The visit of St. Mary, the Theotokos, to St. Elizabeth in Luke 1:39–56 serves as the setting for the song of the Theotokos known as the Magnificat. This title is the first word of the hymn in Latin translation, which begins, “Magnificat anima mea Dominum…” Both St. Elizabeth’s greeting to the Theotokos upon her arrival, and the subsequent hymn, are steeped in Old Testament allusion and imagery. Much of St. Luke’s Gospel is redolent with such connections to the Old Testament, in particular to the text in Greek translation, and other associated Jewish literature in Greek. These connections and parallels to the Old Testament are particularly concentrated in the early chapters of the Gospel. Both St. Elizabeth’s greeting and the…
As described briefly in the previous post, there are at least two ancient versions of St. Luke’s Gospel that emerge from the fog of the early decades of Christianity into the light of the mid-second century side by side. This post will describe three of the most interesting variations between these two versions of St. Luke’s Gospel and what they reveal about their respective texts. These two versions of St. Luke’s Gospel are accompanied by two different versions of the Acts of the Apostles which differ from each other by roughly 8-10 percent. The vast majority of these variations in Acts are merely the result of more elaborate descriptive language in the various narratives. At least some of the variants…
