ever taken to refer to a virginal conception before NT authors used it.70 The Hebrew text refers simply to a woman called an ʿalmâ, a young woman of marriageable age.71 Even the Septuagint translation of Isa 7:14 need not refer to a virginal conception. While parthenos, the word the Septuagint uses to translate ʿalmâ, does often mean “virgin,” it can also carry the more general meaning of a young girl of marriageable age and is so used at times in the Septuagint.72 The most glaring example of this