Luke 1:15

1:15 for he will be great in the sight of ¹  the Lord. He ²  must never drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even before his birth. ³ 

Luke 2:22

Jesus’ Presentation at the Temple

2:22 Now ⁴  when the time came for their ⁵  purification according to the law of Moses, Joseph and Mary ⁶  brought Jesus ⁷  up to Jerusalem ⁸  to present him to the Lord

Luke 5:26

5:26 Then ⁹  astonishment ¹⁰  seized them all, and they glorified ¹¹  God. They were filled with awe, ¹²  saying, “We have seen incredible ¹³  things ¹⁴  today.” ¹⁵ 

¹ tn Grk “before.”

² tn Grk “and he”; because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, the conjunction καί (kai) has not been translated here. Instead a new English sentence is begun in the translation.

³ tn Grk “even from his mother’s womb.” While this idiom may be understood to refer to the point of birth (“even from his birth”), Luke 1:41 suggests that here it should be understood to refer to a time before birth.

⁴ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “now” to indicate the transition to a new topic.

⁵ tc The translation follows most mss, including early and important ones ({א A B L}). Some copyists, aware that the purification law applied to women only, produced mss ({76 it^pt vg} [though the Latin word eius could be either masculine or feminine]) that read “her purification.” But the extant evidence for an unambiguous “her” is shut up to one late minuscule ({codex 76}) and a couple of patristic citations of dubious worth ({Pseudo-Athanasius} whose date is unknown, and the {Catenae in euangelia Lucae et Joannis}, edited by J. A. Cramer. The Catenae is a work of collected patristic sayings whose exact source is unknown [thus, it could come from a period covering hundreds of years]). A few other witnesses (D pc lat) read “his purification.” The KJV has “her purification,” following Beza’s Greek text (essentially a revision of Erasmus’). Erasmus did not have it in any of his five editions. Most likely Beza put in the feminine form αὐτῆς (auths) because, recognizing that the eius found in several Latin mss could be read either as a masculine or a feminine, he made the contextually more satisfying choice of the feminine. Perhaps it crept into one or two late Greek witnesses via this interpretive Latin back-translation. So the evidence for the feminine singular is virtually nonexistent, while the masculine singular αὐτοῦ (autou, “his”) was a clear scribal blunder. There can be no doubt that “their purification” is the authentic reading.

⁶ tn Grk “they”; the referents (Joseph and Mary) have been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁷ tn Grk “him”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁸ map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.

⁷ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.

⁸ tn Or “amazement.” See L&N 25.217, which translates this clause, “astonishment seized all of them.”

⁹ tn This imperfect verb could be translated as an ingressive (“they began to glorify God”), but this is somewhat awkward in English since the following verb is aorist and is normally translated as a simple past.

¹⁰ tn Grk “fear,” but the context and the following remark show that it is mixed with wonder; see L&N 53.59.

¹¹ tn Or “remarkable.” The term παράδοξος (paradoxos) is hard to translate exactly; it suggests both the unusual and the awe inspiring in this context. For the alternatives see L&N 31.44 (“incredible”) and 58.56 (“remarkable”). It is often something beyond belief (G. Kittel, TDNT 2:255).

¹² tn The word “things” is not in the Greek text, but has been supplied because the adjective παράδοξος (paradoxos) is substantival. Other translations sometimes supply alternate words like “miracles” or “signs,” but “things” is the most neutral translation.

¹³ sn See the note on today in 2:11.