This post is part of an ongoing series formulating a methodology for tracking and understanding the variety of ways in which early Christians received and utilized Scripture.
The verbal correspondence spectrum tracks the levels of verbal similarity between two texts.[1] Prerequisite for discussion of this spectrum is definitional clarity.[2] Although numerous scholars have offered numerous definitions for the terms used here,[3] building from Andrew Gregory and Christopher Tuckett’s work I employ the following definitions.[4] Most generally, “citation” or “reference” indiscriminately signifies of any possible use of one text in another. That is, a citation is a possible quotation, allusion, or echo worthy of examination and plotting. On the end of the spectrum with the highest levels of verbal correspondence lay “quotations.” On the end with the lowest levels of verbal similarity lay “echoes.” In-between are “allusions.”[5]
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