I think we both can see that this was a simple error of inclusion, a conflation, by the OP.
I’m afraid I agree with you. Her specialness comes when the Angel Gabriel** is sent from God **to locate and ask Mary for her permission to carry the Lord Jesus.
While we can be reasonably sure Mary perceived the Angel’s address in Aramaic, Luke was originally written in Greek. As such, the inspired text is the Greek and therefore the Greek is authoritative.
The “pleres charitos” of Stephen gives only an adjectival, point-in-time description of his state. It’s nothing like the vocative perfect used to address Mary.
I think its interesting that Stephen is described as “full of Grace” when he was about to become the first martyr of the Church. Not only was he willing to die, but he was doing so with an open heart forgiving those responsible. And is it a coincidence that Paul was forgiven by Stephen here? I always wished Paul directly mentioned his admiration for Stephen’s faith in his writings.
And Mary too described as “full of Grace” (or O you who were graced/favoured before and remain so even today) before Stephen and even the ministry of Christ. She was a first in the order of grace, being graced and having grace. This is a mother of all mothers in Christ.
And we don’t need to fear the Teachings regarding Mary. Jesus told the woman who was fixated on the fact that Mary merely gave birth to Jesus. Jesus wanted to let us know that we are not inferior to Mary. We are her children in the sense of receiving, nurturing, and keeping the Word of Jesus in our hearts. Also, she willingly desired her son to accomplish His mission for our sake.
Got it.Not only that, but “kecharitomene” was invoked as the subject of the sentence. As far as Gabriel was concerned, the name or title of the person he was addressing was "“kecharitomene” (hence why the omission of the name “Mary” is theologically significant). “Kecharitomene” was not just an adjective, something describing Mary, but it was a term naming her, it is WHO SHE IS.
Hence the significance of the vocative. It essentially serves as her title, much like the vocative for kurios (“kyrie”) when addressed to Jesus describes what and who he is.
Yes. It was about that time the Latin was Christianized and certain words were modified to fit. Gratia, the singular form of gratias (thanks), was one of them. Cicero probably wouldn’t have had much use of “grace” as we know it today. You and I prefer to use it the way Jerome intended it to be used.
Except for the fact that plena gratia is timeless, and thus lends itself to readings of a future continuation, whereas the Greek perfect refers only to the narrative moment and to time before that, saying nothing about afterwards (cf. Lk 6:25, 11:21).
There is nothing in the Latin to support the equivalent of the Greek perfect, or anything to imply Mary’s state in the future. Plena is merely an adjective and does not imply anything past or future. I don’t know enough about Latin to say whether plena has a tense.
So noted but FWIW, I ran “χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη” through the Google translator and it came up with “Hail, full of grace.”
Acts 6:8 has “πλήρης χάριτος” not “κεχαριτωμένη” so there should be difference, but is “highly favored one” a justified translation just to be different?
Plena gratia is pretty close to πληρης χαριτος: attributive, tenseless.
While I agree wholeheartedly on the preference for Greek, the question of theological accuracy depends upon whether you are talking about the situation at that moment in the narrative (i.e. the Virgin’s state of grace up to that point) or talking about the situation outside of the narrative (i.e. the Virgin’s timeless, perpetual state of grace): the Greek expresses the former; the Latin expresses the latter.
As porthos11 mentions, the difference is in the “perfect” form used in κεχαρτιωμενη, the perfect being an “aspect” which places the action of the verb prior to the narrative moment, in much the same way that the English perfect system does: “he has been” as opposed to “he is”. Very literally put, Acts 6:8 has “full of grace”, while Luke 1:28 has “having been given grace”.
“Infallible” is not a variety in which translations come, and especially not from Google translate. As for the Anglophone world, we already live with the KJV’s “thou that art highly favoured”, which falls between the Greek “having been favoured” and the Latin “full of grace”.
But, Latin aside, are all scholars agreed that the Greek is “having been favo(u)red” in the English and it’s the only possible translation? If Jerome knew 2014 English would he have translated it that way?