I am like you. I would prefer a translation of Scripture that reads uniformly in line with our prayer life, as the Lectionary reads in Mass, and that reflects our theology.
That being said, the way it is rendered in the New American Bible and other translations is also correct. The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives us a definition of God’s grace at section 1996: “Grace is favor.”
In others words “grace” and “favor” are synonyms. According to the Catechism, they mean exactly the same thing. Being that the Catechism is a large compendium, it is not a wonder that more Catholics are totally unaware of this fact of our religion. It rarely gets discussed. So Catholics unfamiliar with this often get confused when they read the NAB.
But if they are synonyms, why the difference at all? The NAB is following Greek language structure. Our prayers and the Liturgy reflect the Latin translation of the Greek.
The translation of the New Testament in the NAB is directly from the Greek, which came first before the Latin rendition. The word in the Greek text is problematic too. The Infancy Narrative in Luke is not written in Koine (Common) Greek like the rest of the New Testament. It is written in Septuagint Greek, an archaic Jewish form, and the word for “full of grace” or “highly favored” is unique. It doesn’t occur in any other place in the Bible or any non-Biblical Greek text. The Latin helps explain how the Church has always understood it theologically, but the Greek has always left Greek readers scratching their heads.
The word appears to be “most graced” or “favored highly” in the sense of “favor” being God’s sanctifying grace as defined in the CCC. Some linguists believe it is a translation of words heard by Mary in Aramaic, but what those exact words are can only be hypothesized.
As Catholics, we are used to hearing and saying “full of grace,” and we often say that this is due to the Latin rendition. The Latin word “plena” means “plump” as in “filled with,” like when someone eats a meal and they have eaten to satisfaction. In Latin the language allows a person to say that another is “filled” with a quality. But the Greek, even Septuagint Greek, does not allow for such a description in this instance. The word logic is different.
The rules of Greek speaking in this instance only allow for the description to be spoken of in degrees, such as “low” or “high.” You cannot always say that someone is “filled” with grace in Greek, because the rules of that language don’t always let you write or speak that way. But you can say that someone has God’s grace to the superlative degree. That’s what “highly favored” means. In Greek a person can have a high or low degree of grace, but the language doesn’t always allow you to say one is “filled” with it. (You can say that someone is “full of grace” in regular Koine Greek, such as at John 1.14, but that is a different dialect, different words, and a differently structured sentence altogether.)
According to directives from the Vatican, translations of the Bible are to be made directly from the original language. Since the expression is originally written in Greek, the NAB renders it as closely to the Greek as possible. The degree of grace or favor is “high” in Greek, so that is what we read from a translation of the Greek. When we read a rendition from the Latin text, grace or favor is spoken of as existing “inside” a person as one fills a glass, either full to the top or leaving the vessel empty. This is what we are used to hearing becuase our prayer life is based on the Latin prayers of our Tradition.
The good news is that the New Testament of the NAB is being revised to read as it does in the Lectionary. When released in 2025 (the projected date for release) the traditional rendering from the Latin will be reflected in the main text. However, the original Greek expression of “highly favored” will likely never disappear. Since that is what the inspired Greek literally says, you will likely find that reading delegated to the footnote in this new edition.
