Oracles in the New Testament

Intertextuality and comparative midrash have become important terms in contemporary biblical studies. Several generations before these explorations, Selwyn was trying to pursue similar questions with regard to the use and reuse of Old Testament materials in the New. The present work is an attempt to discover the use of the Old Testament by the writers of the New. The oracles are precious words, and the words in the New Testament which were precious to the writers are words of the Old Testament. They were precious because they proved the great fact that Jesus was the Christ. The proof is known generally as the Argument from Prophecy. This volume, instead of being limited to the usual form of that Argument, endeavours to deal with the more extended use of the Old Testament in the New; for while the citation of the oracles is sometimes definite, it is sometimes indefinite, as in John 7:38 'as the scripture saith, ' and sometimes, again, where there is no mark of citation at all, they are assumed by the New Testament writers to be known, and whether known or not they are overwritten. . . . If an expression in the New Testament resembles or repeats another in the Old there is a possibility, which may or may not finally be raised to a certainty, that the resemblance or repetition is deliberate. This book endeavours to discover the extent, the cause, and the mode of that deliberation. --from the Prefac