The NT writers, to be sure, are largely silent concerning the degree to which the OT authors were aware and conscious of the One to whom they were pointing. They are generally content to affirm that the OT authors pointed to Christ. The NT writers are more concerned to insist that the project of “reading backwards” is a possible undertaking only because of the organic and progressive character of biblical revelation. This character of revelation offers a ready explanation why the NT writers are not doing violence to the text of the OT, much less the intention of the human authors of the OT.

One does not have to preach, teach, or even read the New Testament for long in order to discover how steeped its authors are in the Old Testament. The OT surfaces on virtually every page of the NT. It serves a range of purposes, whether for witness to unbelief or for the instruction and guidance of the church. And it speaks with divine authority – like the NT, it is the very word of God.

One salutary trend in the last generation of the academic study of the NT has been a growing estimation of the place and importance of the OT to the NT. Students of the NT increasingly appreciate the degree to which the OT is woven into the warp and woof of the NT message. To attempt to read the NT independently of the OT is to misread the NT.

A pioneer in this branch of recent scholarship is Richard Hays, the George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School in Durham, NC. His Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (1989) invigorated the study of the apostle Paul’s use of the OT. His recent release, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (2016), promises to do the same for the Four Gospels.

The substance of ESG consists of four chapters detailing the method and practice of each of the Four Evangelists in handling the Old Testament. Introductory and concluding chapters frame these four chapters. Although brief, these two chapters set forth the principles and methods that inform the book as a whole. As such, they merit particular attention.

Two terms characterize Hays’ understanding of the Evangelists’ handling of the OT writings. The first is “figuration.” The Gospels evidence what Hays, following Erich Auerbach, terms “figural interpretation.” What is “figural interpretation”? It is a correspondence between “two events or persons” that “can be discerned only after the second event has occurred and imparted a new pattern of significance to the first” (3). Hays distances figuration from “prediction” – “figural reading of the Bible need not presume that the OT authors – or the characters that they narrate – were conscious of predicting or anticipating Christ” (2, cf. 359). Positively, the NT writers engage in the practice of what Hays terms “reading backwards.” In light of the redemptive and revelatory work of Christ in his death and resurrection, the NT writers “retrospectively” read or “reinterpret” the OT in “transformati[ve]” ways (358). The conviction that Jesus is Israel’s Messiah and that he was crucified and raised from the dead comes to define, characterize and distinguish Christian readings of the OT from all other readings of the NT.

The second term that characterizes Hays’ understanding of the Gospel writers’ engagement of the OT is “metalepsis.” Metalepsis is “a literary technique of citing or echoing a small bit of a precursor text in such a way that the reader can grasp the significance of the echo only by recalling or recovering the original context from which the fragmentary echo came and then reading the two texts in dialogical juxtaposition” (11). Metalepsis is hardly unique to the biblical writers. It surfaces in other literature, classical music, and even popular film and music.1 It is a technique that the NT writers use to great effect. They may employ it at multiple levels -when, for instance, they quote the OT, allude to the OT, or echo the OT (“quotations” are “introduced by a citation formula or … feature the verbatim reproduction of an extended chain of words…;” “allusions” either “imbed several words from the precursor text” or “explicitly mention notable characters or events;” an “echo” is “a word or phrase that evokes, for the alert reader, a reminiscence of an earlier text,” 10). As importantly, metalepsis serves the NT writers’ greater end of explicating the person and work of Jesus Christ with reference to the Scriptures of the OT. OT quotations, allusions, and echoes, whether they are expressly metaleptic or not, are the brushes and oils with which the NT authors paint the portrait of Christ in their writings.

How does Hays see each Evangelist turning to the OT in order to craft his particular portrait of Christ? Hays shows how each Gospel engages the OT in order to tell the story of Israel, Jesus, and the church. Mark handles Scripture in a way that, “like his narrative style more generally, is indirect and allusive” (98). There are comparatively fewer citations in Mark than in other Gospels – “Mark for the most part works his narrative magic through hints and allusions” (ibid.). If this is Mark’s narrative technique, what, then, is the narrative or story that Mark tells? As the curtain rises on the Gospel, Mark understands “Israel still under exile,” requiring nothing less than “divine intervention” for her “deliverance” (16). John the Baptist’s sudden appearance at the beginning of Mark heralds both impending eschatological judgment (Mark 1:2-3 and Mal 3:1 [LXX]) and a new exodus (Mark 1:2-3 and Exod 23:20 [LXX]). The one who will bring this restoration is not John but Jesus, whose death, Mark underscores, “stands in direct continuity with God’s covenant with Israel” (Mark 14:24-25 and Exod 24:8, Zech 9:11) (35,36). Lamentably, the Jewish leaders’ blindness and resistance to Jesus not only signifies that they are under divine judgment, but also serves to bring Jesus to the cross (44). Jesus’ parable of the Tenants (Mark 12:1-12), however, deftly engages multiple OT texts (Isa 5:1-7, Gen 22:2, Gen 37:20 LXX, Psa 118:22-23) to point to the vindication of Jesus and the restoration of the people of God (ibid.).

Mark’s portrait of Jesus is inexplicable apart from his handling of the OT. Precisely in referencing many passages from the OT, Mark presents Jesus as Davidic king, the Son of Man, the Crucified Messiah, and the God of Israel. Mark, for instance, affirms “Jesus’ identity with the one God of Israel” not “explicitly” but precisely “through riddle-like allusions to the Old Testament” (62), such as Isa 40:3, 9-10 in Mark 1:2-3; Psa 107:23-32, Job 38:8-11, Psa 89:9, Psa 106:8-12, Isa 51:9-11, and Psa 44:23 in Mark 4:35-41; and Jer 8:13 in Mark 11:12-14.

Mark also crafts the church’s identity with reference to the OT. Mark 13, with multiple echoes of Daniel, Isaiah, and Joel, sets the church’s persecution in the context of the “time of crisis that precedes God’s final saving action and restoration of justice” (91). The opening lines of Mark (1:1-3), in their echoes of Psa 2:7, and Isa 64:1, 40:15, 17, serve, with other texts in Mark, to characterize the church as “a community that owes ultimate allegiance to God,” not Caesar (94). The church, furthermore, has a call to bear witness to Jesus Christ before the nations – a matter less stated than presupposed in Mark, not least in his engagement with the OT (Mark 11:17 with Isa 56:17; Mark 13:10 with Isa 2:2-4; Mark 15:39with Mark 1:11 and Psa 2:7).

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