The Gospels and Israel’s Scriptures

In an obvious echo of the title of his earlier and much praised monograph, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (1989), Richard Hays now turns his attention to studying the rich and varied ways in which the evangelists utilised the Jewish scriptures. Hays explores the use of scripture in each of the four canonical gospels. His study is guided by three heuristic questions: ‘(1) We will be asking how each Evangelist carries forward and renarrates the story of Israel through intertextual references to scripture. (2) We will listen carefully for the ways in which each Evangelist draws on scriptural stories and images to interpret the world-changing significance of Jesus. And finally, (3) we will ask how each of the evangelists begins to shape the story of the church (i.e., the community of Jesus’ followers) through evoking texts from Israel’s Scripture.’ (p. 14). Hays argues that the evangelists were engaged in a figural or backwards reading of the scriptures. That is, the scriptures were re-read in the light of the contemporary events surrounding Jesus in a way that sought new meaning in the deposit of scripture in the light of the evangelist’s own contemporary events. Such a hermeneutical approach not only views the scriptural texts finding fulfilment in the life of Jesus, but makes the more radical claim that, from the perspectives of the evangelists, the precursor texts yield their full meaning when they are read in the light of the life of Jesus. Thus Hays states, ‘Figural reading of the Bible need not presume that the Old Testament authors—or the characters they narrate—were conscious of predicting or anticipating Christ. Rather, the discernment of a figural correspondence is necessarily retrospective rather than prospective.’ (pp. 2–3).

The method adopted by Hays builds on the presupposition that ‘all four canonical Gospels are deeply embedded in the symbolic world shaped by the Old Testament—or, to put the point in a modern critical idiom, that their ‘encyclopedia of production’, is constituted in large measure by Israel’s Scripture’ (p. 10). Here Hays uses the well-established categories of ‘quotation’, ‘allusion’, and ‘echo’ to describe different types of intertextual references. However, he notes that such terms are only markers on a spectrum of intertextual relationships, and as such that divisions between the three categories are not exact but rather indicative of a broad type of intertextual technique. Notwithstanding this important caveat, as a guide, Hays offers the following generalised definitions of the three categories. A ‘quotation’ is typically by a citation formula or has an extended sequence of words from the source text. An ‘allusion’ usually imbeds several words from the source text, or explicitly mentions notable events or characters. Lastly, an ‘echo’ is the least distinct and most disputable category and may include only a word or a phrase that evokes the reminiscence of an earlier text. According to Hays, through being attentive to this range of intertextual linkages, one is able to see the evangelists evoking larger narrative units from Israel’s scriptures. In this way, the meaning of both the gospel text and the source text are enriched through this complex two-way intertextual relationship.

Having re-stated his understanding of intertextuality that has been utilised in previous publications, Hays then applies these perspectives to each of the four gospels, commencing with Mark’s account. Hays’ first major example is drawn from Isa. 63:15–64:4, with key focus on the phrase ‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down’, and the events at Jesus baptism where ‘he saw the heavens torn open and the Spirit descending like a dove into him’ (Mk 1:10). Here the terms Hays italicised are preserved to illustrate the points of contact that he sees between the two passages. However, as Hays acknowledges the language of the Septuagint (Isa. 64:1 LXX = Isa. 63:19 MT) is more closely aligned to that of Matthew and Luke, with the Greek term ἀνοίγω used in both Isaiah and the two synoptic gospels for the opening of the heavens. Hays’ argument here is that ‘Mark’s more vivid verb [σχίζω] offers a stronger allusion to the Hebrew text of Isaiah 64:1 (63:19 MT), the only passage in the Old Testament that uses the verb קרע (“tear”) in relation to the heavens’ (p. 18). Here the logic of the argument may be challenged, since Hays’ assessment of the data is not the only possible explanation. In the Septuagint of Isaiah σχίζω is used as an equivalent of קרע on two occasions. In both cases it is used as the tearing of a garment (Isa. 36:22; 37:1). By contrast, ἀνοίγω is a much more common and natural rendering of קרע, when it is not being used to describe something like material being ripped. If, for the sake of argument, Hays is correct, then for this echo to be detected it would require a reader with linguistic competence in both Hebrew and Greek, who also had a concordance-like knowledge of the Jewish scriptures in both languages, and who would presumably recognise the intentional change from ἀνοίγω of the LXX, to σχίζω in Mark—and moreover would understand this as producing superior linguistic equivalence with the base Hebrew text. Presumably this would be somebody who was an ethnic Jew, but an adherent to the early Jesus movement. Alternatively, maybe Mark wished to create an internal inclusio with the scene where the veil of the Temple was torn in two (Mk 15:38) at the end of the gospel. However, perhaps Hays’ more ingenious proposal is to be preferred over the more straightforward explanation.

Next Hays turns to Matthew’s account, which he views as significantly less restrained in its use of Hebrew scriptures than was the case with Mark. In particular Hays draws attention to the formula quotations as ways in which Matthew presents the Jewish scriptures ‘as a predictive text pointing to events in the life of Jesus’ (p. 107). Furthermore, it is argued that ‘Matthew envisions Israel redeemed and brought back from exile’ (p. 190). Yet there is little to suggest that first-century Judaism experienced a sense of living in exile—after all the people were still living in the land. Such a fixation on the exile motif appears to be more the product of scholarship than being something that can be detected as a concern in contemporary texts. In this vein it is interesting that unlike the other three chapters on Mark, Luke, and John where a text is given from the respective gospel, in the chapter on Matthew Hays cites a verse of a hymn: ‘O come, o come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear.’ Certainly classic Victorian hymnody, but probably not Matthew’s viewpoint. ¹

For Hays, Luke is the most intentional, and most skilful, in narrating the story of Jesus in a way that joins it seamlessly to Israel’s story’ (p. 191). In relation to the fourth gospel Hays makes the elevated claim that ‘even more comprehensively than the other gospels, John understands the Old Testament as a vast matrix of symbols prefiguring Jesus (p. 343).

There is much is this volume that is rich and rewarding. Hays presents an insightful discussion of figural reading and the use of a variety of intertextual linkages. He reads certain passages in each of the gospels in a manner that not only commands assent, but might even take readers closed to the hermeneutical strategies of the evangelists. Despite these strengths there is, however, a nagging concern that Hays has overplayed his hand. Various examples appear to stretch plausibility to breaking point, and the exegetical techniques required appear better suited to a person with electronic Bible software to hand, rather than being those methods practiced by the gospel writers. There is no doubt whatsoever that early Christian writers reflected on the scriptural stories and claimed that they could only be understood aright in light of the events surrounding Jesus of Nazareth. Yet the web of purported allusions and echoes, refracted through several languages, undetected for centuries, and with only fleeting points of contact between the source text and the gospel text, fail to convince that they were indeed in the minds of the evangelists. While evoking wider narrative elements from the Jewish scriptures may result in a richer, multi-textured reading of the gospels—if it is uncertain that the echo exists in the first place, then the edifice built on such intertextual links may prove incredibly unstable.

Paul Foster School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh