Textual variants in the Gospel of Luke

Textual variants in manuscripts arise when a copyist makes deliberate or inadvertent alterations to a text that is being reproduced.

They may resort to performing a rearranging of words to retain the overall meaning without compromising the context.

"[2] Peter J. Gurry puts the number of non-spelling variants among New Testament manuscripts around 500,000, though he acknowledges his estimate is higher than all previous ones.

[3] Scholars find that many textual variants in the narratives of the Nativity of Jesus (Luke 2, as well as Matthew 1–2) and the Finding in the Temple (Luke 2:41–52) involve deliberate alterations such as substituting the words 'his father' with 'Joseph', or 'his parents' with 'Joseph and his mother'.

[4] Alexander Globe (1980) concluded 'that most of the non-Neutral readings under consideration were introduced to remove inconsistencies between the biblical narratives and abstract doctrinal statements concerning the virginity of Mary.