Jewish Scripture Quotations - The Big Picture

This chart gives a summary view of the recent series on quotations of Jewish Scripture, both in the gospels recognized by the Christian church and in a variety of other documents that are sometimes discussed as alternative or non-canonical gospels.

The eight non-canonical documents reviewed had a total of 7 passages quoting Jewish Scripture among them, so that the average number of quotations was slightly less than one per alternative gospel. The four Biblical gospels have a total of 83 such passages, with a group average of slightly more than twenty such passages per generally-recognized gospel. Again, group totals can obscure individual differences. Among the non-Biblical gospels, several contain no quotations of Jewish Scripture, while the Gospel of Peter contains 3 such passages. Among the Biblical gospels, the numbers ranged from a low of 13 in the Gospel of Mark to a high of 39 in the Gospel of Matthew. In each case, we're measuring passages of the document which contain quotations rather than individual quotations; there were a few instances in the New Testament documents where a single passage might contain more than one quotation.

Studying the results in detail, some other areas of interest came to light. Some documents only contained quotations of Jewish Scripture only when they were quoting Jesus, and there was no sign that the author was aware that the material was a quotation of an earlier source. Some quotations were introduced in a way that showed familiarity with individual authors within the older writings. Some documents showed Jewish Scripture being applied independently by the author, suggesting that the author came from a background which included Jewish Scripture as part of their own personal worldview.