Having sought to give their full force and proper meaning to the two passages, Lk. i. 30‐3 and Lk. i. 34 f., we may now consider the arguments which can be advanced in favour of regarding the latter passage as an interpolation. In respect of these arguments, there is far from general agreement among those who are at one in the conclusion reached. But the significant fact is not the diversity of opinion as regards the mode of proof, but the agreement of so many scholars in holding the passage to be a later insertion.(37) The arguments we shall examine are not equally cogent, and, as in the first part of the present chapter, we shall call attention to their limitations as well as to the points in which they are strong. We shall also treat the case entirely apart from the results suggested in the first half of our inquiry. Those results, if valid, set up a presupposition against Lk. i. 34 f. But it seems much the best not to avail ourselves of such an argument, but rather to consider the passage in itself and in relation to its context. If in this way we find reasonable grounds for considering Lk. i. 34 f. to be a later insertion, we have then a double series of arguments converging on one conclusion. (1) The first point to be considered is that _verse 36 follows naturally after verse 33_. As we have seen, in verses 30‐3 we have an angelic announcement to Mary to the effect that she is to give birth to a son who is destined to become the Messiah. He will be called “the Son of the Most High”, and to him the Lord God will give “the throne of his father David”. To this message, it may be said, verses 36 and 37 form a fitting sequel. They add the assurance that “no word from God shall be void of power”, in proof of which it is declared that Mary’s kinswoman, Elisabeth, is shortly to bear a son in her old age. The whole speech (Lk. i. 30‐3, 36, 37) is a consistent passage, and in relation to it the words of Mary in verse 38—“Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word”—are a natural and fitting reply. Canon Box, in the article already cited, questions this view. “There would be nothing extraordinary”, he says “in Mary’s conceiving a son as Joseph’s wife”—nothing, that is to say, to require the sign offered. But surely it is not a question of “conceiving a son”, but of conceiving such a son, the long‐promised Messiah; and, moreover, the ratification of so great a promise by means of a miracle is a commonplace of OT. thought. It is not suggested, of course, that this argument proves Lk. i. 34 f. to be an interpolation. That a section runs smoothly when a particular passage within it is excised, is no proof that that passage is not original. This last conclusion must be established on the ground of other arguments. If, however, in the present instance, other arguments carry weight, then the fact that verse 36 can be connected easily and naturally with verse 33 becomes of very great