Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul

Paul’s 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 Paul’s appropriation of Scripture from a perspective based on recent literary-critical studies of intertextuality. His uncovering of scriptural echoes in Paul’s language enriches our appreciation of the complex literary texture of Paul’s letters and offers new insights into his message. "A major work on hermeneutics. . . . Hays’s study will be a work to use and to reckon with for every Pauline scholar and for every student of Paul’s 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. . . . [Hays’s] 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 Paul’s references to the Jewish Scriptures. . . . Written in a lively, semipopular style, this important study succeeds in showing that Paul’s 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

• Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible
• Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels
• Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness
• Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, Revised and Updated Edition
• Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends (Cultural Exegesis)
• Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels
• Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide
• The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel's Scripture
• How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth: Fourth Edition
• The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation, A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics