No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Text of Luke 2, 22
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2011
Extract
This verse contains a textual problem which has perplexed editors of the New Testament since the days of Erasmus and the Complutensian edition. The question is, What pronoun should be read after καθαρισμοῦ? — αὐτῶν, or αὐτοῦ, or αὐτῆς?
Αὐτῶν is attested by אABLWΓΔII etc., by nearly all the minuscules, by the Peshitta, the Harclean, and the Palestinian Syriac, and by three minor ancient versions (Ethiopic, Armenian, and Gothic). The Arabic Diatessaron also has the plural pronoun, agreeing with the Peshitta at this point. Origen found αὐτῶν in his text of the Gospel, and, so far as is known, he was acquainted with no other reading in this place. He quotes Luke 2, 22 in his Fourteenth Homily on Luke, which deals with the Circumcision and Purification, and he discusses the difficulty involved in the plural αὐτῶν without mentioning any variant reading. If he had known of such, he would certainly have made some reference to it. The Homiliae in Lucam were written at Caesarea, after Origen's withdrawal to that city from Alexandria in the year 231. We may therefore assume that αὐτῶν formed part of Luke 2, 22 in the text current at Caesarea and Alexandria in the early part of the third century, and that there were no rival claimants for the place. It was also the Antiochian, or ‘Syrian,’ reading, as its predominance in the minuscule manuscripts proves.
- Type
- Notes
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1921
References
1. So Mill (Novum Testamentum, ed. Kuster, Prol. §§ 676 and 1438); van Hengel (Annotationes, p. 199); Edersheim (Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 8th ed., i, p. 195, n. 1).
2. So Origen; de Wette; Winer (Grammar, tr. Thayer, p. 147); Hahn.
3. So Meyer, Godet, Alford, Bernhard Weiss, Schanz, Plummer, E. Klostermann.
4. Codex 76, a Vienna manuscript of the twelfth or thirteenth century, is commonly cited as a witness for αὐτῆς. This, however, is an error; for Gregory, who examined the codex in 1887, reports that it reads αὐτῶν in Luke 2, 22 (cf. Tischendorf, Novum Testamentum Graece, III, 484). Codex 76 is one of the manuscripts consulted by Alter. He printed αὐτῆς in Luke 2, 22 without recording the reading of this codex. Griesbach inferred from Alter's silence that αὐτῆς was found in 76, and in order to indicate that the citation was based on inference he enclosed the number 76 in parentheses. It has been pointed out above that this manuscript really has αὐτῶν; and Alter failed to indicate this fact through carelessness. His edition is substantially a reprint of 218, a thirteenth century codex in the Imperial Library in Vienna. Professor Karl Beth, of Vienna, has kindly informed me that it reads αὐτῶν in Luke 2, 22. Alter, a Roman Catholic scholar, no doubt adopted αὐτῆς from the Complutensian-Elzevir tradition, or possibly from the Vulgate eius. Scholz, with characteristic inaccuracy, omitted Griesbach's parentheses about 76, and thenceforth αὐτῆς passed into the critical tradition as the true reading of the manuscript.
5. Athanasius (Benedictine ed., Paris, 1698), ii, 418 f.
6. Cf. Cramer, Catenae, ii, p. 22. Augustine's De Consensu Evangelistarum, ii, 17 is cited by Tischendorf as an authority for eius. The passage runs thus: dies purgationis matris eius (Benedictine ed., Paris, 1679–1701, iii, col. 38).
7. The Roman edition of the Arabic has no pronoun at this point.
8. Codd. 21, 47, 56, 61, 118, 209, 220, 254.
9. Two Sahidic manuscripts, however, read ‘their,’ in agreement with אAB etc. The Amsterdam edition of the Armenian version (1666) is in some places conformed to the Latin Vulgate (cf. Conybeare in Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible, i, 154). Accordingly ‘his cleansing’ in Luke 2, 22 may be due to purgationis eius of the Vulgate. Zohrab's critical edition of the New Testament (1789) has ‘their cleansing.’
10. The only Latin authorities known to read eorum are q and δ.
11. The Curetonian Syriac is defective at this point.
12. Cf. Zahn, Kommentar, p. 151, note.
13. Cod. 435, Scrivener's x and y, Amphilochius (Migne P. G. XXXIX, 48), the Latin translation of Irenaeus (Migne P. G. VII, 877 f.), the Bohairic version (though six manuscripts have ‘their’), and the Roman edition of the Arabic.
14. What manuscripts the Complutensian editors used in preparing their edition of the New Testament is not known. It is, however, altogether improbable that they had any Greek authority for αὐτῆς in Luke 2, 22. They doubtless introduced the word into their text on the strength of the Vulgate eius (understood as a feminine pronoun), just as they adopted 1 John 5, 7 and 8 from the current Latin version. In support of αὐτῆς Mill cites the Lectiones Velesianae. On these readings, which were really not Greek but Latin, see Wettstein, Novum Testamentum, I, pp. 59 ff.
15. ‘Her purification’ of the A. V. represents this tradition. The R. V. on the other hand reads ‘their purification’ in accordance with the great uncial manuscripts. Luther wrote ‘ihrer Reinigung,’ which is ambiguous; but Gerbelius's edition of the New Testament (1521, an Erasmian text), which Luther is said to have used, has αὐτῶν. A similar ambiguity is found in the West Saxon and Northumbrian versions.
16. According to Mill, Erasmus was acquainted with one manuscript that read αὐτοῦ.
17. The hymns on the other hand are Hebraic in character, and may have been composed in Hebrew. Cf. Torrey, in Studies in the History of Religions, presented to C. H. Toy, pp. 293 f. Professor Torrey thinks that the prose setting as well as the hymns themselves were written in Hebrew, and in support of this view he cites the awkward phrase εἰς πόλιν Ἰούδα in Luke 1, 39. This he regards as an attempt to translate the Hebrew אל מרינח יהורה into Greek. “For the Aramaic ליהור מרינתא would hardly have been rendered by εἰς πόλιν Ἰούδα. The word יהור could not well have been misunderstood; moreover, it does not look like the name of a town, nor would it have been transliterated by Ιουδα” (op. cit., p. 292). יהור is found in the Aramaic sections of Ezra and Daniel, but יהורה occurs a number of times in the Targum on the Prophets as the name of the Southern Kingdom. Εἰς πόλιν Ἰούδα may therefore represent the Aramaic למרינת יהורה or למרינתא רי יהורה. Similarly, Torrey thinks that προβεβηκότες ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις αὐτῶν in Luke 1, 7 is a translation of באים בימיהם. But the original may quite as well have been עללין ביומיהון חוו. On a priori grounds it is more likely that a prose writing which circulated among the Jewish Christians of Palestine should be written in the vernacular Aramaic than in the sacred Hebrew, which was to most of them a lingua ignota. Certainly the first part of Acts is based on Aramaic, not Hebrew, sources. Cf. Torrey, The Date and Composition of Acts, passim.