Turning to the story of the Purifying in Lk. ii. 22‐4, we are met by the question, What are we to understand by the phrase “_their purification_” (ii. 22)? Attempts have been made to take the pronoun as referring to the mother and the child, but, in view of the construction of the passage, this exegesis is impossible. Joseph and Mary are clearly the unexpressed subject of the verb in the sentence in which the pronoun “their” occurs (“And when the days of _their_ purification ... were fulfilled, _they_ brought him up to Jerusalem”). Schmiedel holds that the word “their” refers to Joseph and Mary,(30) and without doubt this opinion is correct. But if this is so, is it probable that St. Luke had the thought of a virgin birth in the background of his mind when he first penned the phrase? Is not the pronoun one which we may think he would have been anxious to avoid? Nor was there any need for him to introduce it, since, according to the Levitical law, it was only the mother who was made unclean by a birth (cf. Lev. xii). Schmiedel, who calls attention to this fact, thinks that the writer has made “an archaeological error”. “This error serves to show that the writer regarded Joseph as the actual father of Jesus; otherwise he could not have thought of him at all as unclean” (EB., col. 2955). Even if we think that Schmiedel’s remorseless logic is too confidently applied, the fact remains that St. Luke’s pronoun is as unnecessary as it is ambiguous. The difficulty of the expression is not felt by the modern mind alone. It is reflected in two subsequent textual alterations. Instead of “their purification”, the Codex Bezae reads “his purification”, and the Sin. Syr. MS., together with the cursive 76, has the pronoun “her”. The textual evidence forbids us to accept the reading “her purification”, but this is assuredly the phrase we should expect a writer to use who has just told the story of a virgin birth.