Exegesis:
kai egeneto hōs apelthōn … hoi aggeloi, hoi poimenes elaloun … lit. ‘and it happened when the angels had gone away, that the shepherds said…,’ cf. note on 1.8.
hōs apelthōn ap’ autōn eis ton ouranon hoi aggeloi ‘when the angels had gone away from them back to heaven’; the Greek verb aperchomai means both ‘to go away’ and ‘to go back’ (cf. on 1.23).
hoi poimenes elaloun pros allēlous ‘he shepherds repeatedly said to one another’; the imperfect tense elaloun marks repetition.
dielthōmen dē heōs Bēthleem ‘let us then go over to Bethlehem.’
dierchomai ‘to go through,’ ‘to go,’ but always the implication that a certain distance is to be traversed, cf. Moulton-Milligan 160.
dē ‘then,’ lends greater urgency to the exhortation.
heōs as a preposition ‘as far as’ or in more general sense ‘to.’
to rēma touto to gegonos ‘this thing that has happened,’ cf. on 1.37; the expression is Hebraistic, cf. 1 Sam. 4.16, where Leroy Waterman in An American Translation translates “what has happened?” The participle gegonos ‘happened’ does not add to the meaning of rēma ‘thing’ but stresses the perfective aspect of the ‘thing.’
ho ho kurios egnōrisen hēmin ‘which the Lord has made known to us,’ implying that the angel has been the mouthpiece of the Lord; the first ho (with accent) is the relative pronoun, referring back to rēma.
gnōrizō (also v. 17) ‘to make known,’ not a specifically religious term.
Translation:
Went away from them into heaven, one verb with two indicators of direction. Idiom may require the addition of a verb, e.g. ‘they left them going (or, and went, or, to go) back to heaven’ (cf. Ekari, Telugu, Tamil, Kituba, Toraja-Sa’dan), or the omission of ‘from them’ (Tboli, Sundanese); the latter does not mean an actual loss of information, since the point of departure is clear from the context. Some languages prefer to be more specific, saying ‘went up/ascended to heaven’ (e.g. Ekari, Pampanga, Tae’). — In the Bible heaven may refer to the abode of God or to the vault of heaven, the firmament/sky. In the former meaning it occurs here and in 3.22; 6.23; 10.18 (?), 20; 11.16; 12.33; 15.7; 18.22; 19.38; 22.43, 51, and as an adjective ‘heavenly’ in 2.13; 11.13; and metonymically, cf. on 15.18. The latter meaning occurs in 3.21; 4.25; 9.16, 54; 10.18 (?); 17.29; 18.13; 21.10, 26; also in combination with “Hades” or with “earth” in 10.15 and 21 (which see). Some languages distinguish between these concepts; elsewhere the sky is seldom associated with God, e.g. in Samoan. In such cases a descriptive term ‘place where God lives’ may be an acceptable rendering. The Greek word used here is more everyday than “the highest” in v. 14, but in some languages, e.g. in Tboli, one rendering has to cover the two terms.
Said to one another is often expressed by a reciprocal form of the verb, cf. on 4.36; in Medumba by a complex pronoun (lit. ‘they-they’) with reciprocal meaning, ‘they among themselves said.’
In some cases the clause structure of the following direct discourse must be changed, e.g. ‘The Lord has made known to us what has happened. Let us go … and look at it’ (cf. Telugu).
Let us go over to, or, ‘go (straight) to’ (cf. Good News Translation, New English Bible). The hortatory mood is often expressed by a specific form of the verb, e.g. an imperative (Kituba), or by the use of an interjection (cf. Sundanese), or of a combination of both. In some cases the verb must be rendered by a specific term for going from the countryside to the central town or village.
Thing that has happened or, ‘what has happened,’ ‘event that has taken place (lit. is-born)’ (Thai), ‘things that have taken place (lit. have fallen) there’ (Kituba); or here, ‘this that they told us about just now’ (Tboli, which does not possess such a generic term as ‘happened’). Considerations of sentence structure may make it preferable to render the phrase by one term, e.g. “this event” (Phillips), ‘that matter’ (Balinese).
Which the Lord has made known to us. Whereas the preceding relative clause is restrictive, this one is non-restrictive, cf. ‘what has happened here, as has been known…’ (Javanese). God was the ultimate source of the message but the angels were the actual conveyors; therefore it may be necessary to say ‘which God has caused to be told (or, caused the angels to tell) us.’
Quoted with permission from Reiling, J. and Swellengrebel, J.L. A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1971. For this and other handbooks for translators see here . Make sure to also consult the Handbook on the Gospel of Mark for parallel or similar verses.