Echoes without Resonance: Critiquing Certain Aspects of Recent Scholarly Trends in the Study of the Jewish Scriptures in the New Testament

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).