangelical culture, this message is lost. When I look at the American Evangelical Church, peace is the last adjective that comes to mind. Quarrelsome, fearful, vindictive, chaotic, divisive, greedy, violent, too busy fighting an imaginary war on Christmas to realize everything they do is antithetical to the gospel of Christ.
Not much has changed in America since Longfellow penned his poem.
I want to reclaim the spirit of Christmas. I want my fellow Christians to truly be a people of God’s good will. If there is to be peace on earth, may we be the peacekeepers who bring it to a world starving for peace and be people of eudokias.
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