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Richard B. Hays , Echoes of Scriptures in the Gospels (Waco, TX : Baylor University Press , 2016), pp. xix + 504. $49.95.
The first, most prominent point that this review should make is that Richard Hays' Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels arrives as an instant landmark in gospel criticism - a status magnified by the dramatic health crisis that required the book's hurried completion (with the aid of generous colleagues). Hays analyses the distinct ways that the evangelists work with the Old Testament, and demonstrates connections between their interpretations of their scriptures and their christology and theology more generally; as such, this book serves as an illuminating, convincing account of the extent to which the gospels draw on the Old Testament not only for proof-texts, but all the more for models, allusions, tropes and the metaleptic echoes which are the hallmark of Hays' literary investigations. He is by all odds the most gifted writer in his field, whose elegant prose underscores and enhances his exegetical and theological conclusions. The paeans which wreathe the book's jacket indicate justly that this will be a defining work in New Testament studies.
The body of the book - four long, careful chapters dedicated to displaying the four evangelists' distinctive ways of working with their scriptural thesaurus - contains few outright surprises. Herein I found intuitions confirmed, arguments refined and strengthened, conventions called into question, and on every page the first-rate rhetoric and argumentation typical of Hays. The strength of his exposition lies in his synthetic vision of the evangelists' interpretive habits and their theologies (particularly their christologies). In taking up his account of each evangelist as an interpreter of the Old Testament, he effectively introduces the particular characteristics of each; indeed, Hays here provides the...