And third, the last couple of decades have seen a trend toward identifying scriptural echoes and allusions within the gospels (usually referred to rather anachronistically as the study of the “Old Testament in the New”). There was nothing unusual about a biographer peppering his account with literary allusions: Greco-Roman authors commonly displayed their knowledge of Homer and the other “greats” of the classical tradition, and Philo wrote biographies of a number of Jewish heroes, each of which drew
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