ABSTRACT
In the early part of the twentieth century, scholars, focusing on the character of folk traditions, began to identify the relationship between the formal features of tradition on the one hand and its "situations in life" on the other. In the jargon of biblical scholarship, this scholarly effort came to be known as "form criticism". In addition to form criticism, "redaction criticism", observing the process of how materials are shaped in the process of editing, has also contributed to our understanding of how traditions develop and change. In many parts of the Bible, one encounters evidence that editors have reshaped and recontextualized traditional material. The intertextual use of material is a prominent feature of certain Old Testament writings and illustrates the way older traditions were taken up, revised, rewritten, alluded to, or simply reflected in later material. The Old Testament scriptures provided a powerful symbolic and literary world that resounded through the minds and writings of the New Testament authors.
