Reason : Old versions of Tomcat 6 JSP compiler don't seem to be aware of JDK 8 constant pool enhancements - eg. method handles. New code in JDK 8u is using a method handle instead of creating an anonymous class. This will cause the method handle to be listed in the constant pool and the eclipse compiler will choke on this - https://bz.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=56613