Luke 2:15-16 vs. “O Come All Ye Faithful”

Why it matters

For a great many people this carol is the mental picture of Luke 2, and it is a good picture as far as it goes. What it leaves out is the part of the passage that is easiest to check: named witnesses, a specific night, a sign they were given, and a scene they found matching it.

The other thing worth knowing is that the carol is a text with a history. Its stanzas come from at least three hands across roughly a century, its English is a translation that was itself revised, and the name printed above it has moved between several candidates. None of that makes the hymn untrue. It does mean the hymn has to be read the way any human text is read, while the verse behind it has an address anyone can look up and compare.

Helpful comparison

Two summonses sit next to each other here and they are not the same summons. Luke's is in the mouths of shepherds who have just been told something and want to see whether it is so; the verb is go, the destination is Bethlehem, the purpose is to see. The hymn's is in the mouth of the congregation; the verb is come, the destination is the same, and the purpose is to adore. The passage's version ends in verse 16 with them finding what they were promised, and the chapter goes on to have them tell people about it. The hymn's version has no afterwards, because a hymn is sung in the present. Holding the two together is the whole exercise: the carol is asking you to make the shepherds' journey your own posture, which is fair, and Luke is telling you it was a real journey by real people who then went and talked.

Sources

• Reawaken Hymns, O Come All Ye Faithful, official lyric video · (the recording checked for this proof; posted 6 November 2024 on the Reawaken Hymns channel, arrangement credited to Nathan Drake, and the lyric text posted with it runs three stanzas)
• Reawaken Hymns, O Come All Ye Faithful resource page · (CCLI 7247047, credited to Nathan Drake and John F. Wade, and the chord chart's printed verse list including the creedal stanza as verse two)
• Hymnary.org, O Come, All Ye Faithful text authority page · (Wade as author of the Latin around 1743, Oakeley's 1841 translation, four original stanzas plus four later ones, the old ascription to St Bonaventura, and the scripture index listing Luke 2:1-20 and Psalm 95:6)
• Hymnology Archive, Adeste Fideles · (the attribution history including John Reading, Bonaventure, John IV of Portugal and Cistercian monks; the Wade manuscripts and Dom John Stéphan's 1947 study; the second stanza's near-verbatim use of the Nicene Creed; Borderies' three added stanzas of 1822; Oakeley's translation and Francis Murray's 1852 revision that produced the familiar opening line)
• UMC Discipleship Ministries, History of Hymns: O Come, All Ye Faithful · (Wade's dated manuscripts, Oakeley's 1841 translation first printed in an 1852 hymnal, and Borderies' added stanzas, one of which is the shepherds stanza)