Luke 1:5

γυνὴ αὐτῷ. The reading of אBCDLX Gr[1] La[2] Ti[3] &c.; ‘he had a wife’ instead of the ἡ γυνὴ αὐτοῦ ‘his wife was’ of the Rec[4]

[1] Gr. Griesbach.
[2] La. Lachmann.
[3] Ti. Tischendorf.
[4] Rec. The Textus Receptus.

5. Ἐγένετο ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις. The elaborate style of the Preface is at once replaced by one of extreme directness and simplicity, full of Hebraic expressions; shewing that here St Luke begins to use, and probably to translate, some Aramaic document which had come into his hands. The remainder of this chapter is known as the Protevangelium—the Gospel History before the Birth of Christ. The sweetness and delicate reserve of the narrative, together with the incidents on which it dwells, have led to the not unreasonable conjecture that the Virgin Mary had written down some of those things which she long ‘kept in her heart.’ Something however of the ‘lofty and lyric beauty’ of the narrative must be due to St Luke, for his peculiar expressions occur even amid the Hebraic idioms. In this new material we may note: