In Luke 2:22, there is a mildly famous – or infamous – textual variant which involves the Textus Receptus, the base-text of the KJV: did Luke write that “the days of her [that is, Mary’s] purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished”? That is how the passage is read in the KJV. The NKJV, MEV, the Rheims New Testament, the New Life Version, the NIrV, and the Living Bible read similarly. The phrase is different, however – referring to the days of their purification – in the ASV, CSB, EHV, EOB-NT, ESV, NASB, NET, NLT, NRSV, and WEB. (The NIV inaccurately avoids saying either “her” or “their,” and simply says vaguely that “the time came for the purification rites.” The Message hyper-paraphrase makes the same compromise, saying that “the days stipulated by Moses for purification were complete.” Other versions that have rendered the passage imprecisely include the CEV, ERV, and GNT.)
The difference in English reflects a difference in Greek: the KJV’s base-text (and the base-text of the Geneva Bible in the 1500s) says αὐτῆς, which means “her,” while the base-text of the EHV, EOB-NT, WEB, etc., reads αὐτῶν, which means “their.” The text compiled by Erasmus in 1516, and the text printed by Stephanus in 1550, and the Nestle-Aland/UBS compilations have αὐτῶν.
This little
difference is a big deal to some champions of the KJV, who regard the KJV’s
base-text as something which was “refined seven times” (cf. Psalm 12:6) in the
course of the first century of the printed Greek New Testament. D. A. Waite wrote as if the reading αὐτῶν implies that Jesus was a sinner:
“The word her is
changed to their, thus making the Lord Jesus Christ One Who needed
"purification," and therefore was a sinner!” (p. 200, Defending
the King James Bible, 3rd ed., Ó 2006 The Bible for Today Press) Will Kinney, a KJV-Onlyist,
has written, “The reading of HER is
admittedly a minority reading, but it is the correct one.”
In 1921, William H. F. Hatch, after investigated this variant, reported in the 1921 (Vol. 14) issue of Harvard Theological Review (pp. 377-381) that “The feminine pronoun αὐτῆς is found in no Greek manuscript of the New Testament.” Quite a few manuscripts have been discovered since 1921, but I have not found any Greek manuscripts that support αὐτῆς (though it is possible that αὐτῆς might be found in very late manuscripts made by copyists who used printed Greek New Testaments as their exemplars).
Hatch explained that À A B L W G D P and nearly all minuscules support αὐτῶν, and αὐτῶν is also supported by the Peshitta and by the Harklean Syriac, the Ethiopic, Armenian, and Gothic versions. He observed that Codex Bezae (D, 05) has neither αὐτῆς nor αὐτῶν, but αὐτοῦ (“his”), and at least eight minuscules (listed in a footnote as 21, 47, 56, 61, 113, 209, 220, and 254) have this reading as well. Also, αὐτοῦ is supported by the Sahidic version. Latin texts are rather ambiguous on this point, whether Old Latin or Vulgate; the Latin eius can be understood as masculine or feminine (but not plural). Hatch also noted that “A few authorities have no pronoun at all after καθαρισμοῦ,” but he did not specify which ones.
Hatch advocated a
relatively not-simple hypothesis: that most
of the first two chapters of Luke were “based on a Semitic source” and in this
source, the wording in the passage meant “her” purification but “Luke, or
whoever translated the source into Greek, having read in the preceding verse
about the circumcision and naming of Jesus, took it as masculine, ‘his
purification,’ and translated it by καθαρισμοῦ αὐτοῦ.”
Hatch proposed, further, that before the time of Origen, someone
realized that αὐτοῦ could not be correct (inasmuch as the
law of Moses says nothing about the purification of male offspring) and changed
it to αὐτῶν.
“Αὐτῆς,” Hatch wrote, “appeared as a learned correction, but its range
was extremely limited until the appearance of the Complutensian edition in
1522.”
Those not willing
to embrace Hatch’s hypothesis may be content to adopt what is in the text of
most manuscripts, whether Alexandrian or Byzantine: καθαρισμοῦ αὐτῶν – “their purification.” Facing D. A. Waite’s contention that texts
with “their purification” are “theologically deficient,” interpreters have at least three
options: to understand
(1) that Luke’s “their purification” is a reference to the custom observed by
followers of Judaism in general, or, (2) that Joseph as well as Mary
participated in the purification-rites, having been in contact with Mary at
Jesus’ birth, or (3) that Joseph accompanied Mary in the purification-rites
even though it was not required by the Mosaic law. In no scenario does the text imply that Jesus
“therefore was a sinner,” inasmuch as the purification-rites commanded
in Leviticus 12 followed ceremonial uncleanness, not sinfulness.
8 comments:
GA 76 can be viewed online at CSNTM.ORG, and it's reading of αυτών easily verified there.
Tyndale (1526) and the great bible (1539) kept "their" in their translations per Erasmus' Greek text (all five editions of the TR by Erasmus read "their"). The first emendation with "her" appeared in the Geneva bible (1560) and it seems to me that that came as a theological correction as the purification law is applied only to women plus the reading in the Vulgate. Wycliff had interpreted the Latin words "purgationis eius" as the purification of Mary. The bishop's bible followed the Geneva emendation and so did the translators of the KJV. As to the "αὐτῆς" found in the Complutensian polyglot, it is a great mystery. I'm inclined to think that Cardinal Jimenez may have found that reading somewhere in a Greek manuscript. I have compared some verses in the Latin and the Greek columns in the Complutensian Polyglot and have concluded that the his Greek text differs from the Latin at times (sometimes he did not find a Greek manuscript that corresponded to the Vulgate and left it blank!), which seems to suggest that he followed the Greek manuscripts available to him without engaging in back-translations.
Jesus was circumcised and also was baptized. One could argue that would make Him out to be a sinner also. But if He could suffer those two rituals without being condemned as a sinner, surely this purification does not cast Him as a sinner either.
Did NET copy from Comfort's commentary?
Ross,
Which book of Comfort's are you thinking of?
MAR,
Yes; if you follow the embedded link where I mention minuscule 76, it goes straight to the images at CSNTM.
JSJ
Thanks, James.
James Shelton
Excellent! Thank you James Snapp!
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