Luke 2:22 in the KJV reads:
And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord.
Many modern translations do not read "her purification" but "their purification," including the following:
When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. (NRSV)
And when the days of their purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord. (1995 NASB)
And then the days of their purification were completed to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. (Lexham)
The majority of texts reads “their purification” (του καθαρισμου αυτων) such as א A B L W Θ f1.13 and the Majority text while “her purification” (του καθαρισμου αυτης) is supported by only one cursive text (76).
Commenting on this textual variant, Philip Comfort wrote:
The TR WH NU reading [“their purification”], though strongly supported, is puzzling because the law of Moses called for the purification of only the woman who gave birth (see Lev 12:6), not the husband or child. This problem prompted the variants listed above. The first [“his purification”] indicates that the baby Jesus was purified, the second [“the purification”] leaves the matter ambiguous, and the third [“her purification”] specifically identifies Mary. The third reading, supported by one late cursive manuscript (76), was adopted in the Complutensian Polyglot Bible (1514) and several of Beza’s editions, which were followed by the KJV: “It is a remarkable instance of a reading which had almost no authority becoming widely adopted” (Plummer 1896, 63).
In defense of the TR WH NU reading, Luke may have considered the purification a family matter, involving both Mary and Joseph (the grammatical subjects of the verse). But commentators since Origen have tried to make “their” refer to Mary and Jesus (Fitzmeyer 1981, 424), arguing that the purification of Mary and the presentation of Jesus were considered as two aspects of the one “cleansing” (Marshall 1978, 116). (Philip W. Comfort, New Testament Text and Translation Commentary: Commentary on the variant readings of the ancient New Testament Manuscripts and how they relate to the major English Translations [Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2008], 172, comments in square brackets added for clarification)
Max Thurian offered the following explanation for the use of “their purification”:
. . . Mary, as a faithful Jewess, would not wish to avoid the practice of the law, and she thus reveals, as St. Paul was to say of her, that ‘God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law in order that he might redeem those under the law’ (Gal. 4:4-5). Mary and Joseph were ready to fulfil the law with regard to Jesus because for them it would have been a moral sin not to have carried out an order of legal purification. On the other hand the Gospel speaks of their purification, as opposed to the law which only recognizes the purification of a woman ‘Her purification,’ (Lev. 12.6) Does the use of this plural mean that both Joseph and Mary are involved? That would appear strange since the man in this instance did not contract any impurity according to the law. Was it then a case of Mary and Jesus? The same difficulty arises. It seems more likely that the Gospel here refers rather to the whole religious law of purification to which men submit out of respect for the holiness of God and His demands, than the case of one or two people in particular, Mary and Joseph or Jesus. It is the whole age of law which is here referred to, and the religious act of the ascent to the Temple for the Presentation and Sacrifice. (Max Thurian, Mary Mother of all Christians [trans. Neville B. Cryer; New York: Herder and Herder, 1963], 98)
Some opponents of Roman Catholic Mariology argue that Luke 2:22-24 is a valid proof-text against the sinlessness (and, ipso facto, the Immaculate Conception) of Mary. While I am very critical of Catholic theology on this point, this is not a good argument and rests upon much eisegesis. For my refutation of an appeal to this as a valid proof-text against Catholic theology, see:
