In Reply to: Re: Catholic Bible & other translations posted by exer on July 29, 2003 at 15:37:20:
I am fluent in modern Greek, but not in New Testement Greek, I wish I was. Though I have taught New Testment Greek in Seminary. Aslo I am not a theologian. My degree is in Religious Studies, which is not the same. I received an e-mail asking to say something about the verse you are discussing and I answered it is a difficult passage and sorry but I can't help. But let me try to add my two cents, whatever that is worth. First of all "en anthropis eudokias" "in [or upon]
men of 'good will'" is enclosed in parenthetical markings or signs. My greek bible says that "the words enclosed between these two signs are replaced by other worlds in a part of the tradition." I am not clear as to what they mean by the word tradition in this context. Are they possibly saying that this portion is not even included in some of the manuscripts? I don't know. Ok, if I had to chose between "to men who enjoy his favour" "to those on whom his favor rests" "among men of goodwill" "goodwill toward men" I would chose "among men of goodwill" not that I am sure this is the best of the four. And even the one I have chosen coult be incorrect.
"en" simply means in, upon, inside.
"anthropois" means men, not man vs women, but man in the gerneric sence which inludes both men and women. There is a diffent word for male.
"euthokias" is where the problem is. It is made of two words. eu means good. euangelion means good news, euangelist, the same eu in the begining meaning good.
The rest of the word in eudokias is a word that I don't know what it means. It is translated will here, but in modern Greek it does not mean that.
At any rate the word eudokias whatever it may or may not mean is in the genitive here. So the translation that says "of" in "of good will" seems to be the most correct at least from the gramatical, syntactic point of view. Of course since I don't really know that "dokias" mean I wouldn't know the context which is very important in determining the meaning of a sentence. But even if I know what exaclty "dokias" means contaxt is like art or rather like the Wild West, anybody can see it their own way. As you can see I was not very much help, that's why I didn't want to get involved to begin with. Sam Ajemian