Abstract
This article seeks to critique some of the developments in the study of the use of the Jewish scriptures in the New Testament writings. The focus is upon studies that have emerged subsequent to, and are indebted to, Richard Hays’s Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul. The argument here is not that there are no citations, allusions or echoes of the Jewish scriptures in the New Testament writings: such a position would be absurd. Rather, it is observed that many of the proposed new echoes or allusions are highly speculative, the method employed is not capable of self-falsification, and in effect it is a type of radical reader response. That is, if a reader can detect an echo or allusion, then that brings such an intertextual link into existence. Such an approach is acceptable if it is recognized that such studies are engaged in creative theological reflection (perhaps akin to what many New Testament authors were doing themselves), but such methods frequently have little connection with trying to ascertain authorial intention (as difficult as that might be in its own right).
1. Introduction
From the outset it must be affirmed that the Jewish scriptures, often in the form of pre-existing translation into Greek, are the major source for literary borrowing in the New Testament. The opening line of a canonical New Testament evokes a large historical sweep of biblical history naming the key figures of Abraham and David (Mt. 1.1), and the following genealogy supplies greater detail purporting to document the lineage from Abraham to David, down to the Exile and into the contemporary period of the author (Mt. 1.2-16). The indebtedness to the Jewish scriptures continues in the so-called infancy story with fulfilment citations, which not only cite various scriptural passages, but declare that those source texts have found their fulfilment in the narrated events surrounding the birth of Jesus (cf. Mt. 1.22-23; 2.5-6, 15, 17-18). Alongside the direct citation of scripture, Matthew also shapes the story of Jesus in such a manner that it intentionally recalls the life of Moses. 1 Further relatively uncontroversial examples could be added from the first gospel.
Gospel literature is not the only significant example where literary borrowing from the Jewish scriptures is to be found in the New Testament. In the Pauline epistles there are multiple cases where the Jewish scriptures are redeployed. One particularly notable concentration of examples occurs in Rom. 9–11, where there are several extended scriptural citations of various Septuagintal passages, drawing upon, among others, writings such as Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Isaiah and Hosea. There is much to be learnt here concerning among other things citational technique, the adaption of the base text, the form of the Greek text that might underlie the Pauline citation, and the interplay between freedom and fixity of form in relation to scriptural citations. 2 However, one of the most striking differences in citational practice in the New Testament is to be found outside both the gospels and Pauline writings. This difference in technique in the use of Jewish scriptures is found in Revelation. It is widely acknowledged that there are no formal quotations of the Jewish scriptures in Revelation. 3 However, the vast number of allusions means that the ‘OT in general plays such a major role that a proper understanding of its use is necessary for an adequate view of the Apocalypse as a whole’ (Beale 1999: 77). The allusive and image-laden way in which Revelation makes use of scriptural motifs and themes from the Jewish scriptures may be particularly suitable for an apocalyptic text, which depends on the use of multivalent symbolism to convey its message.
Hence the critique that follows is not a rejection of the study of the use of the Jewish scriptures in the New Testament. That would be a nonsensical position to argue. Moreover, there is a long tradition of fruitful studies that have advanced exegetical understanding of various New Testament writings through paying careful attention to the way in which Jewish scriptures have been deployed in those texts. 4 However, with the publication of Richard Hays’s Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul in 1989, a new phase in research dealing with the use of Jewish scriptures in the New Testament commenced. 5 Hays introduced the term ‘echo’ to refer to lighter resonances with scriptural texts, where the New Testament text had fewer shared terms but could nonetheless evoke not only the specific scriptural text being echoed, but in fact could resonate with the wider context in which the scriptural text being echoed was found. This approach has become a burgeoning field in New Testament studies, and has been especially generative for doctoral topics. This sub-discipline continues to grow and has become more than a ‘cottage industry’. The rapid appearance of studies in this area is more akin to a mechanized production line, with its own methodology and theological agendas.
2. Hays and Echoes of Scripture
The concept of ‘intertextuality’ plays a major role in Hays’s sophisticated discussion of the appropriation of scriptural text, language and images in the writings of Paul. However, Hays rejects the larger project of intertextuality articulated by literary critics who seek to probe the way a new text participates in the discursive space of a culture. 6 Instead Hays prefers to ground his exploration of intertextuality in the textual realm, rather than drawing more widely on the cultural sphere: ‘I propose instead to discuss the phenomenon of intertextuality in Paul’s letters in a more limited sense, focusing on his actual citations of and allusions to specific texts’ (Hays 1989: 15). Hays justifies this more constrained approach on the basis of the observation that ‘Paul repeatedly situates his discourse within the symbolic field created by a single textual precursor: Israel’s Scripture’ (Hays 1989: 15). While this is at one level true, this prior decision to limit Paul’s cultural sphere solely to the Jewish scriptures fails to take account of the multicultural world that Paul inhabited, and it ignores the variegated textual influences that may have shaped Paul’s thought. Thus it constrains Paul’s thought within one hermetically sealed set of textual references, and thereby entrenches scholarly research by forcing it to account for ideas within the Pauline writings solely through the lens of the scriptural writings of Judaism. This results in a quest to find scriptural allusions or echoes of the Jewish scriptures behind every key Pauline concept, instead of recognizing that some ideas may be truly innovative, and others may draw upon Gentile thought.
Two important examples that illustrate the value of looking beyond the corpus of Jewish scriptural texts can be seen in relation to the Pauline usage of the terminology of εὐαγγέλιον and παρουσία. In relation to the first, it can be shown that one needs to consider the way ‘gospel’ language in Paul resonates with both Jewish and Graeco-Roman antecedents. With the second term, parousia, here the borrowings, and hence the echoes, are largely reflective of the Hellenistic context. However, this throws up a larger problem, which is symptomatic of a false approach to classifying the notion of influences to one particular ‘background’ in the ancient world. There is a tendency to dichotomize ‘Jewish background’ and ‘Hellenistic background’, as though these were entirely discrete entities with no overlap whatsoever. The reality appears to have been far different. Instead, one should perhaps talk of influences from the ancient Mediterranean world, and maybe beyond. This in no way suggests a monolithic cultural entity; rather it reflects the organic mix of varied societies, with overlapping cultural values and heritages that are shared to some degree. There is interpenetration between the various socio-religious groups, and hence the textual and cultural narratives that shaped an author’s thinking and own literary works reflect a complex web of influences.
Moreover, it is likely that the use of pre-existing ideas was not always due to a linear progression from background text to new literary work. Rather, it is possible on several occasions that ideas had become freed from their earliest literary context and circulated independently of that original literary context. This calls into question the approach that has become prevalent in New Testament studies of ‘identifying’ a faint echo and then importing the whole theological context of the base text, in order to establish the theological commitments and framework of the new literary work. Unless the author demonstrates other points of contact with the background text, such a hermeneutic manoeuvre appears unfounded, and fails to recognize that the perceived literary borrowing may have come to the author independently of the context in the base text.
3. Four Recent Examples of Studies of Jewish Scriptures in the New Testament
The four examples selected here are illustrative, rather than comprehensive. This is of course necessary given the burgeoning interest in the use of the Jewish scriptures in the New Testament. The volume of academic work in this area is visible through the number of monographs and revised PhD theses that have appeared in print or are housed in libraries. Scott has noted that ‘a considerable industry of “intertextual” scholarship has sprung up in Pauline studies’ (Scott 2014: 2). The industrial scale of such studies is confined not only to Pauline texts, but encompasses the gospels, Acts, Hebrews, the general epistles and Revelation. The examples selected here represent a range of those texts – including the Pauline epistles – without having examples from every text in the New Testament. The desire is to illustrate some of the worrying excesses of the method, not to reject the whole scholarly agenda. However, since what is considered here to be the incorrect identification of echoes is not an isolated phenomenon, but reflective of a widespread sub-discipline, this discussion seeks to highlight fundamental weaknesses in some of the approaches being adopted.
3.1 Jesus’ Cry from the Cross as Evoking the Motif of Vindication
The first example concerns the cry of dereliction in Mark’s gospel, which draws upon the text of Ps. 22.2. In her study of Mk 15.34, Carey argues that the author evokes the whole context of the psalm. 7 Carey seeks to establish the case that the citation of Ps. 22.2 in Mk 15.34 would have evoked a contextual recollection of the whole psalm, not just for the author, instead more significantly for ‘Mark’s earliest implied readers’ (Carey 2009: 27). In this example there is no question that the Jewish scriptures are cited in this passage, both in an Aramaic form perhaps dependent on a targumic tradition and in Greek translation maybe drawn from existing translations (i.e. LXX Ps. 21.2), rather than being a fresh translation by the author. This direct citation of the Jewish scriptures in Mk 15.34 has been recognized throughout the history of interpretation, and hence it is uncontroversial and uncontested. The widespread use of Ps. 22 in early Christian literature was commented upon by Lindars several decades ago.
The foundation of its use, both in narrative and in apologetic, must be our Lord’s cry of dereliction on the cross. Mark 15.34 = Matt. 27.46, the Aramaic version of the words ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ All the other citations and allusions presuppose the Septuagint text, which is of course that of the translation in this instance too (Lindars 1961: 89).
Whether or not Lindars is correct in attributing the use of Ps. 22 to a dominical origin, this so-called cry of dereliction, however, may be viewed as a cause of theological discomfort in some quarters. The starkness of the saying, with Jesus declaring himself to be God-forsaken, while powerfully attesting to the reality of his human nature, may raise more difficult questions concerning Jesus’ sense of doubt.
Carey suggests that Mark wished to portray Jesus as a righteous sufferer and that the evangelist also signalled to his audience the impending vindication of Jesus through the forthcoming resurrection. Thus, in a concluding statement, Carey asserts that, The implied readers’ expectation of Jesus’ vindication after suffering fostered by the various passages that foreshadow these events in the Markan narrative, makes it likely that the same plot of Ps. 22 (the suffering and vindication of the speaker) would have been recalled when Mark includes the allusions and citation of the psalm in the context of Jesus’ death. In other words, it was argued that an allusion to the whole of Ps. 22 in Mk 15.34 would probably have not gone unrecognized by his implied readers because they would have been prepared previously by the narrative to anticipate and recognize the shared reference (implicit in the citation, explicit in the narrative) to his vindication contained within the plot of the psalm (Carey 2009: 171-72).
Carey’s study is not the first attempt at this type of argument, although she develops it at far greater length. Responding to earlier forms of this argument, Hooker offers the following critique: ‘the suggestion seems to be an attempt to disguise the horror of the scene as it is portrayed by Mark, and the narrative supplies no evidence to support the contention that Mark had the rest of the psalm in mind’ (Hooker 1991: 376). This observation appears correct. However, to add more weight one may ask the simple but nonetheless relevant question, if Mark wished to depict this as a scene of future vindication why did he not cite the part of the psalm that spoke of vindication? A more useful text might have been Ps. 22.24: ‘For he has not despised the affliction of the afflicted … but when he cried to him for help, he heard.’ Yet the evangelist has placed the saying of desolation on the lips of Jesus, not an expression of future vindication.
A second problem is that one early reader, Luke, appears to miss the obvious signal that vindication is being clearly announced, and instead eradicates the cry of dereliction, presumably because to him it appears to portray a failed and doubting Jesus, not the promise of reversal. Instead the third evangelist replaces the Markan saying with the more irenic and confident words ‘Father into your hands I commit my spirit’ (Lk. 23.46). This is a substitution of one psalm text (Ps. 22.2) with another (Ps. 31.5), which is perhaps a subtle and subversive rewriting of the Markan narrative removing its dark and despairing tones. Luke, however, is not the only early Christian writer to modify the Markan cry of dereliction. In the Gospel of Peter, the last words Jesus utters are a declamatory statement: ‘My power, the power, you have left me’ (Gos. Pet. 5.19). As has been noted elsewhere, ‘[b]y using the verb καταλείπω, instead of ἐγκαταλείπω as in the canonical accounts, the intention appears to be to tone down the sense of desertion, and instead make this a notice concerning knowledge of impending death and departure’ (Foster 2010: 328). So again, another earlier reader fails to recognize the supposed clues that the use of Ps. 22.2 is meant to betoken a vindicated character, and not the anguish of a forsaken figure.
In the end, the reason why the proposal that the un-cited vindication at the conclusion of the psalm is being evoked fails to be convincing is not simply that it is not cited, nor that other early readers fail to recognize the supposed vindication. Rather, it is due to the suspicion that such a neat solution to this theologically difficult text is a modern construction, and that it is not part of the Markan authorial intention – if that can even be recovered.
3.2 The Bridegroom Messiah in the Fourth Gospel
In another revised doctoral dissertation that draws upon the work of Richard Hays, Jocelyn McWhirter argues that there are intentional echoes of Ps. 45 in John’s gospel. 8 It is argued that Ps. 45, which is a wedding song for God’s anointed king, is the basis of a number of allusions to be found in the Fourth Gospel, and that these echoes are used to portray Jesus as a bridegroom Messiah. Hence, it is argued, use of the marriage metaphor functions to depict the relationship between believers and Jesus (McWhirter 2006: 143). Unlike the previous example, where Ps. 22 was explicitly cited in Mark’s gospel, in the Fourth Gospel there is no explicit quotation or citation of Ps. 45. McWhirter explicitly acknowledges this, 9 yet nonetheless she views the psalm as one of the most significant hermeneutical and intertextual keys for understanding the Johannine message.
The argument McWhirter employs is convoluted and cannot be rehearsed in all its details. However, one of her major examples will suffice. In the chapter entitled ‘The Glorification of the Bridegroom Messiah’, McWhirter first argues that echoes to texts contained in Song of Songs can be detected. For instance, it is argued that the anointing of Jesus at Bethany (Jn 12.1-8) is intentionally evoking Song 1.12: ‘while the king was at his table, my perfume gave forth its fragrance’. The resonances are based on the Septuagintal text rather than occurring at the level of the Hebrew text. This is perfectly plausible. Suffice to note that in the Septuagint the Greek term for perfume is νάρδος (LXX Song 1.12). This is the same term used to describe the perfume or nard with which Mary anointed Jesus at Bethany. The other shared term in the two verses is the word ὀσμή, for ‘fragrance’ or ‘odour’. These two words that are in common do not occur in direct sequence, but have a number of intervening words between them. Thus the terminological connection is not strong. However, on the basis of these two verbal parallels it is claimed that, ‘[i]n John 12:3 an allusion to Song 1:12 portrays Jesus as the bridegroom-Messiah facing crucifixion’ (McWhirter 2006: 79). While the anointing in John’s gospel may have some messianic overtones, although the text presents this as proleptic preparation for burial, in Song 1.12 the perfume is perhaps metaphorical of an alluring fragrance.
If one allows for the sake of argument McWhirter’s admittedly weak claim that there is an allusion to Song 1.12 in Jn 12.3, 10 this does not yet prove the case of the role of Ps. 45 as a decisive intertext for the Fourth Gospel. To make this move McWhirter argues for the equivalence of the bridegroom of Song of Songs and the messiah figure of Ps. 45. Here McWhirter is quoted at length, to do justice to her argument.
The process begins with a comparison of Ps. 45 to the Song of Songs. They are both love songs about a handsome king. Both feature a beautiful bride, mighty men with swords at their thighs, myrrh and aloes, a woman at her lover’s right hand, daughters, and a joyful procession to the king’s quarters. In light of these similarities, the bridegroom of Song of Songs can be identified as the Messiah of Ps. 45. He can also be recognized as Jesus, who was perfumed with nard (Song 1:12 in John 12:3) and sought, found, and held by a devoted woman (Song 3:1-4 in John 20:1-18) (McWhirter 2006: 107).
Yet at this point basic questions of plausibility have receded into the background. Instead, the most generic of royal tropes are presented as strong evidence. For instance, how surprising is it that two courtly texts present the regent as handsome, and possessing a beautiful bride? One can only imagine the consequences for a royal scribe who depicted his patrons as unattractive, or their spouses as ugly. 11 Since both Ps. 45 and Song of Songs treat the topic of royal marriage, it is unsurprising that there is some degree of overlap in themes and even in common terminology. However, the case for a direct literary relationship is not compelling. Yet this is not the most speculative part of McWhirter’s argument. The Song of Songs is one of the least cited texts of the Jewish scriptures in the New Testament. The appendix to NA28 provides only five possible allusions (only two were provided in NA27). Admittedly, one of these involves John’s gospel, a possible allusion to Song 4.15 in Jn 7.38, but the parallel is so weak that the possibility hardly needs to be entertained. 12 This lack of citation or allusion in the New Testament is consonant with the controversial status of Song of Songs in the Second Temple and rabbinic periods, with the text frequently ignored, or alternatively allegorized. While four partial copies of the Song of Songs are found among the Qumran scrolls, each is fragmentary, with two manuscripts attesting a significantly abbreviated form of the text. 13
However, McWhirter requires a positive allusion to Song of Songs as the first stage of her argument. It is then suggested that Ps. 45 stands behind the text of Song of Songs, and hence that the author of the Fourth Gospel is deploying the messianic prophecy of the psalm, mediated through the stronger bridegroom imagery of Song of Songs.
14
Admittedly, this convoluted two-stage argument is one of the most speculative applications of the Haysian paradigm, and perhaps one that even other practitioners of the method would reject. However, this is a significant case, for it raises the important methodological question about the means by which Hays’s approach is capable of rejecting spurious cases of perceived echoes. Or perhaps for the perspective of the method, it would be argued that there are no spurious cases, simply more and less plausible readings. In an initial review of McWhirter’s monograph I characterized her study in the following terms: The trouble is that the whole trajectory may be flawed, and little different from Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet following footprints in the snow around a clump tree, becoming ever more convinced that they are about to catch a Woozle. It looks like the unending pursuit of fainter echoes is little more than a hunt for the non-existent, and McWhirter’s study follows this chase after undetectable infinitesimals of nothingness. Surely it is time to give up such a fruitless endeavour and wrestle with the text that stands before readers and not some hypothetical and unrecoverable ether of allusions (Foster 2007: 564-65).
Having revisited the book, that assessment appears to be fair. There is little evidence to demonstrate that New Testament authors were engaged in such a subtle multiple stage deployment of an interlocking web of echoes. Moreover, one suspects that it is even more difficult to show that ancient readers would have detected this putative and complex multi-stage deployment of allusions.
3.3 The Use of the Jewish Scriptures in Colossians
It is instructive to turn from the gospels to the Pauline letters, the body of texts for which Hays first developed his method. Recently there have been three significant studies of the use of the Jewish scriptures in the Pauline letter addressed to the Colossians. 15 It is notable that there is no explicit citation of scripture in Colossians. There is only one echo or allusion that is widely recognized by commentators, which is the intertextual link with LXX Gen. 1.26-27 in Col. 3.10. However, the parallel is part of the almost ubiquitous theological affirmation that humanity is made in the divine image.
LXX Gen. 1.27 καὶ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον κατ᾽ εἰκόνα θεοῦ ἐποίησεν αὐτόν ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ ἐποίησεν αὐτούς And God made man, according to the image of God he made him, male and female he made them. Col. 3.10 καὶ ἐνδυσάμενοι τὸν νέον τὸν ἀνακαινούμενον εἰς ἐπίγνωσιν κατ᾽ εἰκόνα τοῦ κτίσαντος αὐτόν and having put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him.
The key parallel phrases here are κατ᾽ εἰκόνα θεοῦ ἐποίησεν αὐτόν (LXX Gen. 1.27) and κατ᾽ εἰκόνα τοῦ κτίσαντος αὐτόν (Col. 3.10). The key differences are that the genitive noun θεοῦ, ‘God’, contained in LXX Gen. 1.27 is replaced by the substantivized participle τοῦ κτίσαντος in Col. 3.10, and secondly that this makes the verb ἐποίησεν redundant. Thus it is not present in Col. 3.10. Consequently, this makes the case for an intentional allusion to LXX Gen 1.27 far less certain because the verbal parallels are not strong, and the imago dei tradition was widespread and asserted at times without reference to the original context.
However, there have been three detailed studies that have proposed various other allusions or echoes as being present. The first major study in this area in the post-Hays era was a chapter written by Gordon Fee in a Festschrift for Earle Ellis (Fee 2006: 201-21). The next two studies were related, but undertaken independently. In the Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, Greg Beale contributed an extensive treatment of the Jewish scriptures in Colossians (Beale 2007: 841-70). To date the only monograph-length treatment on the topic has been Christopher Beetham’s published PhD thesis. The thesis was completed in 2005 under the supervision of Beale, but published three years later (Beetham 2008). While there is considerable overlap in these three works, it is also noteworthy that the level of disagreement is significant between these three scholars who are basically using the same method. In total Fee detects ten echoes. Beale prefers the term allusion, which he sees as reflecting intentionality on the part of Paul (whereas an echo is seen as more loosely defined, sometimes ‘as unconscious and unintentional sometimes as conscious and intentional’) (Beale 2007: 841). He argues for 17 allusions to the Jewish scriptures in Colossians. By contrast, Beetham classifies the intertextual links as either being stronger allusions or weaker echoes. In total he finds eleven intertextual relationships, two allusions and nine echoes. Strikingly, even one of his stronger allusions is rejected by Fee. The proposed allusions and echoes detected by these three scholars can be presented in the following table. As a helpful comparison, the table also lists the passages from Colossians contained in the NA28 appendix IV: Loci Citati vel Allegati, A. Ex Vetere Testamento:
Here A = allusion, and E = echo, as defined by the scholar in question. 16
It is immediately apparent that only three examples have support in all four lists (taking rows 21 and 22 together). These are the echo or allusion of Isa. 29.13 in Col. 2.22, Ps. 110.1 [LXX 109.1] in Col. 3.1, and Gen. 1.26-27 in Col. 3.[9]-10. This diversity of opinion gives serious pause for thought. Should all the echoes and allusions detected by the three scholars simply be combined into a 25-element list, and be declared to be the current list of echoes or allusions, which can be supplemented with other proposals as they are put forward? Alternatively, should one only defend those cases where all three agree, or where there are at least two supporters? Is it possible to come to a decision that a proposed echo or allusion is a misidentification, and if so what criteria are invoked to make such a decision? There is a sense that the identification of echoes is due to reader-response. That is, if a modern reader can see a link, then it is justified. There is no inherent problem with such an approach, as long as it is seen for what it is: a pietistic quest to forge greater links between the New Testament and the Jewish scriptures. This is in effect what the New Testament writers were doing themselves when they imparted messianic meaning to the sacred writings of Judaism. Some texts appeared particularly malleable for those types of Christianizing exegetical move. If modern writers wish to do the same, then there is no problem in doing so. However, that is an exercise in constructive theology albeit with a long history of the Christian appropriation of Jewish traditions, which reflects a type of supersessionist attitude towards Jewish biblical traditions.
3.4 Zechariah 9–14 as the Eschatological Framework of 1 Peter
In another recently published version of a PhD thesis, Kelly Liebengood claims that the eschatological programme of Zech. 9–14 functions as a substructure to the theological perspectives of 1 Peter. 17 This is an example of another work that explicitly acknowledges its methodological and conceptual indebtedness to the work of Richard Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (1989). The primary argument is that the eschatology of 1 Peter not only draws upon, but actually takes as its substructure, the eschatological programme of Zech. 9–14, and its reception in subsequent literature. Two ‘strong’ echoes, or indicators, are taken as illustrating the dependence of 1 Peter on Zech. 9–14. First, the shared use of the shepherd motif that occurs in 1 Pet. 2.25 and at various points in Zechariah, most notably for Liebengood’s argument passages from Zech. 10.2; 13.7-9. However, in the Jewish scriptures, shepherd imagery or direct reference to shepherd leaders is hardly limited to Zech. 9–14. Key passages where God, a king or some other figure acts as a shepherd leader, or fulfils the act of shepherding the people, are described in numerous texts outside of Zech. 9–14 (cf. Gen. 48.15; 49.24; 2 Sam. 5.2; 7.7; 1 Chron. 11.2; 17.6; Pss. 23.1; 28.9; 78.71; 80.1; Eccl. 12.11; Isa. 40.11; 44.28; Jer. 17.16; 31.10; 43.12; 49.19; 50.44; 51.23; Ezek. 34.5, 8, 12, 23; 37.24; Amos 3.12; Mic. 5.4, 6; 7.14). Therefore the shepherd metaphor by itself is insufficient to associate the references in 1 Peter exclusively, or even in a major way, with the shepherd references in Zech. 9–14. 18 The supposed closer points of contact between the material in 1 Pet. 2.21-25 and Zech. 9–14 are simply such non-specific features that they fail to make the case being argued (Liebengood 2014: 97-103).
The second compelling piece of evidence for Liebengood (there are only two) is the shared reference to ‘fiery trials’. The metaphor of the fiery trial is contained in 1 Pet. 1.7 and 4.12. Liebengood argues that this image draws upon Zech. 13.8-9 (Liebengood 2014: 105-55). While both 1 Pet. 1.7 and Zech. 13.9 do refer to the testing or proving of gold, there are key differences. In Zech. 13.9 the refinement of gold is said to be analogous to the way the pure remnant are brought through the fire. By contrast, in 1 Pet. 1.7, gold is said to be perishable even though tested with fire, and that is contrasted with faith that will be found at the appearing of Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 1.7).
Perhaps the greatest failure of Liebengood’s thesis is its lack of general plausibility. It is worth noting that in the NA28 table of Citations and Allusions (Appendix III) no allusion or citation of Zechariah is listed as occurring in 1 Peter. 19 Even within a work extremely sympathetic to the quest to find allusions, Beale and Carson’s Commentary on the Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament (2007), in Carson’s extensive section on 1 Peter not even a single allusion to Zechariah is identified anywhere in 1 Peter. 20 In the end there is no obvious evidence to support the thesis that Liebengood puts forward. If, however, Liebengood is correct, then one must congratulate the author of 1 Peter on managing to bury the dependence of his ‘substructure’ on Zech. 9–14 so deeply that it has taken two millennia to spot it. Others might think there is another explanation. 21
4. Concluding Statement
The four examples selected for discussion have not been chosen at random; they are designed to illustrate the application of the Haysian method in various sub-collections of New Testament writings – synoptic gospels, Pauline letters and the Petrine epistles. There are several other examples of similar types of studies – so the examples are not the only studies that make these types of interpretative manoeuvres. Admittedly there are monographs that employ Hays’s method to mount more persuasive cases. 22 However, a fundamental concern is that the approach itself appears to lack any control to exclude various implausible intertextual proposals. Surely at a minimum the source text and the text in which the tradition is redeployed should share some significant or extensive verbal parallels, if it is to be claimed that one can identify a case where an author is demonstrably alluding to a tradition from the Jewish scriptures.
Alternatively, the method could be described as a radical form of modern reader-response. In that case these studies would engage in an exercise in constructive theology through introducing new textual connections, but without claiming these were in the mind of the original authors. Such an exercise in appropriating the Jewish scriptures and loading them with Christianized meanings would follow the type of exegesis undertaken by many of the authors of the New Testament documents as well as other early Christian writers. 23 This would stand in line with a long tradition of claiming the texts of Judaism as finding their deeper meaning when read through a Christological lens. For those comfortable with such a supersessionist approach, this could be a valid way to continue the theological trajectory followed by earlier believers.
However, if the focus remains more firmly fixed on broader historio-critical questions, with the key concern that of assessing the intertextual links created by the author (to the extent that authorial intent can be established), then a more controlled methodology needs to be employed. It is important to look for shared verbal affinities between the source text and the newer text. Also one must be attentive not just to the similarities, but also to the differences between the proposed source text and the context in which is redeployed. 24 Basic questions of plausibility must be addressed. Therefore, the discussion of the lighter or more allusive use of the Jewish scriptures by New Testament writers will remain an art rather than an exact science. However, there needs to be a way of excluding the more fanciful suggestions that certain applications of the Haysian method have generated, without losing some of the more helpful and sustainable suggestions.
Footnotes
1.
4.
Key studies that are representative of the careful analysis of the Jewish scriptures in the New Testament writings include Harris 1916, 1920; Dodd 1952; Lindars 1961; 
.
10.
11.
Holbein’s portrait of Anne of Cleaves for her future husband Henry VIII is a famous example of an artist beautifying his subject. Reality proved that such artistic beauty was not even faintly echoed in the physical form and the marriage was swiftly annulled.
12.
See NA28: Appendix III: Loci Citati Vel Allegati, 857.
13.
Thus 4Canta appears to omit the section Song 4.8–6.10, while 4Cantb omits the sections Song 3.6-8 and 4.4-7, and may well end at 5.1. See Abegg, Flint and Ulrich 1999: 612.
15.
Much of the following section is drawn from my forthcoming commentary on Colossians (). No claim is being made for Paul’s authorship of this letter. The phrase ‘Pauline letter’ simply refers to the fact that Colossians has circulated with the other Pauline letters, is part of the Pauline corpus, and internally it claims to have been written by Paul.
16.
18.
There are no references to shepherds or shepherding in Zech. 1–8. In the remainder of Zechariah they occur in the following passages: Zech. 10.2; 11; 15; 16; 17; Zech. 13.7.
19.
See NA28: Appendix III: Loci Citati Vel Allegati, 868-67.