the Fourth Week after Easter
Click here to join the effort!
Bible Dictionaries
Presentation
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or PRESENTATION (in the Temple) (Luke 2:22-40).—When St. Paul had mentioned (Galatians 4:4) the sending forth of the Son of God into our world, he spoke of it in two stages, ‘born of a woman,’ ‘born under the law’ (Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 ); and in both those acts or stages the Pauline Evangelist St. Luke is able and careful in his history of Jesus to exhibit Him. To the narrative of His nativity accordingly he subjoins (Luke 2:21) a notice of His circumcision on the eighth day, in obedience to Genesis 17:12; and now on the fortieth day He is brought to Jerusalem to be offered or presented (Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 , παραστῆσαι) to the Lord, in accordance with the legal requirements of Exodus 13:2 (freely quoted in Luke 2:23) and Numbers 3, 12, 18. Along with the rite of the Presentation of the, Child there was fulfilled on the same occasion another for the Purification of the Mother; but we shall consider that afterwards.
1. The law as to the Child is described in OT as having its origin in Egypt. From patriarchal times, indeed, the firstborn had been the priest in the family; but a new obligation was laid on the firstborn in Israel by the circumstances of the Exodus. When God sent Moses to Pharaoh, the Divine message to the king ran, ‘Israel is my son, even my firstborn: if thou refuse to let him go I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn’ (Exodus 4:22-23). Pharaoh refused. Nine successive plagues were sent on him in vain. The time had come for the execution of God’s threatening. The Lord was to pass through the land of Egypt to execute the judgment. Israel was not so guilty as her oppressors; but neither could she stand before God if once He were angry; and God provided for her in the Paschal lamb a victim under which each Israelite household that would believe His word and keep His commandment might find shelter. ‘By faith they kept the passover and the sprinkling of blood’ (Hebrews 11:28); but in token that their firstborn had been due to death and rescued by God’s mercy, all the firstborn (‘every male that openeth the womb’) were to be sanctified to Him (Numbers 8:17). God might have slain each, or kept him for His own especial service. He would not slay him: He permitted him (and required him) to be redeemed (Exodus 13:13-15). Instead of the firstborn, however, God took for the service of His sanctuary the tribe of Levi (Numbers 3:12; Numbers 8:14-18), requiring, at the time of this substitution, that as many firstborn as there were in Israel in excess of the number of the Levites must be redeemed by the payment of five shekels for each one (Numbers 3:44-51). Afterwards (Numbers 18:15-16), every firstborn son must be presented and redeemed by the payment of this amount. Our Lord might have claimed exemption, as the Son of God; just as afterwards when they asked Him to pay the Temple rate He declared, ‘Therefore the sons are free’ (Matthew 17:26 Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 ). But He came not to claim exemptions but to share our burdens, carry our sorrows, take away our sins, and, more particularly, to redeem them that are under the Law (Galatians 4:5). He ‘came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many’ (Matthew 20:28); and ‘thus it became him to fulfil all righteousness’ (Matthew 3:15). Moreover, by being thus redeemed from the personal obligation of serving in the Temple, His love to it, which at His next visit to it He was to manifest (Luke 2:49 Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 ), and His zeal for it which devoured Him (John 2:17), were brought into clearer light. They were not of constraint, but willing. Still, the leading thought in the history of His Presentation in the Temple is that of His having come ‘that the scripture might be fulfilled’ (Luke 21:22-24; Luke 24:44), ‘and that the whole life of the God-man on earth might present a realization of that ideal depicted in the prophetic writings of the OT’ (Oosterzee).
The act of presenting Him would be performed by Joseph (Exodus 13:15) as the putative father, at once the shield of Mary and the protector of her child (Luke 3:23); not by the Virgin, as Cornelius à Lapide assumes, although there is some beauty in his interpretation of the five shekels, which constituted the redemption money, as ‘symbolizing the Five Wounds at the price whereof Christ redeemed the race of man’ (Com. in loc.). The Law does not seem to have prescribed any particular time for the redemption of the firstborn, but many fathers would doubtless act as Joseph did, and perform the rite on the day appointed by the Law for the sacrifice of his wife’s purification. There is hardly time for the visit of the Wise Men, the Flight into Egypt, and the Return thence, between the Birth of Christ and His Presentation in the Temple; moreover, a public service at Jerusalem would have been fraught with danger after the inquiries of the Magi had aroused the jealous fears of Herod. But neither is there any need for supposing that the Wise Men’s visit came so soon after the Nativity. ‘From two years old and under’ (Matthew 2:16) was the age which Herod supposed the newborn ‘King of the Jews’ might be. Mary’s availing herself of the permission, as a poor woman, to offer the two doves instead of the costlier lamb is not consistent with the idea that the gold offered by the Wise Men was at her disposal: while St. Luke’s mention of the Holy Family returning into Galilee and Nazareth (Luke 2:39) is of the nature of a foreshortening, and does not imply that no event intervened between the Presentation and the journey to the North.
2. The Purification of Mary, besides synchronizing with the Presentation of her Son, was an event belonging to the same moral and religious category. It also was an act of a humble-minded and becoming obedience to the Law of Moses, under which she lived. St. Jerome alone among the Fathers was of opinion that in her case too it was strictly obligatory, not, of course, on account of any sin on her part, her conception of the Child being spotless and holy (Luke 1:26-35) and an act of obedience to Almighty God; but ceremonially because, the Birth being a real one, she had touched things which involved ceremonial uncleanness. Whether St. Jerome is right, or the other Fathers (for the discussion see Cornelius à Lapide), and whether or not she might have claimed exemption, she is to be praised for not doing so, but quietly and humbly accepting the law binding on ordinary mothers, and being willing, as her Son will also be, to be reckoned with transgressors (Mark 15:28, Luke 22:37). It was enough for her, as it would be enough for Him, that God knew.
The reading adopted in the Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 (Luke 2:22), ‘the days of their (not ‘her,’ Authorized Version ) purification,’ has the highest MS authority, and is that expressly of Origen and Cyril: it is explained when we remember that while the ceremonial uncleanness was directly that of the mother only, Joseph and the Child could hardly help—especially while living in such circumstances as were theirs at Bethlehem—contracting a like defilement, in the legal sense, by contact with her. Our Lord, all holy from the first, was often to be so defiled (Luke 15:1; Luke 19:7). He regarded it as His glory, not His, shame.
The legal ordinance (Leviticus 12) appointed that a woman who had borne a man child should be (ceremonially) unclean for seven days; for three and thirty days more she might touch no hallowed thing, nor come into the sanctuary. Then, on the fortieth day, she must bring ‘a lamb of the first year for a burnt-offering (expressive of devotion), and a young pigeon or a turtle-dove for a sin-offering (a testimony, St. Jerome says, to the doctrine of original sin), unto the door of the tent of meeting, unto the priest, and he shall offer it before the Lord, and make atonement for her; and she shall be cleansed from the fountain of her blood.… And if her means suffice not for a lamb, then she shall take two turtle-doves or two young pigeons; the one for a burnt-offering, the other for a sin-offering.’ The Virgin’s humility appears in her availing herself of this merciful provision; she disdained not to admit her poverty; we may be sure she did not (as some, thinking to exalt her, have imagined) assume a false appearance of it: even if Joseph and she had not been extremely poor before, the expenses of the journey to Bethlehem, and of living there six weeks, and the five shekels for the Child, could not have failed to make deep inroads on their purse. The order of the combined rites would be as follows:—(1) The Holy Family would come into the hall of the unclean, and stand there. (2) Then would be offered the dove for her sin-offering, and perhaps they would be sprinkled with the lustral water and the ashes of the heifer (Numbers 19:17). (3) Then the Child would be presented. And lastly, (4) the other dove would be offered in sign of Mary’s thanksgiving and self-devotion to God. The Virgin would not go further—even when she had been cleansed—than the Court of the Women.
The Evangelist’s use of the words ‘parents’ (Luke 2:27) and ‘father and mother’ (Luke 2:33) have been urged as evidence that ‘the idea of the supernatural’ conception of Jesus has not penetrated to this part of the legendary materials here collected together’ (Schmidt and Holzendorff, Short Protestant Commentary); to which we may answer that he would have been a poor redactor who, having transcribed ch. i., did not observe an inconsistency of this kind, and that in point of fact the Third Gospel is marked by its homogeneity (see Ramsay, Was Christ born at Bethlehem?). The explanation of the apparent inconsistency lies deep in the principle which led our Lord, sinless Himself (2 Corinthians 5:21), to accept the lot of sinners, and lay this lot also on His blessed Mother; and further, that His glory was not to be manifested till the time appointed of the Father. Till then, whatever brief epiphanies there might be were only for the favoured few. Even the Transfiguration was to be told to no man till the Son of Man was risen from the dead. The facts were secure in the hearts of sufficient witnesses (Luke 2:19; Luke 2:51); they would come forth in due time. More especially, His birth of a Virgin Mother—told as it was to be by two Evangelists (Matthew 1:18-25, Luke 1:26-38), and always an article of faith in the Church—was not a thing to be communicated to unbelieving ears and scoffing tongues; even when His claim to have come down out of heaven was contrasted with what were supposed to be the known facts of His origin as Man (John 6:42, Matthew 13:55). The feeling of the Early Church upon the subject is expressed in a famous passage of St. Ignatius of Antioch (c. [Note: circa, about.] 110): ‘Hidden from the prince of this world were the virginity of Mary, and her child-bearing, and likewise also the death of the Lord—three mysteries to be cried aloud—the which were wrought in the silence of God’ (ad Ephes. 19).
Both the Purification of Mary and the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple are commemorated on the 2nd of February (Candlemas). Baronius says that the Church at Rome was led to the institution of this Feast in order to supersede the Lupercalia, the observances connected wherewith were of an extremely immoral as well as idolatrous character. See, further, artt. Anna and Simeon.
James Cooper.
These files are public domain.
Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com. Used by Permission.
Hastings, James. Entry for 'Presentation'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/p/presentation.html. 1906-1918.
