Grace

The Annotation for Luke 1:28 in the 1582 Catholic Rheims Translation of the Bible in to English says:

" 28Full of grace) Note the excellence prerogatives of our B. Lady, and abhor those Heretics which make her no better than other vulgar woman, and therefor to take from her fullness of grace, they say here, Hail freely beloved, contraire to all significations of the Greek word, which is at the left, endued with Grace, as S. Paul useth it Eph. I. by S. Chrysostoms interpretation : or rather Full of grace, as-both* Greek and Latin fathers have always here understood it, and the Latin's also read it, namely S. Ambrose thus, Well is she only called full of grace, who only obtained grace which no other woman deserved, to be replenished with the author of grace. And if they did as well know the nature of these Greek words, as they would seem very skillful, they might easily observe that they signify fullness, as when them selves translate the like word (Luc. 16,20) full of force. Beza, Ulcerous."

The Above scan is the Annotations for Luke Chapter I, of the 1582 Rheims New Testament

The translation "Full of Grace" instead of "Highly Favored" or "freely beloved" is far more accurate to the Greek. The Ancient Syriac, Arabic and Latin versions bare the truth of this out. The translation "Full of Grace" was also approved by the early Christian fathers.

St. Luke wrote kecharitomene [a perfect passive participle of the verb charitoo]. In secular Greek charis meant charm, that which attracts favor. It was used to translate Old Testament Hebrew hen which first meant a favorable attitude of God to us, then the expression of that favor, then what He gives as a

result of that favor. namely hokmah or beraka, wisdom or blessing. (Oo verbs means to put someone in the state expressed by the root, which here is charis. ) The word was not used broadly like NT charis which came to mean any gift from God to us. The net result was that charis could mean either favor or grace.

But now, a thing often overlooked: if God merely sat there and gave nothing but a smile, favor, then the human would do the good by his own power - which would be Pelagianism. So when we translate favor, we must keep this in mind, and usually would do better to translate grace. So then charitoo will mean to put into grace.

Further, in English we may use a noun to mark a person as the ultimate in his class. Kecharitomene is used here as her personal name. So just as Mr. Tennis is the ultimate in the category of tennis. --therefore she would be "Miss Grace", much the same as full of grace.

The early Church father St. Jerome [who the translators of the 1611 King James Version called " a most learned father, and the best linguist without controversy, of his age, or of any that went before him,".(From the Translators' Preface to the 1611 KJV)] translated "kecharitomene" as "gratiae plena" meaning 'full of grace which thou hast received" when creating The Vulgate. The Rheimes new Testament [1582] has "Full of Grace". Many of the early Protestant versions also accepted "Grace" to be the proper translation.

The Word Pictures in the New Testament, by the renowned Protestant Greek scholar A.T. Robertson, expounds Luke 1:28 as follows:

It is certain that kecharitomene is directly concerned with the idea of "grace," since, as Vine noted, it is derived from the root word charis, whose literal meaning is "grace. The word "Charis" is translated by the King James Version, for example, 129 times (out of 150 total appearances) as "grace".

We also have the another Protestant Greek scholar John Nolland, who expounds the Greek word "kecharitomene" as found in Luke 1:28 as follows:

Thus, in just this one verse, pregnant with meaning and far-reaching implications, the uniqueness of Mary is strongly indicated, and the Immaculate Conception can rightly be deemed entirely consistent with the meaning of this passage.