Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul

Pauls letters, the earliest writings in the New Testament, are filled with allusions, images, and quotations from the Old Testament, or, as Paul called it, Scripture. In this book, Richard B. Hays investigates Pauls appropriation of Scripture from a perspective based on recent literary-critical studies of intertextuality. His uncovering of scriptural echoes in Pauls language enriches our appreciation of the complex literary texture of Pauls letters and offers new insights into his message. "A major work on hermeneutics. . . . Hayss study will be a work to use and to reckon with for every Pauline scholar and for every student of Pauls use of Old Testament traditions. It is sophisticated, in both a literary and theological sense, and written with considerable wit and confidence."Carol L. Stockenhausen, Journal of Biblical Literature "Hays has without doubt posed the right question at the right time within the horizon of a particularly important problematic. . . . A new beginning for the question concerning the reception of the Old Testament in the New."Hans Hübner, Theologische Literaturzeitung "A powerful reading. . . . (Hayss] careful and fresh exegesis . . . challenges not a few traditional or highly regarded readings. . . . A major contribution both to Pauline studies and to our understanding of earliest Christian theology as a living dialogue with the scriptures of Israel."James D. G. Dunn, forthcoming in Literature and Theology "A fresh interpretation of Pauls references to the Jewish Scriptures. . . . Written in a lively, semipopular style, this important study succeeds in showing that Pauls scriptural quotations and allusions are often more polyphonic and rhetorically meaningful than traditional exegesis has allowed."David M. Hay, Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology