it is also true, to quote the same authority, that “the participle does not indicate time, its colour in this respect being taken from the connexion in which it stands”. The same consideration also applies to הָרָה in all the OT. instances referred to above. Where it is made clear in the context that conception has already taken place, הָרָה is translated in the RV. by the present (cf. Gen. xvi. 11, xxxviii. 24; 2 Sam. xi. 5). Where, however, there is no such indication, it is rendered by the future, and the announcement is treated as a promise (cf. Judg. xiii. 7). To convict the translator of the Hebrew document of an error in translation, it is clearly necessary to show from the context of Lk. i. 31 that conception has already taken place. In other words, the translation preferred by Canon Box, if it is to be accepted, must be justified by some statement, either previously made, or made within the angelic announcement itself; it must be required, that is to say, by something in the narrative previous to Mary’s question in Lk. i. 34.(36) But these conditions, which are by no means arbitrary, cannot be met. We must, therefore, conclude that the translator was quite justified, when he used the future (συλλήψῃ), and so represented the announcement as a prophecy; and we must draw this conclusion, irrespective altogether of the difference of point of view which thus stands revealed between this announcement and verse 34 in the connexion in which it now appears. Indeed, the argument of Canon Box seems capable of being employed in a direction the very reverse of that intended. It could be argued that since, in point of fact, the translator has used the future in verse 31, there was nothing in the Hebrew original to suggest to his mind the idea of an immediate conception; not even the statement of verse 34, which might have suggested, though it does not justify, the rendering, “Behold, thou art conceiving now”. Thus we might enlist the considered view of the translator, that a promised conception is meant, in support of the contention that Lk. i. 34 f. is a later insertion. Without pressing this view, we may fairly say that there is much more to be said for it than for the theory we have discussed. The latter theory, in spite of all that can be urged in its favour, fails to justify itself. In that case its failure seems to illustrate the somewhat desperate expedients to which we must have recourse, in order to find in the angelic announcement the thought of an immediate conception. On the question as a whole, we can only conclude that such a view is neither stated nor implied in the announcement, but that, on the contrary, its reference is to the future. (c) Reasons for regarding Lk. i. 34 f. as a Later Insertion